Sol 6.1

  1. Are you a monk of a monastery, or unaware

    of worldly life, knowing neither pleasure nor ease?

  2. And you prefer the simple folk around your dwelling

    over notables who ravage one another.

  3. You have shed everything but a wealth of experience,

    and abandoned all but truthfulness and fresh literature.

  4. It is grief enough that I see what distresses me,

    so I neither leave the scene nor can I close my eyes.

  5. I groan and complain that I have no power

    among a people in Egypt to loosen or tighten.

  6. Discord and factions, despair and dread,

    and a lofty hope whose champions are sick.

  7. And Ripon now deliberately reviles the Turks,

    and declares enmity and hatred toward the Turks.

  8. And he pities Macedonia and its rebels,

    and how often they have broken a pledge, and how often sullied honor!

  9. And Marrakesh is bereaved, and in India there is anguish,

    and in Russia, violent strife tears her utterly apart.

  10. If indeed he fears renewed war, why does he

    provoke someone forbearing and powerful, who has so often turned a blind eye?

  11. And is it for Grey to command and forbid among us,

    withholding what he rejects and granting what he approves?

  12. Then may the blessed Nile never quench my thirst,

    if it does not return wholly free to its people.

  13. Nor am I so despairing as to change my character,

    even if God changes the heavens and the earth.

Sol 6.1