Classic Poem

The moonlight lay like hoar frost on the earth
Outside. But, all within, the marble hearth
Made from its dropping logs of scented wood
A rosy dimness of warm light, to flood
With fervid interchange of gloom and gleam
That gorgeous chamber,—from the mad moonbeam
Curtain'd secure. No other light was there.
The outer halls were silent everywhere.
Midnight. And in the bed where he was born,
I' the Porphyry Chamber at Byzance, outworn
By seventeen years of pleasure without joy,
Not yet a man, albeit no more a boy,
His flusht cheek heavy on the fragrant sheet,
Slept Constantine the Porphyrogenete;
When glided in his mother leonine,