| YE gods that have a home beyond the world, | |
| Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony, | |
| Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— | |
| Look with a just regard, | |
| And with an even grace, | 5 |
| Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, | |
| Here on a suffering world where men grow old | |
| And wander like sad shadows till, at last, | |
| Out of the flare of life, | |
| Out of the whirl of years, | 10 |
| Into the mist they go, | |
| Into the mist of death. | |
| |
| O shades of you that loved him long before | |
| The cruel threads of that black sail were spun, | |
| May loyal arms and ancient welcomings | 15 |
| Receive him once again | |
| Who now no longer moves | |
| Here in this flickering dance of changing days, | |
| Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath, | |
| And the black master Death is over all | 20 |
| To chill with his approach, | |
| To level with his touch, | |
| The reigning strength of youth, | |
| The fluttered heart of age. | |
| |
| Woe for the fateful day when Delphi’s word was lost— | 25 |
| Woe for the loveless prince of Æthra’s line! | |
| Woe for a father’s tears and the curse of a king’s release— | |
| Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom! | |
| And thou, the saddest wind | |
| That ever blew from Crete, | 30 |
| Sing the fell tidings back to that thrice unhappy ship!— | |
| Sing to the western flame, | |
| Sing to the dying foam. | |
| A dirge for the sundered years and a dirge for the years to be! | |
| |
| Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day, | 35 |
| Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star, | |
| Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky, | |
| To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore:— | |
| Whether or not there fell | |
| To the touch of an alien hand | 40 |
| The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem, | |
| Better his end had been | |
| To die as an old man dies,— | |
| But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown is ever a crown. | |
