Fragment LXXXVI: For noble minds, the worst of miseries

For noble minds, the worst of miseries,
Worse than old age or wearisome disease,
Is poverty—from poverty to flee,
From some tall precipice prone to the sea
It were a fair escape to leap below !
In poverty, dear Kurnus! we forego
Freedom in word and deed—body and mind,
Action and thought, are fetter’d and confin’d.
Let me then fly, dear Kurnus, once again !
Wide as the limits of the land and main,
From these entanglements ; with these in view,
Death is the lighter evil of the two.