ŷ������

I confess that upon first encountering this volume I only thought the smaller fragments little nothings:


82

Rich as you are

Death will finish
you: afterwards no
one will remember

or want you: you
had no share in
the Pierian roses

You will flitter
invisible among
the indistinct dead
in Hell’s palace
darting fitfully


(Barnard’s note reads: “Stobaeus, anthologist. E(dmonds) 71. Plutarch tells us that this fragment was written to a “wealthy woman�� of “no refinement or learning.�� My text, from Quasimodo, 58.��)


A.S. Kline translates the same fragment:

And when you are gone there will be no memory
Of you and no regret. For you do not share
The Pierian roses, but unseen in the house of Hades
You will stray, breathed out, among the ghostly dead.


Thomas Wentworth Higginson (the muse of sorts to Emily Dickinson) gives this:

Dying she reposes;
Oblivion grasps her now;
Since never Pierian roses
Were wreathed round her empty brow;
She goeth unwept and lonely
To Hades' dusky homes,
And bodiless shadows only
Bid her welcome as she comes.



Still so the shade flickers.