Consolatio

William Cullen Bryant: Life's bright promise withdrawn

I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.

     --William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) in "Waiting by the Gate," Thirty Poems (1864)

Czesław Miłosz: The loneliness of the dying

...when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on....

Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet....

      --"Campo dei Fiori," Warsaw, 1943.  Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004). From Selected Poems, 1931-2004, translated by Miłosz and Robert Hass.

Ancient Egyptian: Death is before me today

Death is before me today:
  like the recovery of a sick man,
  like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
  like the odor of myrrh,
  like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
  like the course of a stream;
  like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
  like the home that a man longs to see,
  after years spent as a captive.

            --From "Dialogue of a Misanthrope with His Soul" (ca 2000 BC), now called "Dispute between a man and his Ba," from a papyrus of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Cited in The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology (1962), p. 138, by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), who slightly changed the original quotation in Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (1912) p. 195, by James Henry Breasted (1865-1935). Breasted himself had translated a German translation of the papyrus by Adolf Erman (1854-1937) in 1896, Gespräch eines Lebensmüden mit seiner Seele (Conversation of a life-weary person with his soul), in the Abhandl. der königl. Preuss. Akad. (Papers of the Royal Prussian Academy) Berlin, 1896. Originally from Lepsius' book Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethopien (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), VI, Taf., 111-112.

A papyrus of the Middle Kingdom in Berlin (P. 3024), first published by Karl Richard Lepsius (1810-1884) in 1859; Lepsius had bought the papyrus in Egypt in 1843. It is now in the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection of the Berlin Museum, no. 3024.

It is one of the oldest documents in the world to speak of a state of mind. This is only a small part of it.

Conrad Aiken: Music I heard with you was more than music

 

Music I heard with you was more than music,
and bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
all that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
and I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
and yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
and blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
they knew you once, O beautiful and wise!

    --Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), in The New Poetry Anthology (1917), ed. Harriet Monroe (1860–1936).  

Pindar: Dream of a shadow is a human

One-day creatures-- what is someone? what is no one?-- A human
is the dream of a shadow. But when a God-given ray alights,
brightness glows, and a honeyed age.

    --From the eighth ode of Pindar (ca 522 BC-443). It was written to celebrate the victory of a young wrestler named Aristomenes.

I don't know Greek; this is a translation after consulting English and French translations. Please write to me if there is a mistake in either the English or the Greek.

Έπάμεροί τί δέ τις; τί δ' οῠ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
ἄνθρωπος. άλλ' ὃταν αἴγλα διὀσδοτος ἔλφη
λαμπρὀν φἑγγος ἔπεστιν άνδρῶν καἰ μείλιχος αἴών....

Su Shi: Who knows where the swan flies?

Remembering the past with Ziyou at Mianchi Temple

When it comes down to it, what is human life like?
It must be like a flying swan that alights on snow or mud.
Sometimes it leaves footprints on the mud.
Then the swan flies off-- where? to the east? to the west?...

       --Su Shi (蘇軾) (1037-1101), also known as Su Dongpo (蘇東坡). Ziyou was his younger brother, Su Che (蘇轍).

和子由澠池懷舊

人生到處知何似？

應似飛鴻踏雪泥。

泥上偶然留指爪，

鴻飛那復計東西....

Rabindranath Tagore: Death has brought thy call to my home

LXXXVI.

Death, thy servant, is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought thy call to my home.

The night is dark and my heart is fearful-- yet I will take up the lamp, open my gates and bow to him my welcome. It is thy messenger who stands at my door.

I will worship him with folded hands, and with tears. I will worship him placing at his feet the treasure of my heart.

He will go back with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on my morning; and in my desolate home only my forlorn self will remain as my last offering to thee.

       --"Gitanjali" (Song Offerings) of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in Collected Poems and Plays (1951).

Melville: The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows

The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

   --Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick (1851)

Where are those who were before us?

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?*

Where are they that were before us,
who led hounds and carried hawks,
and owned fields and woods?
The rich ladies in their bedrooms,
who wore gold in their tresses
with their bright crosses--

who ate and drank, and were glad together;
their life was all full of games,
men knelt before them;
they bore their rank well;
and in a twinkling of an eye
their souls were lost.

Where is that laughing and that song,
that trailing and that proud going,
the hawks and the hounds?
All that joy is gone away,
that "well" has come to "wellaway,"
to many hard hours.

Their paradise they took here,
and now they lie in hell forever
the fire burns forever.
Long is forever, and long is o,
Long is why, and long is woe;
They will never escape from there....

   --Middle English poem by an unknown author

*[Where are those who were before us?]

Were beth they that biforen us weren,
houndes ladden and havekes beren,
and hadden feld and wode?
The riche levedies in hoere bour,
that wereden gold in hoere tressour,
with hoere brightte rode;

eten and drounken, and maden hem glad;
hoere lif was al with gamen i-lad,
men kneleden hem biforen;
they beren hem wel swithe heye;
and in a twincling of an eye
hoere soules weren forloren.

Were is that lawhing and that song,
that trayling and that proude gong,
tho havekes and tho houndes?
Al that joye is went away,
that wele is comen to weylaway,
to manye harde stoundes.

Hoere paradis they nomen here,
and nou they lyen in helle i-fere;
the fuir hit brennes hevere:
long is ay, and long is o,
long is wy, and long is wo;
thennes ne cometh they nevere.

Jayne Anne Phillips: People forget that a soldier's death goes on for years

People forget that a soldier's death goes on for years-- for a generation, really. They leave people behind.

     --Jayne Anne Phillips (1952- ) in Lark and Termite (2009)