Sol 6.1

  1. Through your health, time and well-being

    are renewed for your hopeful state.

  2. You received, in a passing illness,

    an affection that is the enduring proof.

  3. And you will complain of no ailment afterward,

    for that ailment was itself the cure.

  4. Even had the physicians' medicine not healed you,

    your pure intention would have saved you.

  5. May you stay well for yourself and the two nations,

    and for a vast, flourishing kingdom.

  6. And your view now fills the land,

    while the obstinate man's view lies in a corner.

  7. You took in hand an amenable faction

    to gain control of the difficult, defiant one.

  8. And your firmly established measures

    have their fresh results yet to come.

  9. And whoever wins the good souls

    is safe from the rebellious souls.

  10. And whoever doubts the truth after seeing it firsthand

    has indeed doubted his own seeing eye.

  11. You grieved at the discord among the men

    in Egypt, and at the spreading ordeal.

  12. Do they leave the beasts of prey in their field

    and fight one another over the waterwheel?

  13. The resentful criticize your ministry,

    though it rules according to what they decreed.

  14. And they find nothing objectionable in it

    except that it is empty of them.

  15. Is it for their power, or for its constitution,

    that they stir up your contented nation?

  16. And they sought rule in the name of struggle

    only for their fleeting worldly ends.

  17. You safeguarded their share, while

    they squander their feeble claim.

  18. They turned away, destroying themselves,

    furious at your building hand.

  19. If they oppose you, who are their helper,

    then what have they prepared for the tyrant?

  20. They now demand of you what you preserved

    to appease their crafty adversary.

  21. The envoy returned—how, then, did

    his journey of complaint turn out for the people?

  22. Defiance against the adversary, or a return

    to the view that it is the protecting state?

  23. Bear with the alarmists and what they have bestowed,

    and endure them patiently once again.

  24. For they are your earliest companions,

    even if they pass beyond you into the abyss.

  25. And you are one of them, compassionate toward them,

    even if they become the unkind faction.

  26. And you are forced into a situation

    that is a bitter, harsh lesson.

  27. And worthier of your resolve in the two valleys

    is to shoulder their firmly rooted mountains.

  28. Perhaps it is fond presumption toward you that

    you see—or covert bargaining.

  29. I support your party in the good it has done,

    and champion your guiding followers.

  30. And I never thought that peace

    was war upon the lampooning newspapers.

  31. May no livelihood be found among his people

    by a youth through their bleeding wounds.

  32. I have gathered from time, in my village,

    the life of civilization and of the desert.

  33. From my place in the universe, I look out

    upon all that passes at evening and at dawn.

  34. And on earth I witness heaven's rule,

    and encounter its unfolding decrees.

  35. And my principle, exposed to the winds,

    is no marketplace, nor is my writing borrowed.

  36. Nor shall I receive tomorrow

    rewards for my days gone by.

  37. And if I exploited passion,

    it would be all the means I needed.

  38. And if I claimed recompense,

    I would be a prince, with a retinue.

  39. Though I am no banner in the homeland,

    I am its redeeming sacrifice.

  40. Who, then, will help me in what I seek

    of the free, resounding call?

  41. Perhaps I may see a harmony that unites

    hearts around the distant goal.

  42. And the freedom of the two nations is enough for me,

    and it is sacred and precious.

Sol 6.1