Sol 5.6

  1. Maʿmar strained to praise gray hair in my presence—

    but can gray hair ever be praised without strain?

  2. I said, “Consider me: at first it brings anguish

    to a young man’s heart, and in the end leaves him destroyed.

  3. Thirty years of my life have slipped away;

    through them I wore youth’s garment, fresh and fine—

  4. a youth whose absence has driven passion from me,

    and the turn of time from which I found no escape.

  5. With youth I held the breast of joy erect, but gray hair

    never ceased its work until it bent that breast double.

  6. So fly on pleasure’s wing in the days of youth,

    for that wing, if you will, is all too apt to be clipped.

  7. The first streaks of gray have reached the edges of my temples,

    and night now wears the dawn as earrings.

Sol 5.6