Then Wisdom again unlocked her word-hoard.
Her tale of sooth sang in these words:
'While the bright sun most clear is beaming,
Gleaming in heaven, gloom enwraps
Over the world all other bodies;
For their light is nought, nothing at all,
When set against the sun's great brightness.
When softly blows from south and west
The wind beneath heaven, then soon wax
The flowers of the field, fain to be able.
But the stiff storm-wind, when it strongly blow
From out of the north-east, how soon it nips
The rose's beauty! By the northern blast
The spacious ocean is helpless spurned
Till strongly heaving it strikes the beach.
Alas, that in the world nothing wears
Firm and lasting long on this earth. |