This Life Is A Pumpkin Poem by Daniel Casper Von Lohenstein

This life is a pumpkin, the shell is flesh and bone;
The seeds hold the spirit, and the worm-hole is death.
The spring of life brings blushing beauty to the bloom;
Full summer cooks the juices to their sweetest.
But as it reaches its perfection, beetles attack the golden fruit
Causing decay and turning the pumpkin to mush.
Yet amid the assault, seeds of the human spirit endure
In spite of the worms and the sickness and the dying
Recreating itself in the fruit of the next year.
Out of the earthy ooze the uncorrupted body appears
Ready for yet another spring to stretch itself up to heaven.
So why, dear friend, would you tearfully search
for your wife, now soulless, departed?
The soul has not been buried;
God will give her a much more beautiful body.

Our hopes are built upon circumstance;
Blossoms decay to form wine.
Ice and quicksand comprise the field
upon which our courage burgeons.
When we truly examine our noble goals
We see how much trouble earth and sand and death have cost us.
What we sculpt into marble, time will turn to dust
The worm is as he spins and man is what he teaches;
What man worships comes back to destroy him
And today's golden sunshine presages tomorrow's hated frost.
And so the leaf changes despite our concern!
My friend, anyone who wishes to triumph in life
Must surrender himself to the jaws of death;
Except, perhaps, for the one who builds his temple in the sky,
A spiritual abode where the soul may reside,
Spared from the ravages of time and death and decay.