Classic Poem

What bounds can our regret confine,
Quinctilius, for a death like thine?
Muse of the elegiac strain
Ah teach our sorrow to complain!
Has then Quinctilius sunk to rest
By death's unending sleep opprest?
So pure, so incorrupt a mind,
Alas how seldom shall we find!
How very few can earth now boast
Of equal worth to him we've lost?
How dear he was—the gen'ral woe,
And chiefly yours, my Virgil, show;
By none, while living, lov'd so well,
By none he more lamented fell.
In vain you piously complain;
The tear of sorrow flows in vain:
By nature's law his life he ow'd;
Heav'n but resumes what it bestow'd;
Can grief the lifeless shade restore,
Or bring him from the fatal shore?
Then, let us patiently endure
The ill our sorrows cannot cure.