1. “But now they laugh at me,men who are younger than I,whose fathers I would have disdainedto set with the dogs of my flock.
2. What could I gain from the strength of their hands, men whose vigor is gone?
3. Through want and hard hungerthey gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;
4. they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes,and the roots of the broom tree for their food.
5. They are driven out from human company;they shout after them as after a thief.
6. In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell,in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
7. Among the bushes they bray;under the nettles they huddle together.
8. A senseless, a nameless brood,they have been whipped out of the land.
9. “And now I have become their song;I am a byword to them.