[1] For they said to themselves, reasoning in their faulted way: our life is short and full of trouble; there is no remedy at man's end, and no one has been known to have returned from the grave.
[2] By mere chance did we come to be, and thereafter we shall be as though we had never been, for the breath in our nostrils is but a puff of smoke; our reason is a mere spark within our throbbing heart,
[3] and when that is extinguished, our body will turn to ashes, and our life breath will be scattered like thin air.
[4] Our name will be forgotten with the passage of time, and none will recall our deeds; our life will be gone like the traces of a cloud and dispersed as mist, pursued by the sun's rays and overborne by its heat.
[5] For our time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no reversal of our end; it has been sealed, and none overturns it.
[6] Come then, let us enjoy the good things at hand, and make use of creation with youthful zest.
[7] Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no spring blossom pass us by.
[8] Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
[9] Let no meadow fail to share in our revelry, let us everywhere leave tokens of our merriment, for this is our portion and our birthright.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Let Us Enjoy the Good Things at Hand
Wisdom of Solomon 2:1-9 (tr. David Winston):