LIFE A BANE
by: Posidippus
- HAT course
of life should wretched mortals take?
- In courts hard questions large contention make:
- Care dwells in houses, labor in the field,
- Tumultuous seas affrighting dangers yield.
- In foreign lands thou never canst be blessed;
- If rich, thou art in fear; if poor, distressed.
- In wedlock frequent discontentments swell;
- Unmarried persons as in deserts dwell.
- How many troubles are with children born;
- Yet he that wants them counts himself forlorn.
- Young men are wanton, and of wisdom void;
- Gray hairs are cold, unfit to be employed.
- Who would not one of these two offers choose,
- Not to be born, or breath with speed to lose?
This English translation, by Sir
John Beaumont, of "Life a Bane" is reprinted from Greek
Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge:
The Riverside Press, 1893. |
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