As if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your ealdormen and thegns, a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door should instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of winter, but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to your eyes. Somewhat like this a[[ears the life of man; but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant.