There is no attempt in this wild lament to soften or mitigate the horrors of a violent death by throwing around it a halo of heroism and glory. The woman cares not what prodigies of valor her lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will. Compare with this the following lament of a Lesghian woman over the body of her dead husband: I would stand on the shore of the green ocean if I only knew That I should see the diamond which has fallen into its surges: I would climb to the lonely summit of the highest mountain if I only knew That I should find a spring flower blossoming in the blue ice. If one look carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen into the ocean, But never again shall I see the life which has gone: If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in the blue ice, But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown away. Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world, And in a world which has no longer a heaven. There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense of bereavement, I do not know.