And the bat said

Who shuns the mob lives on. Beware of mixing with the throng! Just look at what it did for Ham. For all Ham's milling about the enclosure, Shem was the elect of God, the Apportioner.

A creature of seclusion, whose realm is the night, I am puny, but [unstoppable in flight] "like a boulder the flood washes down from a height." By day, I hide from others' view. Isolation is necessary, in my view. Night is when I unwrap myself, for "The rising of night is when impressions are strongest." The sun, when she rises, sentences my eyes to blindness, and I covet the sight of anything else. Against the sun's eye, I close my own, and where she is present, I make myself gone. Why should my heart placate what's subservient to my Lord? Fie on irreligious leanings toward what's transient and remiss: the sun who hauls her fire just to warm the solar disk!

[The bat went on to say (meter: mutaqārib): ]

  How long you've been her prisoner! How much longer will you be?
     Now, by God, the time has come to set the prisoner free.
  She showers you with affection, makes her visits known to all,
     but any circumspection on her part is hard to see.
  If you were serious about your feelings
     you would flee her when she flees,
  and turn your love to Him Whose love
     is glory, and rejoice.
  The way of faith and purity
     mends the heart and leads aright.
  To make your home inside the Garden of Eternity,
     God's love is where to put your eyes.
  While those who work away the day will find reward tomorrow,
     sleep all day rewards the wakers of the night.

From the Language of the Birds of Ibn al-Wardī

Which color is the sky

I have seen these verses in the handwriting of Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Su’alati, who acknowledged them as his (meter: kāmil):

      Lithe as a shoot, my tormentor in blue
         passes by, exulting in his pride.
      Tobacco smoke envelops his face, going up
         from inside him like mist on a winter's day,
      as if screening his beauty—like the full moon's
         when it rises, and dazzles in the paleness of its sky—
      as if screening it from people's eyes
         lest they fall slain by him [as have I!]

These anonymous verses are quite similar (meter: ṭawīl):

      When he comes into view, in his caftan of blue,
         swaggering with pride in outrageous beauty,
      I cannot suppress my cry of "Stop!" at all who blame me,
        "And behold my full moon in his dark sky!"

Poets and writers choose from a range of hues to describe the sky, which changes under different conditions and forms of expression. Some describe it in terms of zurqa "blueness," as in the verses above, whose authors follow this description of a girl in blue by Abu ‘Uthman al-Najim (meter: khafīf):

      Qabul surpasses the occasion when she arrays
         herself in raiment as brilliant as herself,
      dressed in blue and topped with a face
         like the full moon in the paleness of the sky.

Thus did the ancients describe it. When the sun is shining, the sky's blueness is an azure hue produced by the mixture of blue and white, the color of blood flowing in a vein.
      The sky is called akhdar "blue-green" in hadith: "No one more truthful than Abu Dharr ever went beneath the blue-green [sky] or trod the dust-brown [earth]."
      And it is called lazawardi "azure," as where Abu Hafs ibn Burd described a boy dressed in that color (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):

      In azure silk, the sight of him
         blotted out everything else.
     "What mortal is this?" I exclaimed
         at his exorbitant beauty.
     "Let no one deny the moon," he answered
         the right to go robed in the sky!"

      Some call the sky banafsaji "violet," as where Ibn al-Mu‘tazz described a boy in opulent brocade (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):

      I marvel at a violet robe.
         To see it is to die a lover's death.
      Dressed in it now, you are become
         a full moon in the hue of its sky.

From The Fragrance of Green Herbs and Dewy Coating on Wine-Vessels of the Tavern by Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi