1. No day like yours can comfort me after you are gone,
Nor did the thought of such a day occur to me before.

2. How can a heart find solace when dire calamities
Strike wave after wave of sorrow and confusion?

3. O heart, be patient, for patience is a high virtue
To which exalted men return after passion's rule.

4. Do not say that an early death left a man's goal unmet;
Neither the first to go nor the last is spared.

5. The passing days subtract far more from my life now
Than they detract from ordinary men each day.

6. Time inflicts its strokes on my body continuously;
Why should I worry if it takes my robe away?

7. We're fooled into thinking we'll be spared from it,
As embers' glow tricks one who warms his hands thereby.

8. He whom I hoped in earlier days would come
To mankind's aid is gone - how vain my dreams!

9. Worldly affairs distracted me, but now that
My hands are empty of them, my pains have multiplied.

10. I left them scattered to the winds' sweeping,
And drew away what remained of my train behind.

11. It's as if when I died and went below,
I didn't leave a single part of me on earth intact.

12. Why can't I endure today with equanimity
Or banish patience and solace from my mind?

13. Waves of sorrow keep returning to me
With new sorrows following close on those now past.

14. I wanted a father to show me love, and children
To comfort me as my years went drifting by;

15. Wealth for a time, and family for a season -
Nothing destroys a man like losing wealth and kin.

16. I'd gladly do without it, slowly or quickly,
If that could help me, whether soon or late.

17. How strange is Time, whose days unceasing
Run after me and run away from me by turns.

18. I love it though against my will, and bid it
Farewell, dispatched by Death, that tireless seeder.

19. How many lofty peaks has Fortune undermined,
And from how many deep valleys raised up streams!

20. How many great men among their tribes
She made food for assemblies of gossiping idlers!

21. A man, tall in his enemies' eyes, watches them
Like a hawk surveying prey from on high.

22. When the days drive you relentlessly away
From home to a place emptied of kin,

23. No living soul can feel secure,
For Time is crooked and keeps no settled state.

24. Do not let my wealth or poverty disturb you,
Or whether I have little or enough.

25. I see death's inevitability as uncertain,
So I reject it - how like water life seems to my eyes!

26. You were reviled, O house, despite the love we bore you;
You are more treacherous than a rugged valley.