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Home  »  English Poetry III  »  686. Heraclitus

English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

William (Johnson) Cory

686. 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 remember’d 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.