Tragic verses

Ha Mort, o douce mort, mort seule guerison
Des esprits oppresses d'une estrange prison,
Pourquoy souffres tu tant a tes droits faire tort?
T'avons nous fait offense, o douce & douce mort?
Pourquoy n'approches tu, o Parque trop tardive?
Pourquoy veux tu souffrir ceste bande captive,
Qui n'aura pas plustot le don de liberte,
Que cest esprit ne soit par ton dard ecarte?

Ah death, O gentle death, sole remedy
For spirits pinioned in captivity,
Why let your rights be flouted thus?
Did we offend thee, gentle, gentle death?
Why not draw near, O tardy Fate?
Why condescend to our captive state,
Who can no sooner from our bondage part
Than when our souls are striken with your dart?
-Jodelle's Cleopatre captive


When she that rules the rolling wheele of chaunce,
Doth turne aside hir angrie frowning face,
On him, who erst she deigned to aduance,
She never leaues to daulde him with disgrace,
To tosse and turne his state in euery place,
Till at the last she hurle him from on high
And yeld him subject unto miserie:
And as the braunche that from the roote is reft,
He never wines like leafe to that he lefte.
-Jocasta


Base fortune, now I see, that in thy wheele
There is a point, to which when men aspire,
They tumble headlong downe: that point I touchte,
And seeing there was no place to mount up higher,
Why should I greeue at my declining fall?
-Marlowe's Edward the second


Cut is the branch that might have growne full straight,
And burned is Apolloes Laurel bough
That sometime grew within this learned man.
-Marlowe's Tragical History of Doctor Faustus


Non, je ne pleure point, madame, mais je meurs.

I weep not, madam, but I die.
-Corneille's Surena


Je veux, sans que la mort ose me secourir,
Toujours aimer, toujours souffrir, toujours mourir.

Scorning the balm of death, 'tis my desire
Always to love, to suffer, to expire.
-Corneille's Surena


So young to go
Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
To be nailed down into a narrow place;
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost!
How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be--
What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no Heaven, no earth in the void world;
The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
-Shelley's Cenci