Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)
“Still in the flower of your youth’s delights
Age creeps upon you, silent as a stone.
Death menaces all ages and he smites
The high and low, the known and the unknown;
We see for certain, are obliged to own
That we must die, but we are ignorant of all
Of when the hour’s to come, the blow to fall.”
- From The Canterbury Tales (The Clerk’s Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).
