The Gates of Time and Other Poems

by Frederick George Scott

 

TO A GREEK STATUE

Found in Herculaneum

 
What eyes have worshipped thee, O passionless
Cold stone, thou darling beauty of dead men
And buried worlds! What hearts in those days when
Beauty was god have longed for thy caress,
As, mid voluptuous feast and wild excess,
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They saw the dawn-light of the Eastern skies
Crimson that brow and kindle in those eyes,
And felt their glutted passion’s emptiness.
And still thou mockest us, O cruel stone,
And still thine eyes are gazing far away,
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Drawing out man’s love that loves thee in all vain.
Yea, to all time, thy beauteous white lips say,
“Love’s deepest yearnings leave man most alone,
And in man’s deepest pleasure there is pain.”