'go tell it' (Fr 1584)
By Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
To whom - is specified -
Not murmur - not endearment -
But simply - we - obeyed -
Obeyed - a Lure - a Longing?
Oh Nature - none of this -
To Law - said sweet Thermopylae
I give my dying Kiss -
Fr 1584 alludes to the inscribed epitaph — the lines attributed to the poet Simonides — laid on the burial mound, and spot of the final deaths, of the Spartan hoplites who fought the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae (Herodotus, 288):
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their law, we lie.”
Image:
Pato Bosich
the return of the hero
2019
Oil paint, silver leaf, adhesive, on printed paper
From the series 'The Dying Pythia'