This song cycle consists of three texts of ancient city laments and one meditation, all translated into English. In the first song, Fragment from a Prayer for the City of Ur, there are words missing from the text due to damage to the cuneiform tablets they were found on. The text used in the songs are below.
I. Fragment from A Prayer for the City of Ur
Text from Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, trans. George A. Barton
Thy temples are destroyed like a jar that is smashed.
Thy city, the second which thou foundest, is struck down; it cries out.
Thy house weeps; O speak, lift it up!
Like thy city it is overthrown.
Thy city, the dwelling of its lady, didst thou establish;
let it not be moved!
Thy dwelling, the yoke of the abyss, thou didst establish
As a plant protected of Ninmul, the lady;
The. . . thou didst found.
Its lady as protectress entered.
On her weeping thou thinkest; thy anger is unfavorable!
Heartfelt tears flow; they are not checked; they fall.
She cries before thee with thoughts,
A loud voice she lifts up:
“Unto thy city give rest; it is caught’’ she cries.
Thy house . . .verily is shattered like thy. . . . it is smashed.
Ur was founded, it was established;
Like a .... it is caught, it cries out.
Its ruin verily abounds; for thee it abounds;
Thy heart . . .is broken;
II. Lament for Corinth
Text by Antipater of Sidon, trans. W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology
Where is thy celebrated beauty, Doric Corinth?
Where are the battlements of thy towers and thy ancient possessions?
Where are the temples of the immortals, the houses and the matrons of the town of Sisyphus, and her myriads of people?
Not even a trace is left of thee, most unhappy of towns, but war has seized on and devoured everything.
We alone, the Nereids, Ocean's daughters, remain inviolate, and lament, like halcyons, thy sorrows.
III. Lament for Jerusalem
Text ascribed to Jeremiah, Bible, King James Version
Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.
Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.
We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.
Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.
We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.
Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.
We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.
Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.
Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.
They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.
The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.
The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!
For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.
Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.
Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.
Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?
Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.
But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.
IV. Meditation
Text by Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Jeremy Collier
It will not be long before you will have forgotten
all the world, and in a little time all the world
will forget you too.
