European Elegies/Winter/Memorial stanzas
34.MEMORIAL STANZAS
My sad mind, when night harasses,Will with wakeful resolutions ContemplateHow poor human life soon passes,How approaches dissolution's Silent fate;How soon stilled are joy and laughterAnd their loss in retrospection Gives us grief,How the past appears long afterBrighter in our recollection Past belief.
Each man's life is but a riverRushing onward towards the ocean Of the dead:Thither empires must deliverAll their glories with commotion Lurid red;There the rich man's golden torrentAnd the pauper's rill are tending; Great and smallEqual face their fate abhorrent,Equal meet the dark impending Doom of all.
From the Old Spanish of Jorge Manrique.