Sol 5.6

  1. Had she made it clear to you, before the day of her departure,

    that parting would come this very evening or tomorrow,

  2. you would have lamented when the heart, love-bewildered, became ensnared,

    caught in snares no lover had ever known.

  3. She displayed her charms to you and took you captive with a bright,

    smooth brow and black hair knotted beneath her veil.

  4. White-complexioned, of unalloyed whiteness, as though she were

    a moon poised at the heart of a cool summer night.

  5. Beauty-marked, with women who envy her—

    for beauty is indeed a cause for envy.

  6. Youth’s excess did not carry her beyond bounds, nor did she neglect

    the covenants laid within her by a sincere, right-guiding counselor.

  7. A tender maiden: when talk grows long, she seeks refuge

    in modesty’s sanctuary; and when she speaks, she is measured.

  8. It is as though the taste of choice wine, chilled by the north wind,

    were poured forth in the wake of her supple tooth-stick.

  9. You see her wine shimmering in the twin eyes

    of a wide-eyed beauty, their dark-and-white contrast needing none of antimony’s black.

  10. What beauty, when she comes forth on the morning of her departure—

    beneath the delicate folds of those striped mantles!

  11. Born beneath the most auspicious stars—so her resting place

    and all her journeying lie ever beneath happiest fortune’s smiling face.

  12. May God accompany her, and water her dwelling with

    a rain-laden cloudbank that traveled by night and has not yet thundered.

Sol 5.6