^{1 Ref} But now those who are younger than I make sport of me; those whose fathers I would not have put with the dogs of my flocks.

² Of what use is the strength of their hands to me? all force is gone from them.

^{3 Ref} They are wasted for need of food, biting the dry earth; their only hope of life is in the waste land.

^{4 Ref} They are pulling off the salt leaves from the brushwood, and making a meal of roots.

^{5 Ref} They are sent out from among their townsmen, men are crying after them as thieves

^{6 Ref} They have to get a resting-place in the hollows of the valleys, in holes of the earth and rocks.

^{7 Ref} They make noises like asses among the brushwood; they get together under the thorns.

^{8 Ref} They are sons of shame, and of men without a name, who have been forced out of the land.

^{9 Ref} And now I have become their song, and I am a word of shame to them.