Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fair Love, by spoiling strangers torn
From thine Hellenic home,
For ever wingless left to mourn
In this high place of Rome;

O Love, to me who love thee well,
Who fain would hear and mark,
The secret of thy sorrow tell,
And why thy brows are dark.

It is not for thy vanished wings,
Thou madest no more mirth
Amid thine Hellas' lovely things,
In the sweet spring of earth.

And still sweet airs of Athens flow
From marble tresses shed;
The old Ionian glories glow,
O Love, around thy head.

The little Love who smiles below,
Thy loveliest brother boy,
Knows no such spell to loose his bow,
No care to cloud his joy.

He bends to string his bending bow
In playful haste to harm;
Two thousand years that come and go
Have spared his childish charm.

But thou hast caught a deeper care;
His smile is not for thee;
Thou canst not all so lightly wear
Thine immortality.

O is it that thy spirit knew
Its solitary fate,
That, whatsoe'er of beauty grew,
Thou might'st not find thy mate?

Or is it that thy thoughts had range
O'er the sad years to come,
Of beauty suffering envious change,
Of music marred and dumb,

Of other gods and other lords
Than thine and thee aware,
Of struggling shapes and fiery swords
Vexing thy quiet air?

Ah, not to men who round thee rove
Thy secret wilt thou tell:
Thus then, O fairest, noblest Love,
O saddest Love, farewell.

Yet if some pang of stifled pain
Move thee from mystery,
In a dim dream returned again
Murmur a word to me.

So I might rise and speak it then
In understanding ears,
That word might stir in hearts of men
The inmost springs of tears.