Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HORACE: SONG AT THE END OF ACT 5, by PIERRE CORNEILLE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HORACE: SONG AT THE END OF ACT 5, by                    
First Line: How frailty makes us to our wrong
Last Line: From human cruelties.
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


1

How frailty makes us to our wrong
Fear, and be loth to die,
When Life is only dying long
And Death the remedy!
We shun Eternity,
And still would grovel here beneath,
Though still in woe and strife,
When Life's the path that leads to Death,
And Death the door to Life.

2

The fear of Death is the disease
Makes the poor patient smart;
Vain apprehensions often freeze
The vitals in the heart,
Without the dreaded dart.
When fury rides on pointed steel
Death's fear the heart doth seize,
Whilst in that very fear we feel
A greater sting than his.

3

But chaste Camilla's virtuous fear
Was of a nobler kind,
Not of her end approaching near
But to be left behind
From her dear Love disjoin'd;
When Death in courtesy decreed
To make the Fair his prize,
And by one cruelty her freed
From human cruelties.





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