Catullus's Farewell to the Ashes of his Brother - and Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain".

Perhaps it's a sign of getting old that I find myself returning to the pleasures and passions of my youth: poetry, mediaeval music, jazz, blues, and alcohol.

The following is just another old favourite of mine, which I intend to try to translate, perhaps as a sonnet:


Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
Avdenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias
Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
Tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

And here is 'Love in Vain', by Robert Johnson, the great blues singer and guitarist, who died in 1937. Much of its beauty, as with Greek poetry, lies in what it leaves out.

I followed her to the station, with my suitcase in my hand.
Oh it's hard to tell - it's hard to tell when all your love's in vain

When the train came into the station, I looked her in the eye.
I was lonesome, oh so lonesome, I could not help but cry.

When the train it left the station, with two lights on behind,
Oh the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my  mind.