European Elegies/Autumn (1)/Lacrimae rerum
5.LACRIMAE RERUM
Alas, my dear! Throughout this cottage small
Your vanished form haunts all familiar things;
To the little mirror and the pictured wall
The recollection of your beauty clings.
Your vanished form haunts all familiar things;
To the little mirror and the pictured wall
The recollection of your beauty clings.
Something of fairy fragrance, faintly shed,
Floods the poor dwelling with a sweet unrest,
And your dim phantom steals beside my bed
To thrill with silent touch my throbbing breast.
Floods the poor dwelling with a sweet unrest,
And your dim phantom steals beside my bed
To thrill with silent touch my throbbing breast.
Without, a deep-voiced spirit of the waste
Wails round the roof-tree; while from couch and chair
The sobbings of each corner you have graced
Blend in one anguished outcry of despair.
Wails round the roof-tree; while from couch and chair
The sobbings of each corner you have graced
Blend in one anguished outcry of despair.
And, from his place, a comrade in the dark,
Our old clock speaks, my comforter-in-chief,
Whose measured dirge o'er dying time will mark
The endless iteration of my grief.
Our old clock speaks, my comforter-in-chief,
Whose measured dirge o'er dying time will mark
The endless iteration of my grief.
From the Romaic of Lambros Porphyras.