On Life

Palladas, Anthologia Græca (Jacobs III. 141, cxxviii.), the epigram is trans. by Rev. Robert Bland:

            Waking, we burst, at each return of morn,
            From death’s dull fetters and again are born;
            No longer ours the moments that have past,
            To a new remnant of our lives we haste.
            Call not the years thine own that made thee gray,
            That left their wrinkles and have fled away;
            The past no more shall yield thee ill or good.
            Gone to the silent times beyond the flood.