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[12]
Child of my vain
hopes, did I see your eyes fading in death and your
breath take its last flight? Had I the heart to
receive your fleeting spirit,1 as I embraced your cold
pale body, and to live on breathing the common air.
Justly do I endure the agony that now is mine, and
the thoughts that torment me.
1 It was customary for the next-of-kin to receive in the mouth the last breath of the dying to continue the existence of the spirit.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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