Poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Andromeda

The smooth-worn coin and threadbare classic phrase
Of Grecian myths that did beguile my youth,
Beguile me not as in the olden days:
I think more grief and beauty dwell with truth.
Andromeda, in fetters by the sea,
Star-pale with anguish till young Perseus came,
Less moves me with her suffering than she,
The slim girl figure fettered to dark shame,
That nightly haunts the park, there, like a shade,
Trailing her wretchedness from street to street.
See where she passes -- neither wife nor maid;
How all mere fiction crumbles at her feet!
Here is woe's self, and not the mask of woe:
A legend's shadow shall not move you so!

1. Sestet
2. On Reading William Watson's Sonnet Entitled The Purple East
3. Kriss Kringle
4. Song from the Persian
5. Hesperides

Gerard Hopkins Andromeda ("Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude")

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