No. 59.
"De contemptu mundi:" this is the theme I've taken:
Time it is from sleep to rise, from death's torpor waken:
Gather virtue's grain and leave tares of sin forsaken.
Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended:
Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart suspended:
Death kills all, to no man's prayer hath he condescended.
Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Where are they who in this world, ere we kept, were keeping?
Come unto the churchyard, thou! see where they are sleeping!
Dust and ashes are they, worms in their flesh are creeping.
Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Into life each man is born with great teen and trouble:
All through life he drags along; toil on toil is double:
When life's done, the pangs of death take him, break the bubble.
Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
If from sin thou hast been turned, born a new man wholly,
Changed thy life to better things, childlike, simple, holy;
Thus into God's realm shalt thou enter with the lowly.
Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Having alluded to Gaudeamus Igitur, I shall close my translations with a version of it into English. The dependence of this lyric upon the rhythm and substance of the poem on Contempt for the World, which I have already indicated, is perhaps the reason why it is sung by German students after the funeral of a comrade. The Office for the Dead sounding in their ears, occasions the startling igitur with which it opens; and their mind reverts to solemn phrases in the midst of masculine determination to enjoy the present while it is yet theirs.