They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
William Johnson Cory · Heraclitus
Comfort & remembrance
“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,”
- Author
- William Johnson Cory
- Work
- Heraclitus
- Found in
- The Oxford Book of English Verse
- Year
- 1858
- Length
- 84 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #66619
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. William Johnson Cory died in 1892, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1858. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
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Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.
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