Quotes about loss

A nameless harper

c. 21st century BC · Thebes, ancient Egypt · On the tombs of famous men who lived before

Consider what hath become of their tombs! Their walls have been thrown down; Their places are no more; They are just as if they had never existed.

"The Song of the Harper" · in place of the original: the English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge (1914)

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Thucydides Θουκυδίδης

c. 400 BC · Athens, ancient Greece · From the funeral speech which, he writes, Pericles gave for the soldiers who died in the first year of the war (431 BC)

For of famous men the whole earth is the tomb.

ἀνδρῶν γὰρ ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος

History of the Peloponnesian War, book 2, chapter 43

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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

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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

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Servius Sulpicius Rufus

March 45 BC · Roman Republic · A letter of consolation to Cicero, who had lost his daughter Tullia. He writes that the thought came to him on a voyage, as he looked round at the ruins of Aegina, Megara, Piraeus and Corinth

Ah! Do we little men resent it if one of us, whose lives are bound to be shorter, has died or been killed, when in a single place the corpses of so many towns lie cast down?

hem! nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interiit aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidum cadavera proiecta iacent?

Cicero, Letters to Friends 4.5, to Cicero

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Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero

April 45 BC · Roman Republic · His answer, written alone at a villa by the sea after his daughter's death

Yes, Servius, I do wish, as you write, that you had been with me in this heaviest of blows. How much you could have helped me by your presence, consoling me and grieving almost as much as I, I can easily tell from this: reading your letter, I found some rest.

Ego vero, Servi, vellem, ut scribis, in meo gravissimo casu affuisses; quantum enim praesens me adiuvare potueris et consolando et prope aeque dolendo, facile ex eo intelligo, quod litteris lectis aliquantum acquievi.

Letters to Friends 4.6, to Servius Sulpicius

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Al-Khansa الخنساء

early 7th century · Arabia · Mourning her brother Sakhr, killed in tribal fighting

The rising of the sun reminds me of Sakhr, and I remember him at every setting of the sun.

يذكرني طلوع الشمس صخرا وأذكره لكل غروب شمس

Divan of al-Khansa

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Wolmyeong 月明師

mid-8th century · Seorabeol (Gyeongju), Silla · For the sister who died before him

The road of life and death is here, and you faltered, and went without even finishing the words "I am going." Like leaves that fall here and there in an early autumn wind, we were born on one branch, and I do not know where you have gone.

生死路隱 此矣有阿米次肹伊遣 吾隱去內如辭叱都 毛如云遣去內尼叱古 於內秋察早隱風未 此矣彼矣浮良落尸葉如 一等隱枝良出古 去奴隱處毛冬乎丁

"Song for a Dead Sister" (Jemangmaega), in the Samguk yusa

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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

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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

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Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之

c. 935 · Heian Japan · Boarding the ship, leaving behind the little daughter who died at his post

Even as I think "home to the capital," what makes it sad is that there is one who will not be going back.

都へとおもふもものゝかなしきはかへらぬ人のあればなりけり

Tosa Diary (Tosa nikki)

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Li Yu 李煜

978 · Southern Tang China · This song is said to have angered Emperor Taizong of Song, who had him poisoned

I ask you: how much sorrow can one man have? As much as a river of spring water flowing east.

問君能有幾多愁？恰似一江春水向東流。

To the tune "The Beautiful Lady Yu"

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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

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Yi Gyubo 李奎報

early 13th century · Goryeo Korea

My little girl's face was white as snow, and how bright she was I cannot fully tell. At two she could already speak, rounder-tongued than a parrot. At three she seemed shy of strangers and never played beyond the gate. This year she had just turned four and was learning quite well to sew. Why were you snatched away and taken back, gone as suddenly as startled lightning?

小女面如雪 聦慧難具說 二齡已能言 圓於鸚鵡舌 三歲似恥人 遊不越門闑 今年方四齡 頗能學組綴 胡爲遭奪歸 倏若駭電滅

Dongguk Yi Sangguk jip, "Mourning My Little Daughter"

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Heo Nanseolheon 許蘭雪軒

1580s · Joseon Korea

Last year I lost my beloved daughter. This year I lost my beloved son. Sorrow, sorrow, the earth of Gwangneung, where two small graves rise face to face.

去年喪愛女 今年喪愛子 哀哀廣陵土 雙墳相對起

Nanseolheon sijip, "Weeping for My Children"

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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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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"

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Oscar Wilde

1897 · Ireland · Britain

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do

De Profundis, the letter written in Reading Gaol

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Nakahara Chuya 中原中也

1930 · Showa Japan

On my sorrow, soiled as it is, a light snow falls again today. Across my sorrow, soiled as it is, even the wind blows again today.

汚れつちまつた悲しみに 今日も小雪の降りかかる 汚れつちまつた悲しみに 今日も風さへ吹きすぎる

"On My Soiled Sorrow..." (Yogorechimatta kanashimi ni), in Goat Songs

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