Sol 5.6

  1. If I have grown accustomed to nothing from you but gracious favor,

    how then could I fail to hope in you through every ordeal?

  2. It is toward you, in my reproach, that I prolong my boldness,

    because in every affair you are the one in whom I place my hope.

  3. And after God, you are not merely the hoped-for one

    on whom I rely, but the one on whom I wholly depend.

  4. No one is ever buried except when dead;

    yet here am I, alive, buried in my own home.

  5. Though this age has brought its sword down upon

    my limbs, joint after joint,

  6. and burdened me with its loads, so that I seem

    to stagger beneath mountains of those burdens upon my shoulders.

  7. And since the gates of hope were closed before I reached my goal,

    I have knocked, with my reproach of you, at the gate of gracious favor.

  8. Am I to leave thirsty, though I have come to a watering place—

    my hope in your bounty, the sweetest spring?

  9. And will you surrender me to Time, after I became certain

    that, however Time may terrify me, you are my stronghold?

  10. Suppose the evil of my deeds is what bars me from your gifts;

    still, the goodness of my hope in your generosity will bring me to them.

Sol 5.6