Sol 6.1

  1. Love is like time: it gives to us and takes back.

    Neither despair nor hope tells us the truth about it.

  2. I kept its company while youth set ardent longing upon me,

    And union was an innocent child, and passion a youth.

  3. In days when sleep in our eyelids was not stolen snatches,

    Nor visits from our loved ones fleeting flashes;

  4. And a night whose end thought could not reach,

    As though its two ends were patience and anguish.

  5. When youth was my sword and passion my cutting stroke,

    And revelry was my banner, and pleasures my followers.

  6. I kept it alive; my boon companion in the dark was hope,

    With spacious summits, and my night-companion a skillful imagination,

  7. Until, admiring its own adornment, there smiled

    An exquisite phrase and a meaning newly devised about you.

Sol 6.1