Life is one closely complicated tangle:
Death is the only true unraveller!

QUINTET--DUKE, DUCHESS, CASILDA, LUIZ, and GRAND INQUISITOR.

ALL. Try we life-long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
Why should we, in vain endeavour,
Guess and guess and guess again?

LUIZ. Life's a pudding full of plums,

DUCH. Care's a canker that benumbs.

ALL. Life's a pudding full of plums,
Care's a canker that benumbs.
Wherefore waste our elocution
On impossible solution?
Life's a pleasant institution,
Let us take it as it comes!

Set aside the dull enigma,
We shall guess it all too soon;
Failure brings no kind of stigma--
Dance we to another tune!

LUIZ. String the lyre and fill the cup,

DUCH. Lest on sorrow we should sup.