Sol 5.6

  1. Your youth has passed before we ever savored its bloom;

    nor did we attain a single thing for which we longed.

  2. What use is recalling pledges from you, when hopes never won

    within them a promise free from delay?

  3. Those days when you ravaged my bleeding vitals

    with a glance, kohl-darkened by the last traces of enchantment,

  4. and lorded it over us in our passion—

    a swaying beauty, luxuriant-limbed and dewy-fresh.

  5. O heart, these traces of beauty lie desolate

    in an unknown wilderness whose landmarks are effaced.

  6. Then mourn your hope for a world you were promised—

    Time has turned it into an uninhabited dwelling.

  7. Nowhere in all its far-flung reaches does the eye glimpse

    anything but the afflictions of a heart shackled there;

  8. nor does the tormented lover gain from beholding it

    anything but sorrow’s assaults, relentlessly prolonged.

  9. O you, whose past intercedes for your present

    with a clear and gracious excuse, accepted:

  10. let love forgive the haughtiness you showed before

    toward a lover, heart-tormented and love-sick.

  11. For a time we reveled in the memory of you,

    drinking honeyed sweetness from the pure spring of union;

  12. and today, in whispered converse of you, we quietly worship

    the ruins of a beauty humbled before whoever loves you.

Sol 5.6