Her lily hands she wrings in frantic dread,
While Echo mocks the cadence of her moan;
The very brakes do weep where he hath bled,
And flinty rocks take up her heavy groan.
"O withered bloom!" she cries to heaven’s face,
"That death should banquet on such peerless grace!"
The savage beast, with tusks of ivory gore,
Hath plowed the garden of his damask cheek;
That visage, which the morning did adore,
Is now a ruin, desolate and bleak.
No more shall sunlight dance within those eyes,
Wherein a thousand Cupids found their prize.
She licks the congealed purple from his side,
With sighs that swell like surges of the main;
"Hadst thou but stayed to be thy Goddess’ bride,
Thou hadst not felt this sharp, tusky disdain.
But youth is proud, and beauty is but brief,
A golden premise turned to leaden grief."
From out the earth, whereon his spirit fled,
A spectral flower rears its dappled head;
With streaks of white upon a field of red,
To mark the spot where Adonis lay dead.
She crops the stalk, and hides it in her breast,
To find in scent what she in soul hath lost.
"Long as the world shall spin its weary round,
Shall love be found with jealousy entwined;
It shall be fickle, false, and seldom sound,
A bitter sweet to torture human kind.
It shall be raging fire and freezing snow,
A source of highest joy and deepest woe."
Thus weary of the world’s encroaching night,
She yokes her silver silver-winged team;
To Paphos' groves she takes her lonely flight,
To fade away like some forgotten dream.
The woods are still, the hunter’s horn is hushed,
And all the pride of wanton spring is crushed.
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