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Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Moschus (fl. c. 150 B.C.)

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

‘Alas! alas! when in a garden fair’

Moschus (fl. c. 150 B.C.)

Translated by M. J. Chapman
From the Elegy on the Death of Bion

ALAS! alas! when in a garden fair

Mallows, crisp dill, or parsley yields to fate,

These with another year regerminate;

But when of mortal life the bloom and crown,

The wise, the good, the valiant, and the great

Succumb to death, in hollow earth shut down

We sleep—for ever sleep—for ever lie unknown.