1. By your life! The youth knows not how he may guard himself
Against the strokes of time, nor what he should beware;

2. He sees a thing that he should fear, and fears it,
Yet that which God should guard him from is greater.

3. I see myself alive among the living, yet
To time I’m but a dead man whom time has betrayed;

4. So what of me is dead when part of me still lives?
And part to part is as the grave to what decays.

5. O Lord, well did you begin with me, and call me back,
Yet thanks rise not for your great beneficence;

6. If one has cause with you, and argument,
My cause is but confession that I have no cause.