All life's a scene, a jest: then learn to play,
Dismissing cares, or bear your pains alway.
This wretched life of ours is Fortune's ball;
'Twixt wealth and poverty she bandies all:
These, cast to earth, up to the skies rebound;
These, tossed to heaven, come trembling to the ground.
Oh for the joy of life that disappears!—
Weep then the swiftness of the flying years:
We sit upon the ground and sleep away,
Toiling or feasting; but time runs for aye,
Runs a fell race against poor wretched man,
Bringing for each the day that ends his span.
Tears were my birthright; born in tears,
In tears too must I die;
And mine has been, through life's long years,
A tearful destiny.
Such is the state of man; from birth
To death all comfortless:
Then swept away beneath the earth
In utter nothingness.