Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 32
XXXII.
There is one day in the year that I pass by with blinking eyes: my birthday; then if I were to look up I should see how life's chain uncoils, and I should be able to count the links.
There is one hour in the twenty-four that works in my soul and leaves a taste in my mouth more acrid than any medicine: the hour when I lay myself to sleep, for I know that during the night that evil happens that can never be shriven; that that vanishes that once vanished can never return; and when I awake in the middle of the night I hear time roll on, rushing through the darkness above my head like a mighty stream.
When I read in books of the one's growing loneliness and the other's poorness of life; and when I look round amongst the people about me, and see how the years of all fall from them like badly-kept teeth; when I myself gaze back over the landscape that I have wandered over, to find wild places and nettle woods—then I recognise the species of the sin that is the root and original source. Let not your days be as rotten fruits, which you must cast on the dung-heap behind you or as poisonous wormwood, flowering in your spirit; but make them shining white as the bodies of young virgins, and clothe them in gold and silver, that they may constantly watch round your couch as guardian spirits, fanning refreshing coolness over your soul. May your serving-flock suffice to attend you through each cycle of the sun.