Abu Tammam

"The sword gives truer tidings than do scriptures; its edge is what tells zeal from vanity; White blades, not the black letters on the page — these reveal misguided doubts for what they are."

"If poetry could be exhausted, then it would already have been so by the collected water in your cisterns, in past times. Rather, it is the rainfall of the mind: some clouds may vanish, only to be followed by more clouds."

"A victory at which Heaven threw wide its gates, which Earth put on new dress to celebrate: O battle of Amorium, from which our hopes returned engorged with milk and honey, The Muslims hast thou fixed in the ascendant, pagans and pagandom fixed in decline!"