There are four seasons in our life
as in the year, Laura:
One in which the sky is pure, the aura is meek,
which runs between the flowers asleep:
this is that sweet first age,
of our joyful spring life.
After this comes the one that
such furious Norths unleashes,
that snatches our illusions,
and leaves us at last without illusions;
like the windy autumn that strips
the forest of its green leaf by leaf.
Later, faith is dead, illusion gone,
and doubt in its place,
our existence in solitude changes,
the field of life is sterilized by the
scorching blow of boredom;
This is the age without flower, it is the summer.
And finally comes that dark age
of loaded misery,
which is already sinking into the shadows of nowhere,
the squalid old age , the cold old age ,
wrapped in pain in the darkness: a
sad winter of cold mists.
And these four seasons of life,
one after another come,
and pass, alas! and they never stop
from the swift time in the swift run,
which, taking men out of nowhere,
takes them from death to their abode.