Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive — don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
--
The God Abandons Antony (1911)
--
Like one who’s long prepared, like someone brave, as befits a man who’s been blessed with a city like this, go without faltering toward the window and listen with deep emotion, but not with the entreaties and the whining of a coward, to the sounds — a final entertainment — to the exquisite instruments of that initiate crew, and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria, whom you are losing.
--
As translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (2009)Constantine P. Cavafy
» Constantine P. Cavafy - all quotes »
Don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive — don't mourn them uselessly:
as one long prepared, and full of courage,
say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.Constantine P. Cavafy
'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but you woodlands I mourn not for you!
For spring is returning your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance and glittering with dew.
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn,
Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save;
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?James Beattie
Upward my face I turn to you,
I long for you, I yearn to you,
The spectral vision trances me to utt'rance wild and weak;
It is not that I mourn you,
To mourn you were to scorn you,
For you are one step nearer to the beauty singers seek.
But I want, and cannot see you,
I seek and cannot find you,
And, see! I touch the book of songs you tenderly left behind you!Robert Williams Buchanan
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
Man was made to Mourn.Robert Burns
Mourn if you must. But mourn on the march to Tarmon Gai'don.
Robert Jordan
Cavafy, Constantine P.
Cavallero, Ugo
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