Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE LOST HERITAGE, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY Poem Explanation Poet's Biography First Line: Beauty gone, and beauty gone Last Line: And loveliness its toy. Subject(s): Ancestry & Ancestors; Beauty; History; Knowledge; Love; Time; Historians | ||||||||
Beauty gone, and beauty gone, And gallant wisdom lost -- Growns the race so hardly won, Twines of phantom frost! Sappho and Empedocles, Time's kleptomaniac clan Coffers their gold where golden sleep Knossos and Yucatan. Dreams that found their way in stone, Cool mesmerists of peace, Or flushed to plumage in a song, Or crimsoned Parian Greece, Loveliness dissuaded from The locked and stubborn air -- What rifling of the golden urn, Our ransom from despair! Learn again, and lose again, Create, and then destroy -- For knowledge is the race's game And loveliness its toy. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BRITISH COUNTRYSIDE IN PICTURES by JAMES MCMICHAEL THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE by JOHN ASHBERY INITIAL CONDITIONS by MARVIN BELL THE DREAM SONGS: 290 by JOHN BERRYMAN THE EROTICS OF HISTORY by EAVAN BOLAND THEM AND US by LUCILLE CLIFTON OVERTONES by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY |
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