When clad in his armor and prepared for the fray,
The army rejoiceth and winneth the day!"

Again, she lamented him as follows:

"Each glorious rising sun brings Sakhr to my mind,
I think anew of him when sets the orb of day;
And had I not beheld the grief and sorrow blind
Of many mourning ones o'er brothers snatched away,
I should have slain myself, from deep and dark despair."

The poet Nabighah erected for her a red leather tent at the fair of
Okaz, in token of honor, and in the contest of poetry gave her the
highest place above all but Maymûn, saying to her, "If I had not heard
him, I would say that thou didst surpass every one in poetry. I confess
that you surpass all women." To which she haughtily replied, "Not the
less do I surpass all men."

The following are among the famous lines of El Khunsa, which gave her
the title of princess of Arab poetesses. The translation I have made
quite literal.

"Ah time has its wonders; its changes amaze,
It leaves us the tail while the head it slays;
It leaves us the low while the highest decays;
It leaves the obscure, the despised, and the slave,
But of honored and loved ones, the true and the brave
It leaves us to mourn o'er the untimely grave.
The two new creations, the day and the night,
Though ceaselessly changing, are pure as the light: