Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Courage

Mut verloren — alles verloren!
Da wär es besser, nicht geboren!
To lose courage is to lose everything, in which case it would have been better never to have been born.
 
A few stabs at rhyme-preserving translation:
Of courage shorn, of everything shorn!
In that case better, never to have been born!
Courage lost — everything lost!
Then having been born's too high a cost!
Loss of courage, something fatal!
Better then, never natal!
Loss of heart — loss of all!
'Twould then have been better, not to be at all!

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