Al-Khansa الخنساء

Su Shi 蘇軾

January 20, 1075 · Song China · On dreaming of his wife, ten years dead

Ten years, the living and the dead, each lost to the other. I do not try to think of her, yet cannot forget. Her lonely grave is a thousand miles away, and there is nowhere to tell this desolation.

十年生死兩茫茫，不思量，自難忘。 千里孤墳，無處話淒涼。

To the tune "River Town": recording a dream on the night of the twentieth day of the first month of the yimao year

Open this post

Yuan Zhen 元稹

c. 811 · Tang China · After losing his wife Wei Cong, who shared his years of poverty

I know well that this sorrow comes to everyone, but for a husband and wife who were poor together, everything is cause for grief.

誠知此恨人人有，貧賤夫妻百事哀。

"Letting Out My Grief," the second poem, in the Complete Tang Poems

Open this post

Bak Jiwon 朴趾源

1787 · Joseon Korea

Whom did my brother's face and beard resemble? Whenever I missed our father, I looked at my brother. Now that I miss my brother, where shall I see him? I put on my cap and robe and go to look at myself in the stream.

我兄顔髮曾誰似 每憶先君看我兄 今日思兄何處見 自將巾袂映溪行

Yeonam jip, book 4, "At Yeonam, Remembering My Late Brother"

Open this post

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus

c. 57 BC · Roman Republic · At the grave of his brother, buried in a far country

Take these, wet through with a brother's tears, and for ever, brother, hail and farewell.

accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale.

Poem 101

Open this post

Toru Dutt

1870s · Kolkata, India · After losing the brother and sister who had played with her under that tree as children

But not because of its magnificence Dear is the Casuarina to my soul: Beneath it we have played; though years may roll, O sweet companions, loved with love intense, For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear! Blent with your images, it shall arise In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!

"Our Casuarina Tree," in Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882)

Open this post