Lo, the signs of our Lord are everlasting - Umayyah ibn Abī aṣ-Ṣalt

Lo, the signs of our Lord are everlasting,

None disputes them except the unbeliever.

He created Day and Night: unto all men

Is their Reckoning ordained, clear and certain.

Gracious Lord! He illumines the daytime

With a sun widely scattering radiance.

He the Elephant stayed at Mughammas

So that sore it limped as though it were hamstrung,

Cleaving close to its halter, and down dropped,

As one falls from the crag of a mountain.

Gathered round it were princes of Kinda,

Noble heroes, fierce hawks in the mellay.

There they left it: they all fled together,

Every man with his shank-bone broken.

Vain before God is every religion,

When the dead rise, except the Ḥanífite.

---

Umayyah ibn Abī aṣ-Ṣalt (7th century) Saudi Arabia

Translated by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

Source: A Literary History of the Arabs, Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Cambridge University Press, 1966 (originally 1907)