This bird said to the Hoopoe: I am afraid of death. Now this valley is wide, and I have nothing at all for the journey. I am so filled with the fear of death that my life will leave me at the first stopping place. Even were I a powerful emir, in the hour of death I should fear no less. He who with a sword would iry to ward off death, shall have it broken like a Kalam; for alas, faith in the strength of the hand and of the sword brings only disappointment and sorrow.' The Hoopoe replied; 'O you who are fickle and weakwilled, do you wish to remain a mere frame of bone and marrow? Don't you know that life, be it long or short, is composed of a few breaths? Don't you understand that whoever is born must also die? That he goes into the earth and that the wind disperses the elements of which his body was made? ' You were nourished for death; and you were brought into the world in order to be taken away from it! The sky is like a dish upside down, which every' evening is immersed in the blood of sunset. One could say that the sun, armed with a scimitar, is cutting off heads on this dish. Whether you be good or bad you are only a drop of water kneaded with earth. Though all your life you may have been in a position of authority, you will, in the end, give up the ghost in affliction.'

"I am not," replied Tzŭ Yü. "What have I to fear? Ere long I shall be decomposed. My left shoulder will become a cock, and I shall herald the approach...

You have toiled without cease, and what have you got! Through toil you wear yourself out, you fill your body with grief, your long lifetime you are...

His blind soul wanders in every direction, And at last makes a spring, but springs not upwards. A man captured a bird by wiles and snares; The bird sa...