Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

The fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

So, when a raging fever burns,

We shift from side to side by turns;

And 't is a poor relief we gain

To change the place, but keep the pain.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book ii. Hymn 146.