  The sons of Fortune I envy not For their lives, in pleasure vying, I envy them only their happy death, Their easy and painless dying. In gala dresses, with garlanded heads, Their lips in laughter extended, They joyously sit at the banquet of life,— The sickle falls,—all is ended! In festal attire, with roses adorn’d, Still blooming with life, these glad mortals, These fav’rites of fortune reach at last The shadowy realm’s dark portals. They ne’er were disfigured by fever’s attack, They die with a joyous demeanour, And gladly are welcomed at her sad court By Proserpine, hell’s Czarina. O how I envy a fate like theirs! Seven years I daily languish For death, as on the ground I writhe In bitter and speechless anguish. O God! my agony shorten, that I May be buried,—my sole ambition. Thou knowest that I no talent possess For filling a martyr’s position. I feel astonished, gracious Lord, At a course so unconsequential; Thou madest a joyous poet, without That joy that is so essential. My torments blunt each feeling of mirth, And melancholy make me; Unless I get better ere long, to the faith Of a Catholic I must betake me. Like other good Christians, I then shall howl In thine ears my wailings dreary— The best of humorists then will be lost For ever—O Miserere. |
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