Sol 5.6

  1. They say to me, when my age has driven me backward:

    “Keep back from the noble, mettlesome steeds amid the valiant.”

  2. Is that because I was seen galloping

    on a dust-gray old mount, pursuing the dust-colored game?

  3. Though after all my ardor I now have a spell of languor,

    holding me from an unprecedented onslaught—and a budding-breasted virgin.

  4. Is it out of fear for me, now that my lifetime has disclosed

    a dawn and a night within a sky of hair?

  5. The head’s mouth broke into a white smile of gray,

    and made the heart’s eyes weep tears of red.

  6. I said, “Leave me be; I am well tried:

    an old man’s hunting is not like an untried youth’s.

  7. I have long known my hand to be an expert huntress

    of whatever flies in open sky or ranges the wilderness:

  8. it brings the birds down from the heights of their air

    and draws elusive white-footed mountain goats from rugged ground.

  9. And when the pale, thoroughbred steeds advance in a raid,

    it turns them back with spearpoints, red as chestnuts.

  10. When for a while they throng the battlefield of death,

    spurred at a gallop, now in retreat and now in attack,

  11. I have seen my hand display deftness in both conditions—

    at the manes of seasoned steeds poised at rest, and in successful feats—

  12. deft of fingertip and fully masterful

    in wielding keen white blades and dark-shafted spears.

  13. Though Time has worn away my youthful vigor,

    once, through me, it vaunted itself above the radiant stars.

  14. How often I embroidered it with my noble deeds,

    until, through their radiance, it strode in the ornaments of glory.

  15. And how often I rubbed the nose of its calamities in dust

    through my wise governance—versed in consequences, rich in experience—

  16. one who sets crooked affairs straight by his thought

    and with it confronts the lord of wealth and the teeming host.

Sol 5.6