The earth is the flesh which with beauty is rife,
The air is the breath, without which is no life;
So man must be always accounted the same
As the substances four which exist in his frame.
And as in their creation distinction there’s none
’Twixt man and the world, so the Infinite One
Unto man a clear wisdom did bounteously give
The nature of everything to perceive.
Poverty.
But one thing to me passing strange doth appear:
Since the wisdom of man is so bright and so clear,
How comes there such jarring and warring to be
In the world betwixt Riches and Poverty?
Riches.
That point we’ll discuss without passion or fear,
With the aim of instructing the listeners here;
And haply some few who instruction require
May profit derive like the bee from the briar.
Man as thou knowest, in his generation
Is a type of the world and of all the creation;
Difference there’s none in the manner of birth
’Twixt the lowliest hinds and the lords of the earth.
The world which the same thing as man we account
In one place is sea, in another is mount;
A part of it rock, and a part of it dale—
God’s wisdom has made every place to avail.
There exist precious treasures of every kind
Profoundly in earth’s quiet bosom enshrin’d;
There’s searching about them, and ever has been,
And by some they are found, and by some never seen.
With wonderful wisdom the Lord God on high
Has contriv’d the two lights which exist in the sky;
The sun’s hot as fire, and its ray bright as gold,
But the moon’s ever pale, and by nature is cold.