Verse 7
Where the hundred years go· Verses 7–13
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7Twenty years go by in infancy and boyhood, while he is dazed and at play, and twenty more when age has eaten the body and he can do nothing. 8The rest slips away from a man tied to his house and heedless of it, under a desire that can never be filled and a bewilderment stronger than he is. 9What man whose senses are unmastered could bring himself to release his own self, caught in the house and tied fast with the strong cords of affection? 10And who would let go the thirst for money, wanted more than the breath of life, which the thief and the servant and the trader buy with the breaths they hold dearest? 11How is he to leave the company of a beloved wife he has tended, their talk together in private, the sweet words she counsels with, bound as he is by love among his friends, his heart taken by the half-formed speech of children,
12remembering his sons, and those daughters who lie close to his heart, his brothers and sisters, his parents grown helpless, the pleasant house with its wide furnishings, the family living, the cattle and the servants? 13How is he to give them up, working at his tasks out of greed like a worm spinning the case it will lie in, never filled with what he wants? Holding high what the loins and the tongue give, his bewilderment without end, how would he ever turn away?