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“Gilgamish, why dost thou run, (forasmuch as) the life which thou seekest
Thou shalt not find?” (Whereat) Gilgamish answer’d the warrior Shamash:
“Shall I, after I roam up and down o’er the waste as a wand’rer,
Lay my head in the bowels of earth, and throughout the years slumber
Ever and aye? Let mine eyes see the Sun and be sated with brightness,
(Yea, for) the darkness is (banish’d) afar, if wide be the brightness.
When will the man who is dead (ever) look on the light of the Sunshine?”
—
Gilgamesh in Terror of Death Seeks Eternal Life.
From the Epic of Gilgamesh.
(full text from the 1901 translation of the Mesopotamian epic poem by R. Campbell Thompson on King of Heroes)
