Two Poems by Andreas Gryphius

By Scott Horton

Human Misery

What indeed are men! A dwelling place for grim pains,

A ball of false fortune, a will-o’-the-wisp of their times,

A stage of bitter fear, set with sharp pain,

A quickly melting snow and burnt-out candles.

These lives flee from us like gossip and gestures,

Which before us have removed the gown of a weak body

Have been enrolled in the book of the dead, of the

Great Mortality, and to us are now vanishing memories.

Like a vain dream which easily passes from our attention

And closes up, like a current which no power can resist,

Thus must our name, praise, honor and fame also disappear.

What now draws breath must also escape with the air,

What will follow us will trail after us into the grave.

What am I saying? We are transitory, like smoke before a strong wind.

All is Vanity

You will see wherever you look only vanity on this earth.

What one man builds today, another tears down tomorrow;

Where now cities stand, a meadow will be,

Upon which a shepherd’s child will play with the herds.

What now blooms in magnificence, will soon be tread asunder;

What today pounds with defiance, tomorrow is ash and bone;

There is nothing which is eternal, neither ore nor marble.

Now fortune smiles upon us, but soon troubles will thunder.

The fame of great deeds must pass like a dream.

Why should the game of time, the simple human, persist?

Oh, what is all of this that we hold to be exquisite,

But wicked vanities, as shadow, dust and wind

But a meadow flower which one can find no more!

Yet not a single man wants to contemplate what is eternal.

–Andreas Gryphius, Menschliches Elend and Es ist alles eitel (ca. 1630) in: Deutsche Dichtung des Barock pp. 94-95 (E. Hederer ed. 1967) (S.H. transl.)