[Allen Tice]

The Anthology often makes the hair on my arms arise, even the possible (probable) fakes, such as this, said (in the Anthology, which is plagued by respectful linguistically anachronistic forgeries) to be by Sappho. Here is Rexroth's matte version :

      This is the dust of Timas
      Who went unmarried to the dark
      Bedroom of Persephone. And
      For her death all her girl friends cut
      Their lovely hair with bright sharp bronze.

and a more accurate one by Willis Barnstone (1965) :

      Here is the dust of Timas who unmarried
      was led into Persephone's dark bedroom,
      and when she died her girlfriends took sharp
      iron knives and cut off their soft hair.


Ronsard ...


Then there's Housman, especially the later Housman :

XXXVII - EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES.

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when Earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.




                                                       Oof...!

XXVI

The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.



XV - EIGHT O'CLOCK

He stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.



               And also Sellar, W.C and Yeatman, R.J. ('1066, and all that') :


Old-Saxon Fragment

Syng a song of Saxons
In the Wapentake of Rye
Four and twenty eaoldormen
Too eaold to die....


Thisbe threade darngudthing!