Sol 5.6

  1. If your gift betrays you, look closely

    at the road to a livelihood—a lifetime cannot be divided.

  2. Never easy is the life of one possessed by feeling,

    with a vein pulsing in his innermost soul.

  3. His gentleness turned him into an ocean;

    his faculties bore him forth to hunt the blue.

  4. His candor overflows, while life is deceit;

    your weapon in it is to let its murk envelop you.

  5. Bear whatever calamities befall—

    your strength may fail you before the subtlest things.

  6. People think you arrogant,

    and both you and they are justified in what they think.

  7. Few will excuse your reserve;

    the person people love most is open and affable.

  8. His face drips sorrow,

    and bearing him weighs hard upon companions.

  9. The companion you sincerely befriend is congenial to your nature:

    half is his own nature, and half the shaping of your hands.

  10. Before you, a witty man of letters said:

    The first hospitality offered guests, before food, is gracious character.

  11. Your excuse is that you bear heavy pains

    to which—by your life—men of letters cling.

  12. Most deserving of gentle treatment is one who rises each morning

    when all his life is suffering and exhaustion.

  13. Passions lead you toward deadly ends;

    a passion that wrongs even the forgiving is folly.

  14. Even in silence, resolve is required,

    and even in greeting, tact is required.

  15. People demand a multitude of postures,

    yet whatever people demand meets awkwardness in you.

  16. The individual's submission to society's ranks is compulsory,

    and harsh is the punishment of whoever disobeys.

  17. They are a fabric of tightly woven bonds;

    the singularity of genius tears a rent in it.

  18. ،

    You possess the power to express what

    you feel; the poets' distinction is utterance.

  19. Your life is to speak, though you speak panting;

    to be sentenced to silence is hanging for you.

  20. You do not know whether to free yourself from inspiration's rein

    or stoop low and become enslaved.

  21. If you do not please the mediocre and the common crowd,

    and will not lie—for poetry's excellence is truth—

  22. do not call the supposed nobleman “father of lofty deeds”

    when you know him to be a foolish fraud;

  23. and if you do not praise his noble deeds and judgments

    because they conform to the people's inclination,

  24. you are thrust among the rabble—and that is abuse;

    then you go to the courts—and that is strangulation.

  25. " "

    The survival of the species said to every individual:

    “I have girded my ways with justice and gentleness.

  26. My companions' hearts are sealed; yet to my watering place

    there are paths for one who knows nothing of clamorous jostling.

  27. My laws are my sharp sword, and in my realm

    whoever does not crush feeling is himself crushed.

  28. Through oppression I pave an easy road,

    a slippery descent for the pure of heart.”

  29. Strange is the poets' world: their circumstances grow harsh,

    while their tongues grow delicate.

  30. They are like other people, but once aroused,

    between them and other people lies a difference.

  31. People's singularities vary, but

    the artist-poet's singularity is his very nature.

  32. And if you marvel, marvel at a clever, discerning man

    in whom surface and depth have become equal.

  33. The paths close in upon him, though he is free;

    adaptability fails him, though he is eloquent.

  34. The secret of poetry lies in a brain

    intelligent, yet inept at practical management.

  35. It flounders in the simplest matters, yet its hand

    unlocks for it what is closed among ideas.

  36. Famous, though they never sought fame—

    postal dispatches carried their news, and the telegraph flashed.

  37. Admired from afar and near,

    they have one horizon, while sun and moon have another.

  38. Envied whenever they speak, while others wish

    that one mouth of theirs—if only it were sewn shut.

  39. A volley of afflictions aids the assault upon them,

    a volley of criticism and abuse.

  40. Their only refuge of honor

    is some patron's door, knocked on now and then.

  41. Whenever their panegyrics are finely wrought, a patron sends for them,

    as silver buys the beauty of a melody.

  42. Otherwise they leave them neglected and lost,

    as a wineskin is shunned once the drinking is done.

  43. Many a poet among them is squandered into dust,

    though West and East proclaim his fame.

  44. At the gathering, an inkwell is adorned in his honor,

    and a manuscript of his is displayed in museums.

  45. What wonder if, from an outcast deemed worthless,

    precious treasures of exquisite creation should be prized?

  46. Throughout far-flung lands one sees a tomb

    heaped with a load of scattered roses.

  47. The Euphrates venerates the remains of its Ahmad,

    and Damascus caresses the grave of her Ahmad.

  48. Parting from that man is grief, though he left no heirs;

    while this living one trembles, his livelihood barred from him.

Sol 5.6