1. Your share of this existence is its afflictions,
An illness you endure and a death you battle.

2. You rejoice for one newly born and grieve for one departed;
Its rising is hostage to vanishing and its setting.

3. By your life, surely living is a losing deal
If its pleasures and troubles are weighed.

4. Its serenity passes by like a mirage;
It remains over you—as long as you remain—its misfortunes.

5. You spend the years of life striving for some goal,
Then you attain it not, which you seek.

6. So how paltry is this world and how wretched its inhabitant,
Whose fate is dust and perishing!

7. Humbled before death—for death's a sanctuary
Whose incense is souls and whose awe makes ascetics.