Wise is the man who knows what profiteth, Not he who knoweth much. 272 Full grievous burden is a prosperous fool. 272A From a just fraud God turneth not away. 273 There is a time when God doth falsehood prize. 274 The polished brass is mirror of the form, Wine of the soul. 275 Words are the parents of a causeless wrath. 276 Men credit gain for oaths, not oaths for them. 277 God ever works with those that work with will. 278 Wisdom to learn is e'en for old men good. 281 The base who prosper are intolerable. 282 The seed of mortals broods o'er passing things, And hath nought surer than the smoke-cloud's shadow. 283 Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth. 286 Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast, He dieth not, unless the appointed time, The limit of his life's span, coincide; Nor does the man who by the hearth at home Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees. 287 How far from just the hate men bear to death, Which comes as safeguard against many ills. 288 _To_ FORTUNE Thou did'st beget me; thou too, as it seems, Wilt now destroy me. 289 The fire-moth's silly death is that I fear. 290 I by experience know the race full well That dwells in Æthiop land, where seven-mouthed Nile Rolls o'er the land with winds that bring the rain, What time the fiery sun upon the earth Pours its hot rays, and melts the snow till then Hard as the rocks; and all the fertile soil Of Egypt, filled with that pure-flowing stream, Brings forth Demêter's ears that feed our life. 291 This hoopoo, witness of its own dire ills, He hath in varied garb set forth, and shows In full array that bold bird of the rocks Which, when the spring first comes, unfurls a wing Like that of white-plumed kite; for on one breast It shows two forms, its own and eke its child's, And when the corn grows gold, in autumn's prime, A dappled plumage all its form will clothe; And ever in its hate of these 'twill go Far off to lonely thickets or bare rocks. 292 Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, A glory that to suffering owes its birth. 293 The air is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven, Zeus all that is, and what transcends them all. 294