C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Epitaphs

From a careful study of Simonides by John Sterling (Westminster Review, 1838)

A POOR man, not a Crœsus, here lies dead,

And small the sepulchre befitting me:

Gorgippus I, who knew no marriage-bed

Before I wedded pale Persephone.

THOU liest, O Clisthenes, in foreign earth,

Whom wandering o’er the Euxine destiny found:

Thou couldst not reach thy happy place of birth,

Nor seest the waves that gird thy Chios round.

YOUNG GORGO dying to her mother said,

While clinging on her bosom wept the maid,

“Beside my father stay thou here, and bear

A happier daughter for thine age to care.”

AH! sore disease, to men why enviest thou

Their prime of years before they join the dead?—

His life from fair Timarchus snatching now,

Before the youth his maiden bride could wed.