Triumphant here below, all’s soon to ruin hurled.
This thoughtfulness a sun is; greed’s a mass of ice.
This thoughtfulness is water; greed, the filth of vice.
So from the upper world scant tricklings are sent down,
That greed and envy may not ruin every town.170
If those scant tricklings were to prove a copious rill,
Defects and talents both would cease our soil to till.
Let’s leave these moralisings; they would have no end.
So go we back to seek the minstrel, our old friend.
That minstrel’s talent had been rare; the world he’d charmed.