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.
Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Pedibus timor addidit alas.
Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy (c. 1308-1321), Inferno, Canto I, lines 79-87 (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.
Obstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit.
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.
Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem.
It is easy to go down into Hell;
Night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide;
But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air —
There's the rub, the task.
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
Accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
Defectus solis varios lunaeque labores;
Unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
Obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant.
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque.
Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.
Sin aliquem infandum casum, Fortuna, minaris,
Nunc, o, nunc liceat crudelem abrumpere vitam,
Dum curae ambiguae, dum spes incerta futuri.
Cessi et sublato montes genitore petivi.
Moriemur inultae,
Sed moriamur.
His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono;
Imperium sine fine dedi.