Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/The Thought of Astyanax beside Iülus

by Sarah Piatt

THE THOUGHT OF ASTYANAX BESIDE IÜLUS.⁽²⁾ (AFTER READING VIRGIL'S STORY OF ANDROMACHE IN EXILE.)

Yes, all the doves begin to moan,—
But it is not the doves alone.
Some trouble, that you never heard
In any tree from breath of bird,
That reaches back to Eden lies
Between your wind-flower and my eyes.

I fear it was not well, indeed,
Upon so sad a day to read
So sad a story. But the day
Is full of blossoms, do you say,—
And how the sun does shine? I know.
These things do make it sadder, though.

You'd cry, if you were not a boy,
About this mournful tale of Troy?
Then do not laugh at me, if I—
Who am too old, you know, to cry—
Just hide my face a while from you,
Down here among these drops of dew.

. . . Must I for sorrow look so far?
This baby headed like a star,
Afraid of Hector's horse-hair plume
(His one sweet child, whose bitter doom
So piteous seems—oh, tears and tears!—)
Has he been dust three thousand years?

Yet when I see his mother fold
The pretty cloak she stitched with gold
Around another boy, and say:
"He would be just your age to-day,
With just your hands, your eyes, your hair"—
Her grief is more than I can bear.