Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/118

THE DEATH OF BRYANT Fell from the bent bow of the answering Sun,

Who cried, "The song is closed, the invocation done!"

But not as for those youths dead ere their prime,

New-entered on their music's high domain,

Then snatched away, did all things sorrow own:

No utterance now like that sad sweetest tone

When Bion died, and the Sicilian rhyme

Bewailed; no sobbing of the reeds that plain

Rehearsing some last moan

Of Lycidas; no strains which skyward swell

For Adonais still, and still for Asphodel!

The Muses wept not for him as for those

Of whom each vanished like a beauteous star

Quenched ere the shining midwatch of the night;

The greenwood Nymphs mourned not his lost delight;

Nor Echo, hidden in the tangled close,

Grieved that she could not mimic him afar.

He ceased not from our sight

Like him who, in the first glad flight of spring,

Fell as an eagle pierced with shafts from his own wing.

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