Eight Harvard Poets/Elegy for Antinous

ELEGY FOR ANTINOUS

COME, let us hasten hence and weep no more,
The sinking sea flows on its tranquil ways,
Night looms serenely at the eastern door
And trails the last cloud into lifeless haze.
Antinous is dead, we kneel before
The portals of our past in vain, nor raise
The laughing phantoms of our yesterdays
Upon this desolate and empty shore.

Now deepening pools of shadow overflow
Into the sea of dark; a far-off bell
Sobs with a sweet vibration long and slow
A last farewell, forevermore, farewell;
And will He wake and hear? We cannot tell;
And will He answer? Ah, we do not know.