5 Quotes by Kallimachos

Passerby, do not wish me well with your sour heart.Go away. And I shall be well by your being gone.

Here Philippos the father buried his son Nikoteles,a child of twelve and his dearest hope.

Who are you, O shipwrecked stranger?Leontichos found your corpse on the beach,buried you in this graveand cried thinking of his own hazardous life.For he knows no rest:he too roams over the sea like a gull.

They brought me word of your death,Heraklieitos, and I wept for youremembering how often we watched the sunsetting as we talked.Dear Halikarnassian friend,you lie elsewhere nowand are mere ashes;yet your songs—your nightingales—will live,and never will the underworld,destroying everything,touch them with its deadly hand.

When I heard you were dead, Heraclitus,tears came, and I remembered how often you and I had talked the sun to bed.Long ago you turned to ashes, my Halicarnassian friend,but your poems, your Nightingales, still live.Hades clutches all things yet can't touch these.