Hanzalah of Badghis (about 850 A.D.) was one of the earliest Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 poets.

Hanzalah lived in the time of the of Tahirids (820-872 a.d.), one of the early Persian dynasties after the Arabic attack on Persia.

Persian biographer, Muhammad Aufi, praises the verses of Hanzalah by saying the graceful flow of his expression is like the "Water of Paradise, and his verses have the freshness of cool wine (shamul) and the agreeableness of the northern wind (shamal).

So well known were the poems of Hanzalah that they were worth gathering into a Persian Divan, or 'Collection,' only a few fragments of which however, remain.

Here is a quatrain (the earliest Ruba'i thus far quotable), which contains an odd conceit founded on an old superstition; the poet warns his sweetheart that
it is futile for her to throw rue

Rue

Rue is a genus of strongly scented evergreen subshrubs 20–60 cm tall, in the family Rutaceae, native to the Mediterranean region, Macaronesia and southwest Asia. There are perhaps 8 to 40 species in the genus...

-seed on the fire to avert the influence of the evil eye.

RUE AND THE EVIL EYE

Though rue into the fire my dear one threw,

Lest from the evil eye some harm accrue,

'Twould naught avail her — either rue or fire ;

Her face the fire — her beauteous mole the rue!

RUN THE RISK

More potent, however, was the charm in another stanza ascribed to Hanzalah, for it inspired a simple ass-herd to win a crown. Chancing one day to read four of Hanzalah's verses, this donkey-driver became fired with the ambition to make an attempt to gain the throne; and, rising triumphant over every obstacle, he finally grasped the sovereignty. The inspiring stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

 which served the ass-herd king, Ahmad of Khujistan, as a motto for his life's success was this :

If lordship in a lion's jaws should hang,

Go, run the risk, and seize it from his fang;

Thine shall be greatness, glory, rank, and place,

Or else, like heroes, thine be death to face.

Source

Jackson, A. V. Williams. 1920. Early Persian poetry, from the beginnings down to the time of Firdausi. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp.17-19. (in Public Domain).