Meditation on a Bone

A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow.

Words scored upon a bone,

Scratched in despair or rage —

Nine hundred years have gone;

Now, in another age,

They burn with passion on

A scholar’s tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen

And turns the bone about,

And writes those words again.

Once more they seethe and shout

And through a human brain

Undying hate rings out.

“I loved her when a maid;

I loathe and love the wife

That warms another’s bed:

Let him beware his life!”

The scholar’s hand is stayed;

His pen becomes a knife

To grave in living bone

The fierce archaic cry.

He sits and reads his own

Dull sum of misery.

A thousand years have flown

Before that ink is dry.

And, in a foreign tongue,

A man, who is not he,

Reads and his heart is wrung

This ancient grief to see,

And thinks: When I am dung,

What bone shall speak for me?

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Poems in English 

• The Methodist by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Death of Nicou by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Copernican System by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Advice by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Song from Aella by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Sly Dick by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Narva and Mored by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Heccar and Gaira by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• February by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Eclogues by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Colin Instructed by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• An Excelente Balade of Charitie: As Wroten bie the Gode Pri by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• A New Song by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• A Hymn for Christmas Day by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Spring by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• The Primrose by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Murdering Beauty by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Mediocrity in love rejected. by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song: Eternity of Love Protested by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew

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