272. ‘La vita fugge, et non s’arresta una hora,’

Life flies, and never stays an hour,

and death comes on behind with its dark day,

and present things and past things

embattle me, and future things as well:

and remembrance and expectation grip my heart,

now on this side, now on that, so that in truth,

if I did not take pity on myself,

I would have freed myself already from all thought.

A sweetness that the sad heart knew

returns to me: yet from another quarter

I see the storm-winds rattling my sails:

I see no chance of harbour, and my helmsman

is weary now, and my masts and ropes are broken,

and the beautiful stars, I used to gaze on, quenched.