“I shall die unavenged, but I shall die,"
she says. "Thus, thus, I gladly go below
to shadows.”
‘Moriemur inultae,
Sed moriamur’ ait. ‘sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.’
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Lines 659–660 (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)
Predicting that he would go senile, as quoted in The Highway of Letters and its Echos of Famous Footsteps (1893) by Thomas Archer, p. 380
“I shall die unavenged, but I shall die,"
she says. "Thus, thus, I gladly go below
to shadows.”
‘Moriemur inultae,
Sed moriamur’ ait. ‘sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.’
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Lines 659–660 (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)
“And shall I die? and unrevenged?”
Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet
she said:
"Yes! let me die! thus—thus I plunge in night."
Book IV, lines 887–888
The Æneis (1817)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself — that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life — life will be wrested from me.
“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.”
Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems
"Trees" - This poem was first published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 2 (August 1913). The first two lines were first written down on the 2nd of February 1913.
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Source: Trees & Other Poems
Context: I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
“I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.”
R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet
"Here"
Tares (1961)
“If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
Compensation
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri
“I shall eat cheese before I die contented.”
James Wolfe (1727–1759) British Army officer
Source: Last words, on hearing of the defeat of the French at Quebec. Quoted in Francis Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe