Sol 5.6

  1. O you beguiled by the smiling enticements of hope,

    how long shall we trifle while you, heedless, plunge on?

  2. Never lie: everything you reveal and everything you

    conceal—when humankind is mustered—will be laid bare.

  3. Many a man whose endeavors are accepted in this world—

    his endeavor, on the day of his reckoning, will be rejected.

  4. How admirable are the penitent! For they

    have risen, while sinners have no rising.

  5. How vast the distance between one who, through soaring ambition, fills his heart

    with hope, and one who, fearful, keeps his gaze lowered;

  6. and among whose duties is reflection on the final end,

    possessed by dread, his fingertips bitten.

  7. Say to those who flaunt their prominence:

    Long will their obscurity last in the belly of the earth.

  8. There decay takes dominion, and equal become

    in rank the exalted and the abased.

Sol 5.6