world, and now in hell wallowing and weeping, crying and saying: Alas, what is now worth to us our power, honour, noblesse, joy, and boasts ! Sooner it is passed than the shadow. For as the shot of an arblaster[1] passeth, right so passeth our life. Now be we born, and now be we dead anon; and all our life is not a moment. Now we be in torment everlasting: our joy is turned into weeping, carols to sorrow, garlands, robes, games, feasts, and all goods to us be fallen. Such be the songs of hell. And Holy Writ telleth us that this life is not but a passage, and for to live is not but for to pass. Then for to live is not but for to die, and that is sooth as the Paternoster. For when thou beginnest for to live, anon thou shalt begin for to die: and all thine age and thy time that is passed, death hath it conquered and holdeth.
Thou sayest that thou hast now forty years. That is not sooth. The death hath them, and never shall they thee hold.
Therefore is the wit of this world folly. These clerks see not this thing; and yet day and night they do this thing. And the more that they [have] it done, the less they it know: for alway they die, and yet con they not die. For day and night diest thou, as I have to thee said; yet in another manner I shall teach thee this clergy,[2] that thou con die well and live well.
Now hearken and understand. Death is not else but a departing of the body and of the soul, as every
