Come, Heraclitus and Simonides, Come with your weeping and sad elegies: Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands: Gather ye here within my house today...
If I had ever thought to write in praise Of little children and their simple ways, Far rather had I fashioned cradle verse To rock to slumber, or the songs a nurse Might croon above the baby on her breast....
So, thou hast scorned me, my delight and heir; Thy father's halls, then, were not broad and fair Enough for thee to dwell here longer, sweet. True, there was nothing, nothing in them meet...
Thou hast constrained mine eyes, unholy Death, To watch my dear child breathe her dying breath: To watch thee shake the fruit unripe and clinging While fear and grief her parents' hearts were wringing....
Thou shouldst be purchased, Wisdom, for much gold If all they say of thee is truly told: That thou canst root out from the mind the host Of longings and canst change a man almost...
Just as a little olive offshoot grows Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows, No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb, Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim - Then if the busy gardener, weeding out...
Dear little Slavic Sappho, we had thought, Hearing thy songs so sweetly, deftly wrought, That thou shouldst have an heritage one day Beyond thy father's lands: his lute to play....
Sad trinkets of my little daughter, dresses That touched her like caresses, Why do you draw my mournful eyes? To borrow A newer weight of sorrow? No longer will you clothe her form, to fold her...
Thou hast made all the house an empty thing, Dear Ursula, by this thy vanishing. Though we are here, 'tis yet a vacant place, One little soul had filled so great a space....
My dear delight, my Ursula, and where Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere? High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand One little cherub midst the cherub band?...
"Virtue is but a trifle!" Brutus said In his defeat; nor was he cozened. What man did his own goodness e'er advance Or piety preserve from evil chance? Some unknown foe confuses men's affairs;...
I think no father under any sky More fondly loved a daughter than did I, And scarcely ever has a child been born Whose loss her parents could more justly mourn. Unspoiled and neat, obedient at all times,...
Ursula, winsome child, I would that I Had never had thee if thou wert to die So early. For with lasting grief I pay, Now thou hast left me, for thy sweet, brief stay....
Where are those gates through which so long ago Orpheus descended to the realms below To seek his lost one? Little daughter, I Would find that path and pass that ford whereby...
Long through the night hours sorrow was my guest And would not let my fainting body rest, Till just ere dawn from out its slow dominions Flew sleep to wrap me in its dear dusk pinions....
Golden-locked Erato, and thou, sweet lute, The comfort of the sad and destitute, Calm thou my sorrow, lest I too become A marble pillar shedding through the dumb But living stone my almost bloody tears,...