Classic Poem

RECOVERED FROM THE SEA NEAR MAHDIA IN 1904

Beautiful bronze boy, wing
Of the golden age in flower
With the bloom of an Asian spring, —
Sheathless beauty and power;
Life in its delicate fuse
Of first thought, first desire, —
Of Meleager's muse
The radiance and the fire!

Thy loveliness disdained
A rude barbarian fate;
No Christian touch profaned
Thy form inviolate;
But plunged in ocean-peace
The blue waves did thee cover;
A score of centuries
Thou hadst the sea for lover.
Late thence emerging now
Into the gray light wan,
Thou bringest the youthful brow
The world's dawn rests upon.
Strange is the sight, forlorn
The heart with the sense thereof,
Beautiful boy, reborn
Of the waves for our worship and love.