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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538773" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Vanitas Vanitatum</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">How spake of old the Royal Seer?<br>(His text is one I love to treat on.)<br>This life of ours he said is sheer<br>Mataiotes Mataioteton.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Student of this gilded Book,<br>Declare, while musing on its pages,<br>If truer words were ever spoke<br>By ancient, or by modern sages!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The various authors' names but note,*<br>French, Spanish, English, Russians, Germans:<br>And in the volume polyglot,<br>Sure you may read a hundred sermons!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What histories of life are here,<br>More wild than all romancers' stories;<br>What wondrous transformations queer,<br>What homilies on human glories!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What theme for sorrow or for scorn!<br>What chronicle of Fate's surprises—<br>Of adverse fortune nobly borne,<br>Of chances, changes, ruins, rises!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of thrones upset, and sceptres broke,<br>How strange a record here is written!<br>Of honors, dealt as if in joke;<br>Of brave desert unkindly smitten.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How low men were, and how they rise!<br>How high they were, and how they tumble!<br>O vanity of vanities!<br>O laughable, pathetic jumble!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here between honest Janin's joke<br>And his Turk Excellency's firman,<br>I write my name upon the book:<br>I write my name—and end my sermon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">—————</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Vanity of vanities!<br>How wayward the decrees of Fate are;<br>How very weak the very wise,<br>How very small the very great are!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What mean these stale moralities,<br>Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?<br>Why rail against the great and wise,<br>And tire us with your ceaseless grumble?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pray choose us out another text,<br>O man morose and narrow-minded!<br>Come turn the page—I read the next,<br>And then the next, and still I find it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Read here how Wealth aside was thrust,<br>And Folly set in place exalted;<br>How Princes footed in the dust,<br>While lackeys in the saddle vaulted.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though thrice a thousand years are past,<br>Since David's son, the sad and splendid,<br>The weary King Ecclesiast,<br>Upon his awful tablets penned it,—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Methinks the text is never stale,<br>And life is every day renewing<br>Fresh comments on the old old tale<br>Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hark to the Preacher, preaching still<br>He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,<br>Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill,<br>As yonder on the Mount of Hermon;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For you and me to heart to take<br>(O dear beloved brother readers)<br>To-day as when the good King spake<br>Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Makepeace+Thackeray">William Makepeace Thackeray</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538773" data-title="Vanitas Vanitatum de William Makepeace Thackeray" data-description="How spake of old the Royal Seer?
(His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours he said is sheer
Mataiotes Mataioteton.

O Student of this gilded Book,
Declare, while musing on its pages,
If truer words were ever spoke
By ancient, or by m..."></div>
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