Blossoms Falling

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.
The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

Opening lines of the “Tales of the Heike“, Helen Craig McCullough’s translation