The first hemistich names the old person’s folly and the second the possibility that a young person becomes forbearing. The contrast is a rhetorical opposition between hardened habit and potential development.
Ḥilm is more than silence; it implies restraint, deliberation and patience. Zuhayr associates moral formation with the life course, but the aphoristic phrasing is a literary generalization, not an infallible individual diagnosis.
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Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā: Mortality, Generosity, Self-Respect and Wisdom of Speech (Verses 53–62)
The first hemistich names the old person’s folly and the second the possibility that a young person becomes forbearing. The contrast is a rhetorical opposition between hardened habit and potential development.
Ḥilm is more than silence; it implies restraint, deliberation and patience. Zuhayr associates moral formation with the life course, but the aphoristic phrasing is a literary generalization, not an infallible individual diagnosis.