1. When a scholar dies in a town
Its tallest are diminished

2. And when one passes in his day
The earliest mourns himself

3. The beauty of men are their fathers
And their scholar among them, the finest

4. The pillars of existence are the scholars of the age
If they all perish, it would shake

5. And a man's confidants, they have rank
So that this one ascends, and that one descends

6. As ignorance spreads among the people
And each sees himself as the wisest