"You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still; Your chilly stars I can forgo, This warm kind world is all I know.You say there is no substance here, One great reality above: Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love: Show me what angels feel. Till then I cling, a mere weak man, to men.You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains: My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear dead friend’s remember’d tones.Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away; All beauteous things for which we live By laws of time and space decay. But Oh, the very reason why I clasp them, is because they die."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
William Johnson Cory, "Mimnermus in Church" (1858)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mimnermus
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Mimnermus
Mimnermus (Greek: Μίμνερμος Mímnermos) was a Greek elegiac poet from either Colophon or Smyrna in Ionia, who flourished about 632–629 BC (i.e. in the 37th Olympiad, according to the Suda).
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