Rhyming Ecclesiastes: Chapter 11

Rhyming Ecclesiastes: Chapter 11

Invest in Many Ventures

Your grain, you ship across the sea that churns;
and after many days, receive returns.
Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight;
you don’t know what disasters, how they may
descend upon the land. If clouds are full
of water, rain, upon the earth, they pour.
A tree falls, whether, to the south or north,
where’er it falls, in that place, it will lie.
Whoever watches wind with frightened eyes
will never plant, who looks up to the sky
and sees the clouds, no reaping when it’s time.

As you don’t know the path the wind will take,
how, in a mother’s womb, a body’s made,
so you can’t understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things. So sow your seed
in morning time, when it is in the eve’,
don’t let your hands, to idleness, concede,
for you don’t know what venture will succeed,
if this or that, or both well, equally.

Remember Your Creator While Young

Light’s sweet, to see the sun, the eyes are pleased.
How many years a man’s not yet deceased,
let him enjoy them all. But let him keep
the days of darkness in his memory
for certain, of those, many he will see.
For everything to come is meaningless.

You who are young, while your youth still persists,
be happy then, and let your heart give you
joy in the days when you still have your youth.
Its ways, your heart’s, you should be following,
pursuing everything your eyes might see,
but know that it will be for all these things
that God will, you, to judgment, someday bring.
So banish, from your heart, anxiety,
the troubles of your body, outwards fling,
both vigor, youth, they neither mean a thing.