Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON AN ANTIQUE MEDAL, by JOSE-MARIA DE HEREDIA (1842-1905) Poet's Biography First Line: The wine which gave the antique ecstasy Last Line: The immortal beauty of sicilian maids. Subject(s): Arethusa; Beauty; Transience; Impermanence | ||||||||
The wine which gave the antique ecstasy To great Theocritus, in purple gold Still ripens on Mount AEtna; -- none can hold The gracious girls he sang in Sicily! Greek Arethusa, slave or mistress free, Lost the pure profile of ancestral mold, Mixed in her veins of Angevin, proud and bold, And Saracenic, burning furiously. Time goes; all dies; marble itself decays; A shadow Agrigentum! Syracuse Sleeps, still in death, beneath her kind sky's shades; But the hard metal guards through all the days -- Silver grown docile unto love's own use -- The immortal beauty of Sicilian maids. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FROM THE SPANISH by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON CHAMBER MUSIC: 17 by JAMES JOYCE SOUTHERN GOTHIC by DONALD JUSTICE THE BEACH IN AUGUST by WELDON KEES THE MAN SPLITTING WOOD IN THE DAYBREAK by GALWAY KINNELL THE SEEKONK WOODS by GALWAY KINNELL AFTER PETRARCH by JOSE-MARIA DE HEREDIA (1842-1905) |
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