Sol 6

  1. Falsehood passed among them, elder after elder.

    The learned man tells it from experience, not from his predecessors.

  2. I have tested the people of this world and come to long

    for them, as though experience with them had never cured me.

  3. A nature of injustice, against which war cannot set things right,

    and a form of evil whose broken parts cannot be mended.

  4. Your recitation serves neither sound judgment nor guidance;

    in twenty parts, it has neither assimilation nor emphasis.

  5. Life is only lessons along a departing traveler’s journeys,

    and his eye sheds tears over what he undergoes.

  6. I covered it with travel’s dust until I left it

    an exhausted mount, with nothing left in its udders.

  7. After rashness, its ignorance died

    and was buried, though its skull is the grave.

  8. A tale reached us from a Yemeni and a northerner;

    of all creatures, pride best deserves what was fabricated.

  9. Fear God even over the honey you have tasted from bees,

    for the bees gathered it only for themselves.

  10. If you marry an old woman while you are young,

    her days will bring you frost and bitter cold.

  11. The breaking of battle spears is a prick that speech inclines toward;

    how many a thrust is stirred by a needle’s prick!

  12. Your patience is a virtue if you are capable;

    otherwise, patience is a weakness in your nature.

  13. There is no good for someone like me in meeting you,

    nor for you; so see where a handspan may be found.

Sol 6