They told me, Heraclitus...

Grief in translation

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.

There is something haunting and sublime about this translation by William Cory Johnson, a Victorian schoolmaster, of a Greek epigram by Callimachus (3rd cent BC). The original is far less sentimental:

Εἶπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον, ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
    ἤγαγεν. ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν, ἀλλὰ σὺ μέν που,
    ξεῖν᾿ Ἁλικαρνησεῦ, τετράπαλαι σποδιή.
αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀηδόνες, ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων
   ἁρπακτὴς Ἀίδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ.

This might be more directly translated:

Someone mentioned, Herakleitos, you were dead, and tears
  came to my eyes. It  brought to mind the times we two
had seen the sun set on our conversations; ah, but you,
  my friend from Halikarnassos, have been ashes all these years.
Your songs, your nightingales, live on; though greedy Death commands
  that all come to his realm, on these he will not lay his hands.

I thought of these different models of translation when I read the simple Greek funerary dedication on stone (photo at top of page) composed in Greek elegiac verse, dating from the fifth century BC. It might simply be translated:

This memorial, Xenophantos, Sophilos your father made
To remember you who've perished: him your death in grief has laid.

--Inscribed by Aristocles--

σε͂μα τόδε, Χσενόφαντε, πατέρ σοι θε͂κε θανόντι      
    Σόφιλος, οἷ πένθος θε͂κας ἀποφθίμενος.                      
                  Ἀριστοκλε͂ς ἐποίεσεν.

If we were to apply the Cory Johnson treatment it could be made yet more sentimental - perhaps more appropriately in this case, and preserving the repetition (θε͂κε/θε͂κας in  Greek) of 'laid':

For you, my Xenophantos, your father laid this here,
A stone of dedication to honour you, my dear:
Since you have passed, and laid on me a bitter grief thereby,
For you are gone away from us, and now in death you lie.