For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

Human life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion's weight.

It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.

What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.

I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air.

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.