While wandering in an abandoned cemetery between Haifa railway and harbour, the only engrave I could read (click the picture to zoom) strongly caught my attention: “Heu Quanto Minus Est Cum Reliquis Versari, Quam Tui Meminisse!”

My poor Latin knowledge made me anyway translate: “How little there is to bury, compared to what you remind me“. That sentence got stuck into my mind and today what a surprise by googling it … it is the title of a sonnet:

The sweetest flower that ever saw the light, The smoothest stream that ever wandered by, The fairest star upon the brow of night, Joying and sparkling from his sphere on high, The softest glances of the stockdove’s eye, The lily pure, the mary–bud gold–bright, The gush of song that floodeth all the sky From the dear flutterer mounted out of sight,– Are not so pleasure–stirring to the thought, Not to the wounded soul so full of balm, As one frail glimpse, by painful straining caught Along the past’s deep mist–enfolded calm, Of that sweet face, not visibly defined, But rising clearly on the inner mind. (Henry Alford, 1810-1871)

Eighty-nine years passed since this stranger baby died, still such a huge pain touched my heart.