Lament XVI

Misfortune hath constrainèd me

To leave the lute and poetry,

Nor can I from their easing borrow

Sleep for my sorrow.

Do I see true, or hath a dream

Flown forth from ivory gates to gleam

In phantom gold, before forsaking

Its poor cheat, waking?

Oh, mad, mistaken humankind,

’Tis easy triumph for the mind

While yet no ill adventure strikes us

And naught mislikes us.

In plenty we praise poverty,

’Mid pleasures we hold grief to be

(And even death, ere it shall stifle

Our breath) a trifle.

But when the grudging spinner scants

Her thread and fate no surcease grants

From grief most deep and need most wearing,

Less calm our bearing.

Ah, Tully¹, thou didst flee from Rome

With weeping, who didst say his home

The wise man found in any station,

In any nation.

And why dost mourn thy daughter so

When thou hast said the only woe

That man need dread is base dishonor ? —

Why sorrow on her?

Death, thou hast said, can terrify

The godless man alone. Then why

So loth, the pay for boldness giving,

To leave off living?

Thy words, that have persuaded men,

Persuade not thee, angelic pen;

Disaster findeth thy defenses,

Like mine, pretenses.

Soft stone is man: he takes the lines

That Fortune’s cutting tool designs.

To press the wounds wherewith she graves us,

Racks us or saves us?

Time, father of forgetfulness

So longed for now in my distress,

Since wisdom nor the saints can steel me,

Oh, do thou heal me!

Przypisy:

1. Tully — Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC), Roman politician, philosopher, renowned orator and writer. [przypis edytorski]