Sol 5.6

  1. You are the one who taught me,

    my master, the loyalty due a friend,

  2. then left me among your young companions;

    not one of them has a faithful friend’s devotion.

  3. After you, I met among them

    nothing but coldness or disloyalty,

  4. until it seemed I had never spent a night

    among them under a binding pledge.

  5. It was as though they had never seen

    in my friendship the noble, true-hearted man.

  6. They forgot my love, yet never woke

    from loving them, my yearning heart.

  7. They forgot the fresh delight of our talk

    over morning cup or evening cup.

  8. Would that passion had never led me

    one day along that road.

  9. Or would that I had not been deceived,

    in ignorance, by those flashes of lightning.

  10. Rather, would that, after all

    I suffered from my companions, I might awaken.

  11. My master, if you could see me,

    you would be alarmed by my tears running free,

  12. and by my grief—my body wasted,

    as though it were a phantom visiting by night.

  13. I lay my complaint before you; for only

    the wronged complain to the compassionate.

  14. Have mercy—I would ransom you—on a soul

    that deep sorrow has brought to ruin:

  15. a sorrow that cuts within the breast,

    as though it were a friend’s betrayal.

  16. Alas for my heart: it has never ceased—

    its fluttering spirit keeps it yearning;

  17. and memory leads it back

    to the days of tender, gentle love,

  18. the days when we frolicked in youth,

    in that elegant life;

  19. the days when, amid love

    and affection, we drank a cup of nectar.

  20. Those nights left no beauty

    after them that could delight;

  21. no—nothing did they leave us

    but sighing out or gasping in.

Sol 5.6