Sol 6.1

  1. Goals are attained with keen-cutting Indian swords,

    not through wishes and hopeful reliance on fate.

  2. So if a ruined dwelling has faded, or its inhabitant has perished,

    do not stand there amid sorrow and brooding.

  3. Smelling musk occupies you away from tasting it,

    and the sun's radiance gives enough to dispense with the moon.

  4. Had I not resembled other people in my character,

    I would have said I belonged to a race other than humankind.

  5. Or, had the water of my knowledge not subdued my thought,

    my thoughts would have burned me in their fires.

  6. The harshness of the days makes my praise more fragrant,

    as though I were musk between the pestle and the stone.

  7. I have grown accustomed to the greatest of time's calamities,

    so I do not pause over their other little offspring.

  8. Nothing seems stranger to me in its incongruity,

    when I contemplate it, than these figures:

  9. I see clothes, and within their folds are cattle

    without horns—and that is a defect in cattle.

  10. She said, 'You slept.' I answered, 'Care put me to sleep,'

    for care sometimes prevents wakefulness.

  11. How often I have fallen like a bird into a snare,

    and my strength has broken the strength of its twisted cords.

  12. Sometimes I am clear, sometimes turbid, to whoever tests me;

    clarity without turbidity is not considered admirable.

  13. I range farther across the horizons than a proverb

    in circulation, and fill the eyes more than a moon.

  14. If you doubt what you are seeing,

    do not say, 'Among people, I possess sight.'

  15. And how can a person rejoice in his radiant brow

    if, when he bares it, it proves false to his gaze?

  16. Indeed, I have rejoiced in the poverty I endured,

    fearing the two ugly traits: arrogance and insolence.

  17. A blind man may rejoice in his condition,

    because he has escaped the ill omen of one-eyedness.

  18. And I do not weep over the gray hair with which I have been afflicted;

    those who grieve over their lifetime weep over gray hair.

  19. Be wary of your friend, rather than anyone else,

    if the utmost caution can save you from him.

  20. Whenever I trust a person and confide in him,

    he reveals to me a baseness exposed by experience.

  21. I have looked at the world through its own eye,

    and my eyelids have judged it utterly small.

  22. I did not thank my age when it was raising me up;

    so how can I thank it as I descend?

  23. No disgrace attaches to me because I possess no wealth;

    and what disgrace is there in an eye without lovely contrast?

  24. So if I attain what I desire, it is through destiny;

    and if I am denied what I desire, there are excusing reasons.

Sol 6.1