Louis Dyer (1851–1908)

Who Had Been an Actor in the Greek Play at Harvard College
Sent with Thackeray’s Anthologia Græca

A JOYOUS mourner clad in glistening white,

Thee I beheld with suppliant’s olive bough

And bound the fillet on thy youthful brow:

Walking before them, thou didst all delight.

Alas! thy slender youth shone there too bright,

Nor would for Thebes the Gods thy grief allow,

But sorrows of thine own they send thee now

And dim with flowing tears thy peaceful sight.

I bade thee feign that look of Theban woe,

Who, powerless now, would fain forbid this grief;

For in the sober depths of thy pure eyes

I seem to know a look that ever tries—

Feigning an unfelt joy—to gain relief

From pains which stricken souls alone can know.