What, then, is life if love the golden is gone? What is pleasure?
Better to die when the thought of these is lost from my heart:
the flattery of surrender, the secret embrace in the darkness.
These alone are such charming flowers of youth as befall
women and men. But once old age with its sorrows advances
upon us, it makes a man feeble and ugly alike,
heart worn thin with the hovering expectation of evil,
lost all joy that comes out of the sight of the sun.
Hateful to boys a man goes then, unfavored of women.
Such is the thing of sorrow God has made of old age.

Mimnermus