We, like the leaves which the
blossoming season of Spring reproduces
when they suddenly grow up in the
rays of the sun,
similar to those blooms, in the
minuscule time of our youth we
revel, discerning by gods neither
what's harmful for us
nor what is good. Black Fates by our
sides stand waiting around and
one of them's holding out old
age, the inevitable
thing, and the other one death. And the
fruit of our earliest years is
as short-lived as the sun's
spreading out over the Earth.
Truly indeed, when the end of this age
has elapsed and been passed by,
straightaway dying is much better
than staying alive.
Plenty of horrible things will arise in
the spirit and soon the
home will be ruined and sad
poverty's toils await.
One man terribly misses his children,
and longing for them goes
cheerlessly under the Earth down into
Hades's realm.
One man's sick with a spirit-consuming
disease, and there's not one
man to whom Zeus didn't give
myriad terrible things.
