European Elegies/Autumn (1)/Lacrimae rerum
5.LACRIMAE RERUM
Alas, my dear! Throughout this cottage smallYour vanished form haunts all familiar things;To the little mirror and the pictured wallThe 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 bedTo thrill with silent touch my throbbing breast.
Without, a deep-voiced spirit of the wasteWails round the roof-tree; while from couch and chairThe sobbings of each corner you have gracedBlend 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 markThe endless iteration of my grief.
From the Romaic of Lambros Porphyras.