William Shakespeare
c. 1598 · England
Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, scene 2, spoken by Benedick
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Callimachus Καλλίμαχος
3rd century BC · Alexandria, Hellenistic Egypt · The nightingales are the poems his dead friend left
Someone told me of your death, Heraclitus, and it brought me to tears, and I remembered how many times the two of us put the sun to bed with our talk. You, I suppose, my friend from Halicarnassus, are ashes long, long ago. But your nightingales live on, and on them Hades, who snatches everything, shall never lay his hand.
εἶπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον, ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
ἤγαγεν, ἐμνήσθην δʼ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν ἀλλὰ σὺ μέν που,
ξεῖνʼ Ἁλικαρνησεῦ, τετράπαλαι σποδιή·
αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀηδόνες, ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων
ἁρπακτὴς Ἀίδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ.Greek Anthology 7.80
Bai Juyi 白居易
840 · Tang China · Nine years after Yuan Zhen died
You lie buried under the springs, your bones dissolving in the mud. I lodge among the living, my head covered with snow.
君埋泉下泥銷骨，我寄人間雪滿頭。"Dreaming of Weizhi," in the Complete Tang Poems
Epicurus Ἐπίκουρος
270 BC · Athens, ancient Greece
I write this to you on a happy day that is also the last of my life. The strangury and the dysentery have kept with me, and nothing could be added to their severity. But set against all of them is the joy in my soul at the memory of the conversations we have had.
Τὴν μακαρίαν ἄγοντες καὶ ἅμα τελευταίαν ἡμέραν τοῦ βίου ἐγράφομεν ὑμῖν ταυτί. στραγγουρία τε παρηκολουθήκει καὶ δυσεντερικὰ πάθη ὑπερβολὴν οὐκ ἀπολείποντα τοῦ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς μεγέθους. ἀντιπαρετάττετο δὲ πᾶσι τούτοις τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν χαῖρον ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν γεγονότων ἡμῖν διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ.The last letter, to Idomeneus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 10.22
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