On Procrastination - Hebat Allah ibn Altalmith

Youth is a drunken, noisy hour,

  With every folly fraught;

But man, by Age's chastening power,

  Is sobered into thought.

Then we resolve our faults to shun,

  And shape our course anew;

But ere the wise reform's begun,

  Life closes on our view.

The travellers thus, who wildly roam,

  Or heedlessly delay,

Are left, when they should reach their home,

  Benighted on the way.

---

Hebat Allah ibn Altalmith (died 1164) Iraq

Translated by Joseph Dacre Carlyle

Source: Specimens of Arabian poetry, from the earliest time to the extinction of the Khaliphat, with some account of the authors by Joseph Dacre Carlyle, Lunn, 1796