How can I loose thy sight?
How can my eyes turn where my feet must go,
Trailing their way in woe?
Gone is my strength of heart;
The roses that I brought
From thy dear bowers, and thought
To keep, since we must part—
Thy thornless roses, sweeter until now,
Than round Hymettus' brow.
The golden-vested bees
Find sweetest sweetness in—
Such odors dwelt within
The moist red hearts of these—
Alas, no longer give out blissful breath,
But odors rank with death.
Their dewiness is dank;
It chills my pallid arms,
Once blushing 'neath their charms;
And their green stems hang lank,
Stricken with leprosy, and fair no more,
But withered to the core.
Vain thought! to bear along,
Into this torrid track,
Whence no one turneth back
With his first wanderer's song
Yet on his lips, thy odors and thy dews,
To deck these dwarfed yews.
No more within thy vales,
Beside thy plashing wells,
Where sweet Euterpe dwells
With songs of nightingales,
And sounds of flutes that make pale Silence glow,
Shall I their rapture know.
