# Lament IV

Jan Kochanowski

> Utwór opracowany został w ramach projektu Wolne Lektury przez fundację Wolne Lektury.

Thou hast constrained mine eyes, unholy Death,
To watch my dear child breathe her dying breath:
To watch thee shake the fruit unripe and clinging
While fear and grief her parents' hearts were wringing.
Ah, never, never could my well-loved child
Have died and left her father reconciled:
Never but with a heart like heavy lead
Could I have watched her go, abandonèd.
And yet at no time could her death have brought
More cruel ache than now, nor bitterer thought;
For had God granted to her ample days
I might have walked with her down flowered ways
And left this life at last, content, descending
To realms of dark Persephone[1], the all-ending,
Without such grievous sorrow in my heart,
Of which earth holdeth not the counterpart.
I marvel not that Niobe[2], alone
Amid her dear, dead children, turned to stone.

Persephone — Greek goddes of vegetation, daughter of Demeter and Zeus, abducted by Hades, god of underworld; her Roman counterpart is Proserpine. [przypis edytorski]

Niobe — a figure from Greek mythology, daughter of Tantalus, turned into stone by grief after death of her 14 children, inflicted by Olympic gods. [przypis edytorski]