Rhythmus de miseria mundi

How the fleeting and perishable nature of man Is vividly depicted.

All the world’s creation, seen aright,

is a book to us, a picture bright,

and a mirror held to view.

Of our life, and of our dying,

of our state, and of our lying

in the lot that falls as due.

The rose paints our state for showing,

fitting gloss on our own going,

lesson of our life laid bare.

While at morning first it flowers,

stripped of bloom, in evening hours

it grows old and sheds its wear.

So the breathing flower expires,

paling as its bloom retires,

dying even as it’s born.

Young and old at once together,

girl and crone in the same weather,

fades the rose that greets the morn.

So the springtime of man’s aging,

in youth’s morning, freshly staging,

blooms again a little while.

Yet this morning soon is banished

by life’s evening, till it’s vanished

into twilight’s dying smile.

While its beauty still is speaking,

soon that beauty falls to weakening,

in the age where it must flow.

Flower turns to hay, gem to clay,

man to ash, the tribute man must pay

when he yields to death below.

Whose life, whose very being here,

is pain, is toil, and bound to bear

life’s closing in death’s embrace.

So death shuts life, grief shuts laughter,

shadow shuts day, and flood shuts after

the harbor, evening shuts morning’s face.

The first assault comes down upon us,

pain of death, its face upon us,

labor, death’s own mummer-play.

It sets us forth into our toiling,

takes us up into our moiling;

death’s conclusion ends the day.

So, enclosed beneath this reason,

read your state, o man, its season;

look upon your very frame.

What you were, before your bearing,

what you are, and what’s your faring,

search with care and know the same.

Mourn the pain, lament the failing,

curb the passions, break the railing

of your pride, lay low your brow.

Ruler, charioteer of spirit,

guide the mind, and rein it near it,

lest it stray to wander now.