From the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (1890), pp. 135–136 — translated from the Irish.

¹ What should a man avoid? Not hard. Frequent anger. Pride without a poem. Fierceness towards an elder. Slowness to the bell. Fickleness towards the untrustworthy. Too much wandering. Watchfulness of speech. Unclean words. Harshness of reproach. Obstinacy towards the vice-abbot. Persistence in rebuking. Rivalry among monks. Frequency of questioning.

² Question: what should be pursued? Not a doubt. Rest after labour. Slowness of speech. Loving words. A rule to preserve it. Rising at first word. A step of submission before God. Purity of heart. Submersion of will. Restraint of nature. Patience under trial. et caetera.

More Grievous To Me Than Death #

¹ More grievous to me than death itself
to come at all into Adam’s lot,
the host that shall come after me,
whose whole life is in misery.

² Evil the time that shall come then:
envy, murder, feeble rule,
the coming of every evil vehemently,
no true layman, no true cleric.

³ No king who gives us justice or right,
no young bishop above the altar,
no hospitaller who renders tithes
of his cattle, of his fair herds.

⁴ The elders who were, by God’s will,
in the beginning of time,
though bare, maimed, scabbed,
they were the strongest, most sturdy.

⁵ The folk of eager learning
served the King of the sun;
sons nor women hindered them,
pure were their natures.

⁶ Small tunics, great mantles,
hearts heavy and wretched,
short rough rags,
and rules most rough.

⁷ There shall come hereafter
the elders of the world’s end,
with mantles, with spoils, with peaked caps,
with circlets, with chessboards.

⁸ With satin and silk and sendal,
with fair quilts after drinking,
with contempt for the wisdom of dear God,
they shall be in the very possession of the Devil.

⁹ I say to the seed of Adam:
there shall come the people of the cold devotion;
the slippery ones, the robbers,
will take upon them the forms of God.

¹⁰ With like swiftness they pass away —
grass and green-sodded causeway:
so shall they go together,
and the flower of the deceivers.

¹¹ The deceivers of the world’s end
shall all go upon one path,
into the devil’s grasp by God’s will,
into torments dark and painful.