Sonnet français, take two:

Si périssable est toute chose née,
Comment la mort pourrait-elle mourir?
À quelle étrange heure, il faut réflechir,
A-t-elle eu la naissance? A-t-elle pleuré
En étant, dans ce monde exact, traîné?
Qui lui a fait la vie en son empire?
À quel âge a-t-elle fait introduire
Au corps humaine sa vénalité?
Surtout: si la mort peut jamais périr,
Attendrons-nous la vaste éternité
Horrifiante, nos mortalitées
Volées de nous? Aucun dernier soupir?
La vie douloureuse illimité?
Qu’on ne soit pas laissé la mort mourir!

2009 October 30, in response to the quote, ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.’ I am not sufficiently confident in my French; any native or fluent speakers should point out stuff that is ill said or that doesn't mean what I think it means. What I think it means is this:

If everything that is born dies,
how can it be that Death could die?
At what strange hour, one must consider,
was Death's birth? Did she cry
at having been dragged into this very world?
Who made this world her domain?
At what age did she introduce
corruption to the human body?
Above all, if Death were able to die,
would we be awaiting a vast and
horrifying eternity? Our mortality
stolen from us? Never a final breath?
Life, unhappy and unlimited?
We cannot let death die!