UPON your face, with all its youthful glory, The mould of beauty with no base alloy, Mournful I read your life's pathetic story, Oh, blithe Bithynian boy! How down your wood-ways green and meadows bloomy Buoyant you roved through dreamy days and long, And deeming naught within the world was gloomy, Gave the gods praise and song; Knelt, with your soft cheeks glowing, to Apollo, Hung garlands fair where Venus was enshrined, Heard dryad-voices from the tree-trunks hollow, Faun-laughters on the wind. How the proud Caesar came and you departed, Braving the reaches of the barren foam To follow him, capricious, myriad-hearted, Unto all-conquering Rome; How by the Tiber, in the sunlight golden, While round you frowned the Olympians, now disowned, You pondered deep o'er many a volume olden Of cruel creeds dethroned; How, when encamped on fiery sands Egyptian, You, seeking truth beneath their gods' dark brows, Were lured to death by some priest-wrought inscription, Believing in their vows; I seem to see, clear-limned as with a stylus, The last sad scene, your pitiful despair, -- The slow and somber flow of haunted Nilus Drowning your parting prayer. Thus in the loyal hope of fate forfending From him whose guerdon was the end of joy, You brought your life to sacrificial ending, Oh, blithe Bithynian boy! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO MARY CHURCH TERRELL - LECTURER by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON FIRST BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 17. SIC TRANSIT by THOMAS CAMPION LACK OF STEADFASTNESS; BALLAD by GEOFFREY CHAUCER TO THE THAWING WIND by ROBERT FROST ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT, DROWNED IN A TUB by THOMAS GRAY TIRED MOTHERS by MAY LOUISE RILEY SMITH THE GRAVE OF HOMER by ALCAEUS OF MESSENE BLOUDIE JACKE OF SHREWSBERRIE; THE SHROPSHIRE BLUEBEARD by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM |