Classic Poem

Albeit care that consumes, with dule assiduous grieving,
Me from the learned Maids, Hortalus! ever seclude,
Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver
Thought of my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills):
For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses,
Laved my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,
He whom the Trojan soil, Rhaetean shore underlying,
Buries forever and aye, forcibly snatcht from our sight. . . .
I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,
Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life,
Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee forever,
Ever what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;
Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondage
Warbles of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot!)
Yet amid grief so great to thee my Hortalus, send I
These strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;
Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gusts
Vainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed —

As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,
In the chaste breast of the Maid hidden a-sudden out-sprang;
For did the hapless forget when in loose-girt garment it lurked,
Forth would it leap as she rose, scared by her mother's approach,
And while coursing headlong, it rolls far out of her keeping,
O'er the triste virgin's brow flushes the conscious blush. . . .

Troy (ah, curst be the name!), common tomb of Asia and Europe,
Troy, to sad ashes that turned valour and valorous men!
Eke to our brother beloved, destruction lamented
Brought she: O brother for aye lost unto wretchedest me,
Oh, to thy wretchedmost brother lost the light of his life-tide,
Buried together wi' thee lieth the whole of our house:
Perisht along wi' thyself forthright all joys we enjoyed,
Douce joys fed by thy love during the term of our days;
Who now art tombed so far nor mid familiar pavestones,
Nor wi' thine ashes stored near to thy kith and thy kin,
But in that Troy obscene, that Troy of ill-omen, entombed
Holds thee, an alien earth-buried in uttermost bourne.