In youth alone, unhappy mortals live; But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive: Discoloured sickness, anxious… — Virgil
In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;
But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discoloured sickness, anxious labour, come,
And age, and death's inexorable doom.
Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
Et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis.
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But when you hold him in the grasp of hands and fetters, then will manifold forms baffle you, and figures of wild beasts. For of a sudden he will become a bristly boar, a deadly tiger, a scaly serpent, or a lioness with tawny neck; or he will give forth the fierce roar of flame, and thus slip from his fetters, or he will melt into fleeting water and be gone.
And now farewell! Involved in shades of night,
For ever I am ravished from thy sight.
In vain I reach my feeble hands to join
In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine!
And lay down their lives in the wound.
