Vintage Thursday

... the tremendous bird
Now slanting swoops toward them, hovering
Over the fair boy smitting dumb with awe.
A moment more, and how no mortal knows,
The bird hath seized him, if it be a bird,
So lightly lovingly those eagle talons
Lock the soft yielding flesh of either flank,
His back so tender, thigh and shoulder pillowed
How warmly whitely in the tawny down
Of that imperial eagle amorous!


We rush through the water, we scatter the spray,
The foam-bubbles leap in the blue light away.
Old dotards may mumble their winterly talk,
But the young joy of living their age may not baulk.
Never fear, never fear, nestle closer to me,
Owe to joy to bound over wild waves and be free!


Nay, we may never more climb waves together
In bounding boats, nor ply the limber oar
Among those bounding billows; but I roam
Heart-wounded in chill twilight by the shore,
Like him of old of whom blind Homer sang,
How, reft of one he loved, disconsolate,
He went in silence by the sounding sea:
I hear that rhythmic breathing of the sea
And evermore the surge repeats thy name.
Even so Achilles mourned his friend Patroclus,
So Alexander wept Hephaestion.