Explore "Thomas Trebelyan" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys, / Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain / For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela, / The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne, / And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing / Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale, / Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow!
Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone, / Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom, / Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, / A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul!
How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!
The thurible opening when I had lived and learned / How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us, / Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh;
And all of us change to singers, although it be / But once in our lives, or change -- alas! -- to swallows, / To twitter amid cold winds and falling leaves!