Mankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike.

The line is a catalogue of metaphors for human frailty and transience: people are compared to leaves that fall, clay that can be reshaped or crumble, shadows without substance, and dreams that vanish on waking. The piling up of images intensifies a mood of pessimism (or moral admonition), stressing how brief and insubstantial human life is when measured against time, nature, or the divine. In a Greek literary context, this kind of “ephemerality topos” is often used to humble human pride and to frame ethical or political choices against mortality. Without a secure source, however, it is difficult to say whether the tone is comic, tragic, or rhetorical in its original setting.