Closed in dreams, with pain for all time persisting,
We must experience, know all creation,
Study both human souls and aspirations,
And plan in silence an ideal existence.
We must suppress all that tempts us, insistent,
Which fate grants as a transient donation,
The future greet with trumpets' salutation,
Then vanish in oblivion's dusty distance.
We live only by fantasies deluding,
Although we have life and all its allurements,
Though we have souls, though we have hearts within us,
Merciless fate aye buffets us thus rudely,
We must roam life, heedless of how it stings us.
Drinking the poison that the slanderers bring us.
1906