“Whoe’er thou art who walkest overhead,
Behold thyself in stone: for I yestreen,
Was seemly and alert like thee: now dead,
Nailed up and earthed, and for the last time green;
The first spring greenness and the last decay
Are hidden here forever from the day.
I, Hubert van Eyck, whom all Bruges’ folks hailed
Worthy of lauds, am now with worms engrailed.
My soul, with many pangs by God constrained,
Fled in September, when the corn is wained,