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Dante – The Divine Comedy – Purgatorio XI

'Earthly fame is nothing but a breath of wind,
Which first blows one way and then blows another,
And brings a fresh name from each fresh direction

What greater name will you have, if you are old
When you put aside your flesh, than if you had died
Before you had given up baby talk and rattles

Once a thousand years have passed?  And that is a shorter
Space to the eternal than the flash of an eyelid
To the circle which turns in the heavens most slowly.

The one who moves painfully ahead of me
Has a name which once rang through all  Tuscany
There is hardly a whisper of him now in Sienna

…...........

Your renown is like the colour of grass,
Which comes and goes, and he discolours it
Who causes it to spring fresh from the ground'

And I to him 'Your words are true and fill me
With just humility and cure my swelling;'....