On Humilitas

Be Not Proud

Why be like pine, with all its wounds outshown?
When pine’s blood flows it hardens haughtily
and stays to boast of aches past undergone.
How prideful is the pine, so vain a tree!
Robust and standing firm against the gale,
the potent pine has pow’r to be unswayed—
the strength to keep its lesions ‘neath a veil—
but much too often leaves its hurts outlaid.
Instead, turn from yourself; be not self-tall,
or else, like shining sap, you’ll swollen be.
Be like a mountain stream that, after all
its turns and bumps, bleeds forth into the sea.
For goodness flows, not from man’s vainglory,
but from that Precious Man spared vanity.