
“Sweet semblance of the children who have forsaken me, Archemorus, solace of my lost estate and country, pride of my servitude, what guilty gods took your life, my joy, whom but now in parting I left at play, crushing the grasses as you hastened in your forward crawl? Ah, where is your starry face? Where your words unfinished in constricted sounds, and laughs and gurgles that only I could understand? How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe!”
O mihi desertae natorum dulcis imago,
Archemore, o rerum et patriae solamen ademptae
seruitiique decus, qui te, mea gaudia, sontes
extinxere dei, modo quem digressa reliqui
lascivum et prono uexantem gramina cursu?
heu ubi siderei vultus? ubi verba ligatis
imperfecta sonis risusque et murmura soli
intellecta mihi? quotiens tibi Lemnon et Argo
sueta loqui et longa somnum suadere querela!
Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 608