by Coleridge · Cluster: Mortality · Grave · Memento Mori
Abstract
Mock-epitaph epigrams (after Lessing) on a nonentity (‘Cypher’) reduced to dust and a miser (‘Avaro’) whose soul rots in the grave.
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori Motifs: Dust, Grave Themes & Concepts: Grotesque, Money and Avarice, Economics Forms & Genres: Epigram
Testo integrale / Full text
No doleful faces here, no sighing —
Here rots a thing that won by dying:
‘Tis Cypher lies beneath this crust —
Whom Death created into dust.
1799. First published from an MS. in 1893. The two last lines were
printed for the first time in 1834. Adapted from Lessing’s Sinngedicht
No. 52. Grabschrift des Nitulus.
‘Hier modert Nitulus, jungfräuliches Gesichts,
Der durch den Tod gewann: er wurde Staub aus Nichts.’
There comes from old Avaro’s grave
A deadly stench — why, sure they have
Immured his soul within his grave?
1799. First published in Keepsake, 1829, p. 122. Included in Lit.
Rem., i. 46. Adapted from Lessing’s Sinngedicht No. 27. Auf Lukrins
Grab. ‘Welch tötender Gestank hier, wo Lukrin begraben.’