Callimachus, the great Greek elegist, remembers his friend Heraclitus, a poet over the seas, and his nightingales (his poetry): hear the Greek and follow in English here. On one of his very best days the Victorian, William Johnson Cory, wrote the verse translation below.

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 remembered how often you and I
Had 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.

The loss of a loved one is hard, but it has inspired some very beautiful poetry. This selection begins with Catullus’s

farewell to a beloved brother.

In this poem, the inspiration for a famous English translation, Callimachus remembers his

poet-friend, Heraclitus.

Catullus expresses both consolation and desire in his half-serious lament for

Lesbia’s sparrow.

Archilochus, the seventh-century BCE warrior-poet, explains that

loss must be endured.

Finally, in the Elysian fields Aeneas is shown Marcellus, Augustus’s tragically short-lived

heir-to-be.

See the index to Pantheon Poets’ selections of poetry on a theme here.