A LAMENT FOR ADONIS.
FROM THE GREEK OF BION.
I.
I MOURN for Adonis—Adonis is dead!
Fair Adonis is dead, and the Loves are lamenting.
Sleep, Cypris, no more, on thy purple strewed bed;
Arise, wretch stoled in black,—beat thy breast unrelenting,
And shriek to the worlds, "Fair Adonis is dead."
II.
I mourn for Adonis—the Loves are lamenting.
He lies on the hills, in his beauty and death,—
The white tusk of a boar has transpierced his white thigh;
And his Cypris grows mad at the thin gasping breath,
While the black blood drips down on the pale ivory:
And his eye-balls lie quenched with the weight of his brows.
The rose fades from his lips, and, upon them just parted,
The kiss dies which Cypris consents not to lose,
Though the kiss of the Dead cannot make her glad-hearted —
He knows not who kisses him dead in the dews.
