Sol 5.6

  1. What does Time show you through its lessons,

    through its vicissitudes and its changes?

  2. Blessed is a servant whose whispering doubts have died,

    and whose soul has confined itself to reflection.

  3. Blessed is one whose concern is the Resurrection and what

    God has told him of its tidings.

  4. Blessed is one who grows in nothing but piety

    toward God as he advances in age.

  5. A man who has witnessed the calamities

    of Time ought never sleep, for fear of it.

  6. As much as any taster has savored the serenity

    of life, one day he will taste its bitterness.

  7. How many a mighty man, consigned to a grave,

    has been weighed down by hands with its clods of earth.

  8. Death has driven him out of his palatial estates,

    out of his pavilions and out of his chambers.

  9. When a man of rank has taken up residence in the graves,

    visit him there, and behold what became of his rank.

  10. How swiftly night and day work upon

    man—in his hearing and in his sight,

  11. in his gait and in his joints—

    yes, and in his hair and in his skin.

  12. The time is coming—there is no doubt of it—so do not

    consider its length or its brevity.

  13. No one from among us has gone on ahead

    without those behind him following in his tracks.

  14. No elder remains because of his years,

    nor does any child remain in childhood.

Sol 5.6