My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend’s remembered tones.
Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away;
All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them, is because they die.
William (Johnson) Cory (1823-1892).
Mimnermus was a fine Greek elegiac poet—about 630-600 B.C.