Sol 6.1

  1. And a lean she-camel, like a sword's sheath, her marrow worn down

    by swift trotting across desert wastes, beyond what one fears.

  2. You headed with her toward the lowland, until you made her kneel

    before one who condemns wrongdoing and knows the truth.

  3. Riders seated in the saddle slip off a long stretch

    of backbone, bleeding from the saddle boards' bite.

  4. And how often she struck hard ground with pad and toe,

    sending solid boulders rolling with it as it bled.

  5. Had they not slackened for me after drawing near

    to my hand—the cords of creeping death—

  6. I would have been like a gazelle caught in a snare,

    though the gazelle had feared one of the traps.

  7. I see that God has granted the son of Atika, for whom

    the faith has come to stand with its neck held straight,

  8. fear of God and judgment without equal,

    and the compassion of a rightly guided man, tender toward the people.

  9. And after God, no protector is better than the one

    at whose gates I set down a frightened man's saddle.

  10. To the best of protectors, whose rope offers refuge,

    and the most faithful in his bond to a fugitive poised

  11. over death's abyss, which, if it tosses

    him about, hurls him into far-off chasms.

  12. So I need not fear: I have grasped a handhold

    that is the firmest handhold of the best of allies.

  13. Before what I fear, there came to my hand, from them both,

    rain for the people and fates fraught with destruction.

  14. So he calmed my soul after it had risen in alarm because of it,

    so that the leaping might depart from trembling hearts.

Sol 6.1