Translation of part of the 15th Satire of Juvenal
Nature on a man, a feeling heart bestows,
The gushing tear her pow’r triumphant shows;
Pity peculiar to the human race,
Of all the senses holds the highest place:
Hence in the sorrows of our friends we share,
And mourn the squalid garb th’ accused wear;
Or when the orphan to regain his rights,
To the tribunal his defrauder cites
While through his tresses and his streaming tears,
Almost a virgin the fair youth appears.
It is by Nature’s high behests we mourn,
When to the tomb the blooming maid is borne,
Or should an infant to the grave retire,
Too short its life to claim the funeral fire.
Where lives the man among the just enroll’d,
And worthy deem’d the secret torch to hold;
Him whom the Priest of Ceres might prefer
Would think another’s woes beneath his care?
’Tis this to man exalted genius gives,
By this distinguished from the brutes he lives;
’Tis this to him the useful arts supplies,
Conducts his thoughts and lifts them to the skies.
Tis from heaven’s heights our nature draws its birth;
Unlike to brutes who groveling seek the earth,
Instinct alone e’er since the world arose,
The architect divine on the bestows.
While man more blest enjoys a reasoning soul,
To be his guide, and all his acts control.
For rul’d by this his passions he directs
And mutual aid his happiness protects
Impell’d by this his passions he directs
And mutual aid his happiness protects
Impell’d by this, the scatter’d people fly
Leave the wild woods and seek society,
Desert the forests where their fathers stray’d.