When life’s autumn days decline,
Thus to live, a libertine,
Fancy-free as thoughts incline,
Manhood’s older age and colder
Now forbids; removes, destroys
All those ways of wonted joys.

Age with admonition wise
Thus doth counsel and advise,
While her voice within me cries: 
“For repenting and relenting
There is room; forgiveness falls
On all contrite prodigals!”

I will seek a better mind;
Change, correct, and leave behind
What I did with purpose blind: 
From vice sever, with endeavour
Yield my soul to serious things,
Seek the joy that virtue brings.

The third would find a more appropriate place in a hymn-book than in a collection of Carmina Vagorum.  It is, however, written in a lyrical style so closely allied to the secular songs of the Carmina Burana (where it occurs) that I have thought it well to quote its grimly medieval condemnation of human life.

VANITAS VANITATUM.

No. 58.

    This vile world
    In madness hurled
          Offers but false shadows;
    Joys that wane
    And waste like vain
          Lilies of the meadows.

    Worldly wealth,
    Youth, strength, and health,
          Cramp the soul’s endeavour;
    Drive it down
    In hell to drown,
          Hell that burns for ever.

    What we see,
    And what let be,
          While on earth we tarry,
    We shall cast
    Like leaves at last
          Which the sere oaks carry.

    Carnal life,
    Man’s law of strife,
          Hath but brief existence;
    Passes, fades,
    Like wavering shades
          Without real subsistence.

    Therefore bind,
    Tread down and grind
          Fleshly lusts that blight us;
    So heaven’s bliss
    ’Mid saints that kiss
          Shall for aye delight us.

The fourth, in like manner, would have but little to do with a Commersbuch, were it not for the fact that the most widely famous modern student-song of Germany has borrowed two passages from its serious and tragic rhythm.  Close inspection of Gaudeamus Igitur shows that the metrical structure of that song is based on the principle of quoting one of its long lines and rhyming to it.

ON CONTEMPT FOR THE WORLD.

No. 59.

    “De contemptu mundi:”  this is the theme I’ve taken: 
    Time it is from sleep to rise, from death’s torpor waken: 
    Gather virtue’s grain and leave tares of sin forsaken. 
      Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.

    Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended: 
    Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart suspended: 
    Death kills all, to no man’s prayer hath he condescended. 
      Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.