In this paper I offer a close reading of Mulayḥ b. al-Ḥakam’s (d. 7th century) first qaṣīda, as collected in in the Baghdadi philologist and poetry collector as-Sukkarī’s (d. 275/888) diwan of the tribe of Hudhayl. The tribe resided (and according to Wellhausen still resides) in the Hejaz, Saudi Arabia. My research is based on Farrāj and Shākir’s 1963 edition Kitāb Sharḥ ashʿār al-Hudhaliyyīn. Mulayḥ’s poems have been translated into German by Bräu (1927), based on an edition of Wellhausen (1884). Bräu expressed surprise that the Arabic philologists showed little interest in these poems, even though they are teeming with rare words (gharāʾib). I argue, however, that this is incorrect: Mulayḥ al-Hudhalī’s poems are frequently quoted in Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿarab. It has further been stated that Mulayḥ is scarcely treated by classical and post-classical scholars alike (Farrāj 1963; Hussein, 2011). But the lexicographer Ibn Manẓūr’s revitalized interest in Mulayḥ’s poetry beyond the thirteenth into the fourteenth century suggests otherwise. It attests to a continuous engagement with his work in the philological tradition. Further, it indicates that Mulayḥ’s choice of words represents a unique register of Arabic that was deemed worthy of recording. The Hudhalī diwan represents, according to Goldziher (1897) one of the earliest efforts of the Arabic philologists in preserving the Arabic poetic tradition. Further, it is the only extant diwan of a pre-Islamic tribe and therefore doesn’t exclusively represent their best poet’s writings, which compilers were usually interested in. To the contrary, it reflects the average tribal poet’s literary output and hence, was labeled mediocre by Bauer (1992). In my interpretation of the poem, I frequently resort to Ibn Manẓūr’s Lisān al-ʿArab, who explains Mulayḥ’s rare words while citing verses from his eleven poems. Further, I offer to pause on linguistic features of the poet’s work, especially the use of simile (tashbīh) of the kind that involves a mafʿūl muṭlaq construction. That way, I seek to remedy previous injustice done to Mulayḥ's poetry.