تكمَّل فَضْلِي قبلَ عشرين حِجَّةً

فَكَيْفَ وقد جاوزتُها بِثَلاَثِ

My excellence reached perfection before twenty years had passed;

That should suffice it, though I have exceeded them by three.

وأُنفقتُ عمري في مدائحِ معشرٍ

كَمَوتَى ولو أَنْصَفْتُ كُنَّ مراثِي

And I have spent my life composing praises of a certain company

Who are like the dead—had I been just, those praises would have been elegies.