Classic Poem

Toward Themiscyra which in dire despair
Has shaken all day with clash of horsemen dread,
Dark, doleful, slow, Thermodon bears the dead,
The arms, the chariots, no more to dare.

Philippis, Phœbe, Marpe, Aella, where?
Hippolyté and Asteria who led
The royal host to slaughter's gory bed?
Their pale, disheveled bodies now lie there.

Such giant lily bloom is here laid low,
High-heaped the warriors all the shores bestrow,
Where madly neighs at times some struggling horse;

And the Euxine sees at dawn far up the flood
Ensanguined, from its mouth unto its source,
White stallions flying red with virgins' blood.