From the book
The Sophic Hydrolith, Water Stone of the Wise
Anonymous and companion authors · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Meaning
Fortune is ‘round and rolling’: its instability explains why the poem’s feminine figure, despite possessing what the world desires, must endure distress. Bathing among thorns and thistles is a deliberately painful image, not advice about bodily treatment. Possession does not remove suffering or the need to resist greed.
The stanza proceeds to death, rest in the grave, heavenly crown and enduring good name. Thus fickle Glück belongs to earthly reversals, not the final reward. The English preserves the rolling image rather than replacing it with an abstract ‘bad luck’; no particular emblematic wheel or historical event needs to be supplied to understand the contrast.
Places to read
- Closing epigrams · unit 5The concluding poem contrasts rolling fortune and earthly affliction with final rest and honour.
Attested forms
rund vnd waltzend; Glück; Dorn vnd Disteln