If you are going to travel by water,

Your best plan is to use a boat;

If by land—a cart is your vehicle then.

Take a boat which will go easily

Along on the water, but try to push it

Along on the land and all your lifetime

It will not go far than a few feet.

Are not the past and the present day

Like the water and the dry land?

Are not our temporary life and death

Like the boat and cart we change?

To seek now to practise old methods

Of running affairs is like pushing

Along a boat on the dry land—

It’s only a toilsome labour and has

No success; everyone who does so

Is sure to meet with failure.

One who has not learned the simple thing

That in handing down the arts of one time,

One is sure to be reduced to extremity

In endeavouring to adapt them

To the conditions of another point of age.