Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/202

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184
The Tragedies of Seneca

Thou, harsh, uncouth, and ignorant of life,
Dost spend thy youth to joy and love unknown
Think'st thou that this is man's allotted task,
To suffer hardships, curb the rushing steeds,
And fight like savage beasts in bloody war? 465
When be beheld the boundless greed of death,
The mighty father of the world ordained
A means by which the race might be renewed.
Suppose the power of Venus over men
Should cease, who doth supply and still renew 470
The stream of life, then would this lovely world
Become a foul, unsightly thing indeed:
The sea would bear no fish within its waves,
The woods no beasts of prey, the air no birds;
But through its empty space the winds alone
Would rove. How various the forms of death 475
That seize and feed upon our mortal race:
The wrecking sea, the sword, and treachery!
But say that these are lacking: still we fall
Of our own gravity to gloomy Styx.
Suppose our youth should choose a mateless life,
And live in childless state: then all this world
Of teeming life which thou dost see, would live
This generation only, and would fall 480
In ruins on itself. Then spend thy life
As nature doth direct; frequent the town,
And live in friendly union with thy kind.
Hippolytus: There is no life so free, so innocent,
Which better cherishes the ancient rites,
Than that which spurns the crowded ways of men
And seeks the silent places of the woods. 485
His soul no maddening greed of gain inflames
Who on the lofty levels of the hills
His blameless pleasures finds. No fickle breath
Of passing favor frets him here, no sting
Of base ingratitude, no poisonous hate.
He fears no kingdom's laws; nor, in the quest 490
Of power, does he pursue the phantom shapes
Of fame and wealth. From hope and fear alike