Niobe and the poets

This pensive tomb within no dead contains,

This pensive corpse without untomb'd remains;

For, by a strange result of fate's decree,

At once th'unburied dead and tomb you see.

~~~

The gods to stone transform'd me; but, again,

I from Praxiteles new life obtain.

Greek epigrams found in The first twenty-eight Odes of Anacreon: in Greek and in English, John B. Roche, 1827, p. 155

O Niobe, con che occhi dolenti

vedea io te segnata in su la strada,

tra sette e sette tuoi figiuoli spenti!

O Niobe, what tears afflicted me

when, on that path, I saw your effigy

among your slaughtered children, seven and seven!

Mandelbaum translation of Dante, Purgatorio XII.17-19

Dying Niobid, Horti Sallustiani

Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules:

Hamlet I.2

By children's births, and death, I am become

So dry, that I am now mine own sad tomb.

John Donne

Thanks to Jutta for this addition:

Oh Rome! my Country! City of the Soul!

The Orphans of the Heart must turn to thee, 695

Lone Mother of dead Empires! and controul

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see

The Cypress, Hear the Owl, and plod your way

O’er steps of broken thrones and temples – Ye! 700

Whose agonies are evils of a day –

A World is at our feet as fragile as our Clay.

The Niobe of Nations! there She stands,

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

An empty Urn within her withered hands, 705

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;

The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now;

The very Sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 710

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

Lord Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV.78-79