1. The nights and days urged us on insistently,
Rushing us from one pleasure of life to another.

2. But the ravages of time are many,
And how many kings built and fortified,

3. Yet outran neither days nor death.
How many people we saw happy,

4. Only for them after their joy to die.
The living were heedless, as though

5. In their heedlessness of obeying God, dead.
Does not the son of Adam wrongly think

6. He has a term hidden from him and a fate?
And all the sons of this life make excuses,

7. With the bitterness of months though they impair life.
O brother, possessions came to ruin

8. And for their owners in life’s span were signs.
Did you not see when coffins were stacked over them

9. With long sojourning beneath, left to stay?
Leave evil and seek good in its settlement,

10. For good has habits and for evil habits.
You have no property counted from this world

11. Beyond what you know of it and live by.