Note 35 — Chapter XV · THE FRAGMENTS OF ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, AND EURIPIDES.
Reading edition
There is no trouble worse than length of life. Old age hath all the ills that flesh is heir to— Vain thoughts and powerless deeds and vanished mind. If mourners by their cries could cure our misery, If tears could raise the dead to life again, Gold would be valueless compared with crying. But now, old man, these sorrows nought avail To bring to light him whom the grave hath covered; Else had my father, too, by grace of tears, The day revisited.
The second of these extracts finds a close echo in some beautiful lines on the inutility of tears by Philemon [Sardius fr. i.]