My father's brother has a farm in the forest. I often go there, to those quiet places, To rid myself of the ugly urgent things That torture men. Green turf amid silent trees and soft light airs And a spring of running water in the grass, They freshen a jaded mind, they give me back to myself, They make me abide in myself. For is there any man can live in a town, Harried and always at white heat with some fresh disturbance and racket, And not be dragged outside himself, Not waste his time on emptiness, No longer privy to his own thoughts? Love, Hate, Desire, Fear, These are the Masters, Differing among themselves, but alike in this, Their power to subjugate the ignorant mind By a lie... How short a while we live: the image of death Hath swallowed up the hours of our past lives, And that same image holds the hours to come. This little little space, this span of time Thou liv'st in now, it is already gone, The present in the past. These things and others like them, There's time and will to think on In the trees' shadow of my uncle's farm.
Marbod of Rennes (1035-1123) translated from the Latin by Helen Waddell















