1. The land’s flowers today, its heroes tomorrow—

    God’s peace be upon you, companions!

  2. Your joy in the year is glad tidings that it

    will attend you, free of fear and drought.

  3. You are reconciled with the days, and the pact between them

    and you is that no wrong of theirs shall recur.

  4. If I rejoiced that the Nile should water your planting,

    and that your hopes and love should unite you there,

  5. it grieved me that I remained behind, away from you,

    like one lost in a wilderness from which the caravan has departed.

  6. Now, whenever I contemplate some good for my people,

    hoping to repay my debt to them, my heart throbs.

  7. My inmost voice drives me, while sorrow draws me back;

    yet no push has driven me on, nor any pull turned me back.

  8. You reproached me—but if you knew your faithful friend’s plight,

    that reproach of yours would fall upon the Fates.

  9. I do not seek a cure by despairing of my hopes,

    though consolation and medicine are powerless to help me.

  10. It grieves free men that they are never stirred

    by letters and books except through complaints.

  11. When will the aggressor against us come to his senses and desist,

    and the party of the devoted become the true Party?

  12. The utmost aim of my struggle is to see Egypt free,

    with no land convulsed and no war breaking out.

Sol 6.1