వాళ్ళు అంటున్నారు హెరాక్లైటస్! వాళ్ళంటున్నారు ఇక నువ్వు లేవని.

భరింపశక్యంకాని వార్త మోసుకొచ్చేరు వాళ్ళు వినడానికీ, ఏడవడానికీ;

మనిద్దరం ఎన్నిసార్లు మనమాటలతో సూరీడ్ని విసిగించి,నింగి వీడేదాకా

మాట్లాడుకున్నామో తలుచుకుని తలుచుకుని కన్నీళ్ళు కార్చేను.

ఇప్పుడు నువ్వు నిద్రిస్తున్నావు, నా ప్రియమైన కేరయాన్ అతిథీ!

ఒక పిడికెడు బూడిదై, ఎన్నాళ్లనుండో, ప్రశాంతంగా.

అయినా, నీ మధురమైన స్వరాలు, నీ కోయిలలు మేలుకున్నయిలే

మృత్యువు దేన్నైనా హరించగలదేమో గాని, అవి దాని తరం కాదు.

.

విలియం జాన్సన్ కోరీ

(January 9, 1823 – June 11, 1892)

ఇంగ్లీషు కవి

. 

.

Heraclitus

.

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.

.

William Johnson Cory

(January 9, 1823 – June 11, 1892)

Poem Courtesy: www.wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com 

(Notes:

1. Carian: of Caria, part of southwest Asia Minor.)

2. Heraclitus’s poems appear to have been known as ‘nightingales’, and Lempriere explains that he was ‘remarkable for the elegance of his style’. 

Heraclitus (ca. 540-ca. 400 BC) was a Greek philosopher and pre-Socratic founder of an Ionian school, whose principal tenet was ‘change’ in all things. Cory translates an epigram of Callimachus, which in A. W. Mair’s translation of the Greek is as follows:

“One told me, Heracleitus, of thy death and brought me to tears, and I remembered how often we two in talking put the sun to rest. Thou, methinks, Halicarnasian friend, art ashes long and long ago; but thy nightingales live still, whereon Hades, snatcher of all things, shall not lay his hand”

From http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/cory1.html

And from Unauthorized Versions

Biographical Note

Educator (his tenure as Assistant Master of Eton College lasted from 1845 to 1872) and author of A Guide to Modern British History (New York: Holt, 1880-82), William Johnson became William Johnson Cory after his retirement. A brief biography appears in the third edition of Ionica, his translation of classical poems, as edited by Arthur C. Benson

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/cory.html#notes