Close to fifty different volumes of memorial writing --including elegies,
epicedia, epitaphs, emblems, impresa, devices, meditations, sermons--were occasioned by Henry's death, many of those volumes being, in fact, anthologies representing the poetical offerings of dozens of men in all the learned languages, both ancient and modern.
The table of contents shows a typological order in the contributions (Elegien, Monobiblos,
Epicedia, Satire, Lateinische und Volkssprachliche Dichtung, Spatere Lyrik, Lehrepos, Tragodie), but there are also thematic lines to be discerned.
In these
epicedia, I am at one with Gary Snyder, who in his Turtle Island wrote: "I am a poet who has preferred not to distinguish in poetry between nature and humanity." In this book, human history and natural history are not separate disciplines: humans and animals share a common and interactive history.