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Jan Kochanowski
JAN KOCHANOWSKI - On Human Life
ON HUMAN LIFE
Everything we think is but a trifle,
Everything we do is but a trifle
1
.
In this world there's no dependable thing,
In vain man cares here about anything.
Esteem, beauty, power, money, greatness,
All this will pass away like the field grass
2
.
We and our arrangements will be laughed at,
And, treated like puppets, tossed in a sack
3
.
Translated by Michael J. Mikoś
Notes
1
"All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1, 2).
2
"All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field" (Isaiah 40, 6).
3
Cf. "(...) they are to play their play, win heaven's favor for it, and so live out their lives as what they really are - puppets in the main, though with some touch of reality about them, too" (Plato,
Laws
, 804 B,
The Collected Dialogues of Plato
, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, New York, Pantheon Books, 1961, 1375).