Ibn al Farid lived a solitary life in Cairo and Hijaz, and his Arabic odes, small in number "resemble the choicest and finest jewel -work of a fastidious artist rather than the first fruit of a Divine inspiration " to quote one of his interpreters, Reynold A. Nicholson
"Ice cool are his deep-red lips, and sweet his mouth to kissing in the morning,
yea, even before the toothpick's cleansing excelling the musk in fragrance
and investing it with its own perfume
of his mouth and his glances cometh my intoxication: nay, but see a vintner
in his every limp.
When the silence of the rings upon his fingers vexed him,
then the girdles about his waist speak forth to the uttermost of his desire:
Delicate are those girdles,and fine that waist, the former is akin to my love-song
and the latter draweth out of excellence of its meaning
so that it vies with it Therine
like the bough of the tree
he is in stature,
and like dawn in beauty
his hair is dark as night
reaching down even to the middle of his back .."
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