To man is allotted a span of a hundred years;
Half of that passes in sleep;
Of the other half one half is spent in childhood and old age;
The rest is passed in service with illness, separation, and pain as companions.
How can mortals find joy in life
That is like bubbles on the waves of the sea?

Those that brought us up are long departed;
Those that grew old along with us are no more than a memory.
We that remain are threatened at every moment by the same fate,
Broken like the trees on a sand-bank.

A PERPETUAL VOW .

My Life, you swear this love of ours
Shall pleasant and perpetual be!
Fulfil her promise, Heavenly Powers,
And grant it honest, frank, and free!
That all our lives be ordered by
This league of solemn amity.

Apply what test you will to a man of courage,
His constancy will never be false to itself.
Turn over the fire;
None the less the flame will mount upward.

LOVE DETECTED .

Lesbia does nothing else but flout me,
She cannot hold her tongue about me!
Then hang me, but she loves me dearly!
What proof? My own behaviour clearly:
For I attack her just as stoutly,
Yet hang me! her I love devoutly.

'Twould not be hard, through life's gray sea
To find the track;
But fawn-eyed women hinder me
And hold me back.

FRAGMENT OF G AZEL

Torn and pierced my heart has been by thy scorn and tyranny's blade;
Rent by the scissors of grief for thee is the robe that my patience arrayed.
Like the mihr a b of the Ka " ba, as shrine where in worship to turn,
They ward would an angel take, if thy foot-print there he surveyed.
They are pearls, O mine eye! thou sheddest her day-bright face before;
Not a tear is left — these all are dried by the beams by her cheek displayed.

The sportive Love-god in this worldly sea
Angles continually;
And women are his hook, their luring lips
The bait that bobs and dips.
We greedy fools, like silly nibbling fish,
Are landed with a swish;
And then, alack! to end the cruel game
Are broiled on love's quick flame.

I longed that the Beloved might come to me,
Or Patience come and in my heart remain;
But neither came, and now at last I see
The only constant friend I have is Pain.

Oh dice, give play that profit brings,
Like cows that yield abundant milk:
Attach me to a streak of gain,
As with a string the bow is bound.