29.4.11

Mimnermus Fragment Two


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.

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