The book of the homeless Author:Edith Wharton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IIs n 'attendaient plus rien de la tendresse humaine Et cherchaient a chasser d'un effort douloureux L'Ange noir qui se couche a plat ventre sur eux Et qui les c... more »onsidere avant qu'il les emmene. Jean Cocteau HOW THE YOUNG MEN DIED IN HELLAS A FRAGMENT [translation] Antigone went wailing to the dust. She reverenced not the face of Death like these To whom it came as no enfeebling peace But a command relentless and august. These grieved not at the beauty of the morn, Nor that the sun was on the ripening flower; Smiling they faced the sacrificial hour, Blithe nightingales against the fatal thorn. They grieved not that their feet no more should rove The Athenian porticoes in twilight leisure, Where Pallas, drunk with summer's gold and azure, Brooded above the fountains like a dove. They grieved not for the theatre's high-banked tiers, Where restlessly the noisy crowd leans over, With laughter and with jostling, to discover The blue and green of chaffing charioteers. C D Nor for the fluted shafts, the carven stones Of that sole city, bright above the seas, Where young men met to talk with Socrates Or toss the ivory bones. Their eyes were lit with tumult and with risk, But when they felt Death touch their hands and pass They followed, dropping on the garden grass The parchment and the disk. It seemed no wrong to them that they must go. They laid their lives down as the poet lays On the white page the poem that shall praise His memory when the hand that wrote is low. Erect they stood and, festally arrayed, Serenely waited the transforming hour, Softly as Hyacinth slid from youth to flower, Or the shade of Cyparis to a cypress shade. They wept not for the lost Ionian days, Nor liberty, nor household love and laughter, Nor the long leaden s...« less