Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CRETAN IDYL, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CRETAN IDYL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ah, see the grasshoppers, flame-colored, beautiful
Last Line: Flashing their flame-colored wings.
Subject(s): Crete


Ah, see the grasshoppers, flame-colored, beautiful,
Singing and flying in the harsh sunlight,
On the heights of Phaestos, Phaestos trembling with sun.
Hear the click of their wings, flame-colored,
And watch them swarming and singing
Where once the high-built palace towered and sang,
Where now the rubble whitens in glare.
The dark blue sea is yonder
With mints and thyme and grasses,
And yonder down in the valley
The plane trees pool their shadow,
And the olives sprinkle a shifting lace,
And the cypresses too like silence
Lay a finger of shade.
Surely if I had wings,
I should go slithering down
Where the rose-laurels wade in the pasture,
Their perfume hazy about them,
Heavy with bloom and drowsy,
Too beautiful, ah, to think of.
Why are they crowding here,
Shutting, unshutting their wings,
Here on the shadowless cliff-top
Where only the thistle is thriving,
Blue through all of its body,
Hot blue like a twist of the sky?
The thistles, the parched pale grasses,
These and the dead acanthus,
These are all that remain
Of the garlands and wreaths of Phaestos,
On the shattered tomb of Phaestos,
Why are they here with their singing
And not on the steep of Ida
Where chalk-marks of snow attest
The infinite ravage of summer?
Ah, these are the people of Minos,
The beautiful flame-colored Cretans of old,
Who sang through the palace and danced in the daedal days,

In the delicate days before Troy.
And now they cry through the palace,
Drunk with the harsh desolation,
Mad with the terrible sunlight,
Calling for Minos the king,
Calling for sweet Ariadne,
In the empty desolate sunlight,
Flashing their flame-colored wings.





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