1. In times like these, patience and fortitude are stirred,
And in them, determination demands what it finds.

2. Trouble is naught but to be confronted by us,
While we, oblivious to it, remain far removed.

3. Like sheep grazing in waste terrain,
The shepherd slept while the lion awakened.

4. Adversity walks veiled, not revealing it,
While cold chance hovers over it.

5. Man's days are but detention,
until death comes to take him unawares.

6. He strives though only toward his grave,
Deeming himself supported, or how else supported?

7. He roamed lands, evading his death sites,
Yet one land among them encompassed his death site.

8. How can a man escape the cords of woe
When deaths throng him afterwards in hosts?

9. We knew we were a folk eaten away,
Sought by death sometimes, at others missed.

10. One who knows not what tomorrow holds for him
Will not rest tonight in apathy ever.

11. How many honored ones have we lost, no return for them,
Cast down from the sublime lodging, and we miss them!

12. Their lips tasted the savor of woe in the end,
While midst them honey had oft flowed.

13. How we frequented them! - but our visiting availed not
When the fates swooped down on them.

14. Neither what they hoarded to defend against misery
Nor their mustering availed them.

15. No matter how ample his plenty,
It avails not the youth when his term is done.

16. As if, when their span had stretched out long for them,
Having marched to death, they had not been born!

17. So we weep for their traces in anguish,
Saying, "Do not leave us!" though they have left.

18. Say to the minister - none but you to rouse him -
While to others appeal slumber and torpor.

19. How long will you brood on the past in sorrow?
The fates have reaped their harvest; no sense or leader!

20. Leave off pursuing the life you spent,
Which death and doom have terminated and ended.

21. Grieve for it only while you hope to regain it;
If you despair of it, then neither grief nor toil!

22. Hold back your tears, do not let them flow freely,
For one prodigal sheds them, while one is frugal.

23. If you are distraught that a hand has reached out to you,
By my life, no hand has reached out to you!

24. That parents should drink death to the dregs
Is that their children may live safe from it.