I want only a little earth to cover me; let another lie sumptuously under the weight of a costly tombstone, the dismal burden borne by the dead, who will know me in death as Alkander, son of Kalliteles.

Tell me, my Heart! fond slave of hopeless love,
And doom'd its woes without its joys to prove,
Canst thou endure thus calmly to erase
The dear dear image of thy Delia's face?
Canst thou exclude that habitant divine
To place some meaner idle in her shrine?
O task for feeble Reason too severe!
O lesson nought could teach me but despair!
Must I forbid my eyes that heav'nly sight
They 'ave view'd so oft' with languishing delight?
Must my ears shun that voice whose charming sound
Seem'd to relieve while it increas'd my wound?

Time makes great states decay,
Time doth Maye's pompe disgrace,
Time drawes deepe furrowes in the fairest face,
Time wisdome, force, renowne doth take away,
Time doth consume the yeeres,
Time changes workes in heauen's eternall spheares:
Yet this fierce tyrant, which doth all deuoure,
To lessen loue in mee shall haue no power.

What are we to think, O Peisistratos, when we see this die carved upon your tomb, with the Khian dot on top? Not, though it is likely, that you came from, Khios? Or were you a gambler, who never threw a high score? Perhaps you used to soak yourself with pure Khian wine? Yes, I think this is nearer the truth.

My skeleton, partly uncovered, has already been disturbed, my gravestone has fallen over, and one can see the worms under my coffin. To what end are the dead covered with earth, O man? You have cut through a new road, close to my peaceful tomb.
In the name of Earth, of Hades, Hermes, and of Night, choose another path!
Favourable winds to the seafarer, but if a gale should force him, like me, to seek the harbours of Hades, he must not blame the unfriendly gulf of the sea, but his own recklessness in casting off his moorings from our tomb.

And would yee, louers, know
Why Loue doth naked goe?
Fond, waggish, changeling lad,
Late whilst Thaumantia's voyce
Hee wondring heard, it made him so rejoyce,
That hee o'rejoy'd ran mad,
And in a franticke fit threw cloathes away,
And since from lip and lap hers can not straye.

Alas, Antikles! your mother is more miserable than you are, for she has laid her only son upon the pyre in the flower of youth, at eighteen. At the thought of my childless old age, I weep and I long for the shadowy halls of Hades, for the morning seems no longer sweet to me, and the sun's swift rays have lost their warmth.
Alas, Antikles, take me with you into the house of death and end my sorrow.

The sun, whirling on its flaming axis, dims the stars and the sacred disk of the moon; in the same way all the poets are dimmed by the splendour of Homer, the glory of the Muses.

Blick um dich, was Geschick und Welle will:
Du liegst in Händen, die dein Herz nicht schonen,
Und dir verwehrt mit Himmeln und mit Zonen
Liegt Land um Land. Was noch? und willst du still
Hintreiben dort hinaus wo nicht mehr schrill
Dein Ohr das Graun vollsingt? wo seit Äonen
Bestehn, die nicht begehren und nicht fronen?
Ein Jahr steigt auf aus Tränen und April,

Und hinterm fernen Sommer auf der Bütte
Schläft schon der Herbst, der dir die Traube nicht
Vom blond und blau Gehäuften reichen wird:
Irrseliges Herz, wie ganz bist du verirrt!

Madam, before your feet I lay
This ode upon your wedding day,
The first indeed I ever made,
For writing odes is not my trade:
My head is full of household cares
And necessary dull affairs;
Besides that sometimes jealous frumps
Will put me into doleful dumps,
And then no clown beneath the sky
Was e'er more ungallant than I:
For you alone I now think fit
To turn a poet and a wit —
For you, whose charms I know not how
Have pow'r to smooth my wrinkled brow,
And make me tho' by nature stupid
As brisk and as alert as Cupid.