Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn

by Lafcadio Hearn

I shall not tread thy battlefield,

Nor see the blazon on thy shield;

Take thou the sword I could not wield,

And leave me, and forget.

Be fairer, braver, more admired;

So win what feeble hearts desired;

Then leave thine arms, when thou art tired,

To some one nobler yet.

How beautiful this is, and how profoundly sad!

I shall return to the personal poetry of Cory later on, but I want now to give you some examples of his Greek work. Perhaps the best of this is little more than a rendering of Greek into English; some of the work is pure translation. But it is the translation of a very great master, the perfect rendering of Greek feeling as well as of Greek thought. Here is an example of pure translation: