And therefore, whensoever death shall close my eyes,
I charge you thus to solemnize my doom:
let there be then no long ancestral parade of masks,
nor empty cry of trumpet for my end,
nor spread me a catafalque inlaid with ivory,
nor lay my corpse out on a cloth-of-gold;
no ranks of acolytes with incense heaped on trays:
the plain last rites of a common man be mine.
Grand enough my cortege, if it bears a few slim books,
my ultimate offering to Persephone.
But you, your naked breast all torn, shall follow after,
nor ever weary of calling out my name,
and press your final kisses upon my frigid lips,
while Syrian unguent pours from the onyx jar.
Then last, when the fire kindled beneath has burned me to ash,
consign my relics to a fragile urn,
and plant a laurel spreading over my simple tomb,
to shade the burnt-out cinders of my pyre,
and write: HERE LIES A MOUND OF COARSE, IGNOBLE DUST,
THAT ONCE WAS VASSAL TO A SINGLE LOVE.
My sepulcher shall then achieve no less renown
than has the Phthian hero’s bloodstained tomb.
You also, when your fate draws near, remember me,
and come white-haired to these memorial stones;
meanwhile, have care lest you be faithless to my grave:
this earth will not be wholly dead to truth.
If only in my cradle one of the Sisters Three
had ruled that then I should yield up my soul!
What use to cherish so life’s too precarious breath?
Seek Nestor, who lived three long ages: dust.
Yet if his doom of lingering age had been revoked
on Ilium’s rampart by some Carian’s spear,
he never would have seen Antilochus’s corpse entombed,
nor cried, “O death! Why come to me so late?”
Yet you sometimes shall mourn the lover you have lost:
love lasting is the meed of vanished men;
as, when the savage boar smote delicate Adonis
while hunting once, high on Idalium’s crown,
they say that in those marshes his beauty was laid low,
and that you, Venus, came with loosened hair;
but Cynthia, vainly you will summon back my ghost:
what answer could my crumbled bones return?
— translated from the Latin
Feb 26
Feb 26, 2026 at 12:25 PM UTC
And therefore, whensoever death shall close my eyes,
I charge you thus to solemnize my doom:
let there be then no long ancestral parade of masks,
nor empty cry of trumpet for my end,
nor spread me a catafalque inlaid with ivory,
nor lay my corpse out on a cloth-of-gold;
no ranks of acolytes with incense heaped on trays:
the plain last rites of a common man be mine.
Grand enough my cortege, if it bears a few slim books,
my ultimate offering to Persephone.
But you, your naked breast all torn, shall follow after,
nor ever weary of calling out my name,
and press your final kisses upon my frigid lips,
while Syrian unguent pours from the onyx jar.
Then last, when the fire kindled beneath has burned me to ash,
consign my relics to a fragile urn,
and plant a laurel spreading over my simple tomb,
to shade the burnt-out cinders of my pyre,
and write: HERE LIES A MOUND OF COARSE, IGNOBLE DUST,
THAT ONCE WAS VASSAL TO A SINGLE LOVE.
My sepulcher shall then achieve no less renown
than has the Phthian hero’s bloodstained tomb.
You also, when your fate draws near, remember me,
and come white-haired to these memorial stones;
meanwhile, have care lest you be faithless to my grave:
this earth will not be wholly dead to truth.
If only in my cradle one of the Sisters Three
had ruled that then I should yield up my soul!
What use to cherish so life’s too precarious breath?
Seek Nestor, who lived three long ages: dust.
Yet if his doom of lingering age had been revoked
on Ilium’s rampart by some Carian’s spear,
he never would have seen Antilochus’s corpse entombed,
nor cried, “O death! Why come to me so late?”
Yet you sometimes shall mourn the lover you have lost:
love lasting is the meed of vanished men;
as, when the savage boar smote delicate Adonis
while hunting once, high on Idalium’s crown,
they say that in those marshes his beauty was laid low,
and that you, Venus, came with loosened hair;
but Cynthia, vainly you will summon back my ghost:
what answer could my crumbled bones return?
— translated from the Latin
Copyright © 2026 by Jon Corelis
