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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Tomb of Anacreon

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.

Asia Minor: Teos (Sigagik)

The Tomb of Anacreon

By Simonides (c. 556–468 B.C.)

Translated by H. H. Milman

MOTHER of purple grapes, soul-soothing vine,

Whose verdant boughs their graceful tendrils twine:

Still round this urn, with youth unfading, bloom,

The gentle slope of old Anacreon’s tomb.

For so the unmixed-goblet-loving sire,

Touching the livelong night his amorous lyre,

Even low in earth, upon his brows shall wear

The ruddy clustering crowns thy branches bear,

Where, though still fall the sweetest dews, the song

Distilled more sweetly from that old man’s tongue.