Literal translation
in winter, whoever finds it uses it; in summer, whoever finds it, it is his; in autumn, whoever finds it gives it away; in spring, whoever finds it keeps it
Meaning
depending on the season it's found, it gets used, kept, or given away
Explanation
This popular rhyme assigns, depending on the season, a different fate to a found object, never specifying which, making it closer to a riddle or a children's memory game than to a classic moralising proverb. The words winter, summer, autumn, and spring are all well attested, as is the verb to use, meaning to make use of, and the word for gift, the act of giving. The verb rendered as to find, however, could not be directly verified in our dictionaries, its exact form being absent from our sources, as is the form meaning his, marking possession. The repetitive structure, the same formula stated four times where whoever finds an object makes four different uses of it depending on the season, follows a mnemonic pattern typical of orally transmitted rhymes, meant to exercise children's memory or accompany a game. The exact identity of the object in question remains open, which is precisely the charm and the puzzle of the rhyme, closer to wordplay than to a saying of wisdom.