Virgil
Known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a Latin poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became the Roman Empire's national epic.
Procul, O procul este, profani!
Has omnis, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos,
Lethaeum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno,
Scilicet immemores supera et convexa revisant
Bursus et incipiant in corpora velle reverti.
Hue omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
Matres atque viri, defunctaque corpora vita
Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae,
Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum.
Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur
Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris,
Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
Et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis.
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.
Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artis
paulatim.
Sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis.
Jam senior, sed cruda deo viridisque senectus.
Ever the best day of life for unhappy dying creatures is the first fleeting one; soon come diseases, and sorrowful old age, and toil, and the merciless quick grasp of hard death.
A woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing.
Heu nihil invitis fas quemquam fidere divis!
At nos hinc alii sitientes ibimus Afros,
Pars Scythiam et rapidum cretae veniemus Oaxen,
Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy (c. 1308-1321), Inferno, Canto I, lines 79-87 (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
Pedibus timor addidit alas.
Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
Spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
Et vera incessu patuit dea.
Sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste Penates
classe veho mecum, fama super aethera notus.
Italiam quaero patriam et genus ab Iove summo.