Sol 6.1

  1. To you we sent her—wandering verses containing

    Meanings without which poetry would not be ennobled.

  2. A bride, yet married off—a daughter of one night,

    Secluded, but my thought is her curtained chamber.

  3. When my body says, “She is made lawful with a robe,”

    My two legs tell it, “No—her bride-price is a colt.”

  4. Who, then, will procure it for me? No black steeds have won its hue,

    Nor have speckled steeds gained its two mantles, nor yellow ones.

  5. A bay horse: gray and piebald steeds are humbled if it appears,

    And chestnuts are exalted by the likeness to it they have gained.

  6. When it meets blood matching its own hue, it wades through it,

    And through no water but the deep water of its luster.

  7. So its forehead blaze is white, and its stockings too,

    But wine has been poured over all the rest of it.

  8. And swifter than a seeker of bounty coming to you, and a poet

    Whose rhymes are peerless, white-stockinged and white-blazed.

  9. So if a horseman glimpsed it in the land of Persia,

    By the time the two reached evening, Egypt would be his city.

  10. Bred by a youth whose horses are foaled in war,

    And watered with blood; combat keeps them lean.

Sol 6.1