After the ashes of the fatherland and the fallen heights of relatives,
that the Thuringian land bore from the hostile sword,
if I spoke of wars of wars lived through in unfortunate strife,
to what tears should I, a captured woman, be drawn first?
What remains for me to weep? This people pressed by death
or the sweet race family ruined by various vicissitudes?
For the father falling first, the uncle following him
each relative fixed a sad wound in me.
A last brother remained, but by execrable fate
the sand pressed me equally to his tomb.
With all those extinct (alas the rough guts of the one grieving!)
you who were the one left, Hamalafred, you lie dead.
Do I Radegund seek such after long times?
that your page brought this to speak to the sad one?
I waited so long for such a gift from my loving one
and you send me this act of your military service?
You direct these silken sheepskins to me now to my thought
so that, while I draw threads, I the sister have communication with love?
Did your care thus counsel powerful grief?
Did the first and last messenger give this?
Did we rush elsewhere with ample tears in our desires?
It was not for the one desiring to be given bitter sweets.
I am twisted by solicitous sense, anxious in my bosom:
is such fever of the spirit healed by these waters?
I did not deserve to see him alive nor to be at his burial,
I am pierced by your funeral rites with higher losses.
Why do I yet remind you of these things, dear surrogate-son Artachis,
to add with my weepings to what you must weep?
I ought rather to bring solace to my relative,
but sorrow for the dead compels me to speak bitter things.
He was not close to me from distant consanguinity,
but was a near relative from the brother of my father.
For Bertharius was my father, Hermenedfred was his:
we were born from brothers, but we are not in the same world.
Or you, dear nephew, give me back the peaceful close relation
and be mine in love what he was before,
and I ask that you often seek me with messages to the monastery
and that that place be your help with God,
that with your pious mother this perennial care
may give you back honor on the starry throne.
Now may the lord give you both to be happy in
broad present health and future salvation.