Trees shook; the Earth quaked

Higgledy piggledy, snowmelt is patchily greening the fields, and the trees are in bud.

Earth is remade by the change of the seasons. The rivers return to the riverbeds' mud.

Spirits of nature come all unapparelled and dance unabashedly, joyous at play.

Hope for no permanence: nonsempiternally, years, like the moment, are rushing away.

After the frost is the warmth of the spring, but it's trampled by summer, as greenery wilts—

slain in its turn by the heliocyclical bountiful autumn, then winter's white quilts.

All that is lost to the seasons' revolving, though, moon after moon in their time will restore;

we, when we die, like the mythocanonical heroes and kings, will be dust evermore.

No one can say if the gods will capriciously grant us the morrow, and maybe they won't.

All that you give to your heart, all you love, will be lost to your heirs on the day that they don't.

Once you are gone and your shadow is facing its judgement in death and the sentence is passed,

never, my friend, will your family, eloquence, piety, anything, save you at last.