Since we can die but once, what matters it,
If rope or garter, poison, pistol, sword,
Slow-wasting sickness, or the sudden burst
Of valve arterial in the noble parts,
Curtail the miseries of human life?
Tho’ varied is the cause, the effect’s the same:
All to one common dissolution tends.
From: Chatterton, Thomas and Willcox, Charles Bonnycastle (ed.), The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton: with Notices of his Life, History of the Rowley Controversy, a Selection of his Letters, and Notes Critical and Explanatory, Volume II, 1842, W. P. Grant: Cambridge, p. 439.
(http://books.google.com.au/books?pg=PA44)
Date: 1769
By: Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
From Troubles of The World 