Arabs, who founded the excellence of rhyme
On heaven or earth who were second to none
The world recognized their eloquence sublime
But our honoured folk have their traces erased
Having first lost their art and second their glory
Then drowned poetry thus ending the story.

To letters they gave life, they adorned their fiction
With rhetoric they polished the text of religion
Like the tip of the sword they used their diction
The jab of their tongue was sharp as the dagger
Morality was furbished by their prose and poetry
The world was stirred by the flow of their oratory.

Their offspring here who have magic of words
Whose style is admired by aged and young
In rhetoric who are known all over the world
But their true worth is nothing more than this:
In poetry their lives when they frittered away
Then clowns in carnivals their poems do bray.

Nautch girls recite all their poems by heart
Bards and troubadours owe them much gratitude
In brothels, bordellos, their desires do start
Satan sings panegyrics, praises them no end
Having drawn thick veils over our minds entire
They have taken away our right thinking power.

Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/impact-of-arabic-poetry/