My father's dear friend David Lane passed away on Saturday 17th October 2015 exactly a month after his own passing. So many times these two friends of almost 70 years did indeed "tire the sun with talking and send him down the sky". May they both rest in peace.
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
William Johnson Cory’s translation of the epitaph Callimachus wrote for his friend Heraclitus who died ca260BC (not the pre-Socratic Heraclitus)
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
William Johnson Cory’s translation of the epitaph Callimachus wrote for his friend Heraclitus who died ca260BC (not the pre-Socratic Heraclitus)