Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE LOST HERITAGE, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LOST HERITAGE, by             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.





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