r/comics Finessed Impropriety 15h ago

25 years ago today

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u/wdmartin 11h ago

I was in my last year of college. I had gotten up early to finish some homework -- translating a poem from Latin. It was Horace. One of the Odes. The exact lines were:

Pallida mors pede aequo pulsat

Tabernas pauperum et turris regem

Which I rendered as:

Pale death knocks with impartial foot

At the hovels of the poor and the towers of kings

Then the phone rang and it was my roommate's mother to say "turn on the TV".

I will remember those two lines of Latin until the day I die.

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u/Fletch71011 2h ago

That's beautiful by the way. You have a great way with words. Thanks for sharing. All I could do that day was go home and sob forever. Everything else seemed irrelevant. I couldn't put a coherent feeling or words to any of it.

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u/wdmartin 1h ago

Thank you!