So there until the judgment day Shall come and find his bones laid low And raise them up for weal or woe, This man must bide; cast down he lay While all his past life day by day In one short moment he could see Drawn out before him, while that he In terror by that fatal stone Was laid, and scarcely dared to moan. But in a while his hope returned, And then, though nothing he discerned, He gat him up upon his feet, And all about the walls he beat To find some token of the door, But never could he find it more, For by some dreadful sorcery All was sealed close as it might be And midst the marvels of that hall This scholar found the end of all.
But in the town on that same night, An hour before the dawn of light, Such storm upon the place there fell, That not the oldest man could tell Of such another: and thereby The image was burnt utterly, Being stricken from the clouds above; And folk deemed that same bolt did move The pavement where that wretched one Unto his foredoomed fate had gone, Because the plate was set again Into its place, and the great rain Washed the earth down, and sorcery Had hid the place where it did lie. So soon the stones were set all straight, But yet the folk, afraid of fate, Where once the man of cornel wood Through many a year of bad and good Had kept his place, set up alone Great Jove himself, cut in white stone, But thickly overlaid with gold. "Which," saith my tale, "you may behold Unto this day, although indeed Some Lord or other, being in need, Took every ounce of gold away." But now, this tale in some past day Being writ, I warrant all is gone, Both gold and weather-beaten stone.
Be merry, masters, while ye may, For men much quicker pass away.
They praised the tale, and for awhile they talked Of other tales of treasure-seekers balked, And shame and loss for men insatiate stored, Nitocris' tomb, the Niblungs' fatal hoard, The serpent-guarded treasures of the dead; Then of how men would be rememberéd When they are gone; and more than one could tell Of what unhappy things therefrom befell; Or how by folly men have gained a name; A name indeed, not hallowed by the fame Of any deeds remembered: and some thought,-- "Strange hopes and fears for what shall be but nought To dead men! better it would be to give What things they may, while on the earth they live Unto the earth, and from the bounteous earth To take their pay of sorrow or of mirth, Hatred or love, and get them on their way; And let the teeming earth fresh troubles make For other men, and ever for their sake Use what they left, when they are gone from it."