1. Shall I forget while time forgets not
Or forget Him whose affair is most complex?

2. And I hope that I am safe
Though the safety of the secure slays me

3. My day passes and its darkness
Passes with what is fairer and lovelier than it

4. And I hope to elude sorrow
By my life! For me it is delusion

5. And how can another see he will remain
When the first has perished?

6. And when the signs of old age appeared
On him who before was rejected

7. They consulted and said, “The tongue of old age
Of our members is the most feeble”

8. So I said to them, “It is old age that enfeebles
Only him who faces wrong and accepts it

9. So for how long do I not act wisely
And why do I not speak and act?

10. And how thirsty I have been throughout life
While in my palm the icy chain!

11. No safety and no deed among them
Like a cloud that threatens but does not give rain

12. Men are but like insects of the night
Vexing the earth or making it easy

13. So he that has no experience of it
And another who knows yet does not act!

14. Would that he who knows the ways of destruction
And pursues them were an ignorant man!

15. Do you feel secure after the forties
Have sped like a flock of startled crows?

16. And there remains in you no trace
Of the rending of youth to be hoped for or sought

17. Yet you aspire to length of life
When soon that which is past will be longer!

18. Know that the house is but the house of affliction
So that in its honey there is always bitter aloe.

19. He is healed of disease who is afflicted
And he escapes death who is killed

20. And a sickness that settled all the calamities
As though it was a sickness that kills

21. O heedless one, the voice of him who warns
Awakens in men one who slumbers!

22. A long road and you a feeble man
Perhaps in your provisions you are scant

23. Is there not behind you an oft-visited house
Full of winding sheets and shrouds?

24. By it the dawn is night, by it the night
Of departure is a night serene

25. When the youth alights near it
Intending to stay, how far is his removal!

26. And if he comes to it urged by men
Then in spite of him he will descend

27. Yet from it he has no escape
Even if he attains deliverance and departure

28. Stages where no living man has
A resort, no middle part a halting place

29. Empty save for a wolf you see in it
Howling or a screeching owl

30. Or a cooing gazelle
Murmuring as the sound of the threshing sledge

31. Murmuring and bolting the door
Against one who neither murmurs nor bolts the door!

32. Where are the possessors of abundant ease
And where the braves and champions?

33. And where are their spirited horses?
And what they ruled and what they appropriated?

34. And where are those who when they spoke
Their eloquence made the assembly tremble?

35. And all men of lengthy tongue fell silent
Answering not nor questioning!

36. When they walked they dragged their robes
So that the ground was swept for the hems

37. A people, when they journeyed shook
The rocky hills or caused them to slip

38. With their spears they overturned empires
And their swords levied tribute

39. And how many glances they turned in men
Yet saw nothing but their own bounty!

40. And when the lands feared calamity
Their homes were the refuge

41. They have gone like the winds that bear
The homeland they adorned and made gentle

42. And roused them from the repose of their castles
So they tarried not, the rousing vexation!