If tears for their dead sons, in deep despair,
Mothers of Memnon and Achilles shed,
If gods in mortal grief have any share,
O Muse of tears! bow down thy mournful head!

Tibullus, thy true minstrel and best fame,
Mere lifeless clay, on tall-built pyre doth blaze;
While Eros, with rent bow, extinguished flame,
And quiver empty, his wild grief displays.

Behold, he comes with trailing wing forlorn,
And smites with desperate hands his bosom bare!
Tears rain unheeded o'er his tresses turn,
And many a trembling sob his soft lips bear.

Thus for a brother Eros mourned of yore,
Aeneas, in Iulus' regal hall;
Not less do Venus' eyes this death deplore
Than when she saw her slain Adonis fall.

Yet poets are sacred! Simple souls have deemed
That ranked with gods we sons of song may stand,
See one and all by sullen Death blasphemed,
And violated by his shadowy hand!

Little avails it Orpheus that his sire
Was more than man; for though his songs restrain
The wolves of Ismara, his love-lorn lyre
Wails in the wildwood gloom with anguish vain.

Maeonides, from whose exhaustless well
All bards since then some tribute stream derive,—
Him, even him, th' Avernian shades camped;
Only his songs his scattered dust survive

Yet songs endure. Endures the Trojan fame,
And how Penelope's wise nights were passed.
So Nemesis and Delia have a name,—
A poet's earliest passion and his last.

Live piously! Build shrines! Revere the skies!
Death, from the temple, thrusts thee to the tomb
Or sing divinely! Lo, Tibullus dies!
One scanty urn gives all his ashes room.

Could not that laurelled head the flames restrain?
How dared they that inspired breast explore?
Rather they should have burned some golden fane
Of gods,—of gods who this last insult bore!

Yet 'tis my faith the Queen of Love the while,
Whose altars crown the bright, voluptuous steep
Of Eryx, at that sight did lose her smile;
Oh! I believe sweet Venus deigned to weep!

But he had feared worse deaths: for now he lies
Not on Phaeacia's strand in grave unknown;
His own dear mother closed his fading eyes,
And brought her prayers to bless his votive stone.

Thither drew near in mournful disarray
His sister pale, her mother's grief to share:
Thither no less, their rival tears to pay,
His Nemesis and Delia, fond and fair.

There Delia murmured, "In such love as thine
I was too happy; thou, supremely blest,"
Rut Nemesis: "Nay, nay! The loss is mine;
By mine alone his dying hand was pressed."

If after death, we haply may retain
More of true being than a name and shade,
Tibullus now the bright Elysian plain
Doth enter, and hears stir of welcome made.

With ivy garlands on his fadeless brow,
Catullus hails his peer in perfect rhyme;
Comes Calvus, too; and slandered Gallus! thou,—
Not guilty, save if wasted love be crime!

Such comrades now attend thy happy shade,—
If shade in truth to our frail flesh belong:
Th' Elysian company is larger made
By thee, Tibullus, skilled in noble song!

May thy bones rest in peace! is my fond prayer:
Safe and inviolate thine urn shall be.
Be changeless peace on thy loved relies there!
And light the hallowed earth that shelters thee!