...Why silence the deepest grief of a brother’s murder?

How innocence fell into the wicked ambush.

Ah, trusting the enemy, he was taken from the world.

Oh memory of the tomb that renews my sorrow,

Suffering once again, as I speak through tears.

Hurrying and eager to see you again,

His wish was thwarted, blocked by my love.

In trying to spare me, he wounded himself.

The harm he feared has caused this pain...

I, his sister, absent, did not see his awful end.

I lost even the chance to piously close his eyes,

To say over his body a final word;

Wept his cold, not warm, entrails.

My kiss was kept from his dying flesh.

In my misery, I could not clasp him close and weep

Nor warm his hapless body at my breast.

Life was denied him. Why should the brother’s,

Not the sister’s, breath leave the mouth?

Fringes I made while he lived now suit his coffin

But no longer may serve as ornament.

Believe me impious; I stand accused, my brother:

You died alone, without a grave.

Having left my country once, I am twice captive

And the enemy again has taken my brother, laid low.

And so the grief returns for father and mother, uncle and kin,

Whom I mourn in their graves.

Since my brother’s death, not a day has passed without tears.

He took our joys with him to the land of the dead...

From “The Fall of Thuringia”
Radegund/Fortunatus

Grief -->