I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor mortis conturbat me.

-Dumas, Alexandre, pe'  re
c.1505  'Lament for the Makaris', stanza1. The Latin is from the Office for the Dead:'The fear of death disturbs me'.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.64^76.

Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity.

-Wordsworth,William
^1805  The Prelude, bk.2, l.212^15 (published1850).