Love's worshippers alone can know <br />The thousand mysteries that are his; <br />His blazing torch, his twanging bow, <br />His blooming age are mysteries. <br />A charming science--but the day <br />Were all too short to con it o'er; <br />So take of me this little lay, <br />A sample of its boundless lore. <br /> <br />As once, beneath the fragrant shade <br />Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air, <br />The children, Love and Folly, played-- <br />A quarrel rose betwixt the pair. <br />Love said the gods should do him right-- <br />But Folly vowed to do it then, <br />And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight, <br />So hard, he never saw again. <br /> <br />His lovely mother's grief was deep, <br />She called for vengeance on the deed; <br />A beauty does not vainly weep, <br />Nor coldly does a mother plead. <br /> <br />A shade came o'er the eternal bliss <br />That fills the dwellers of the skies; <br />Even stony-hearted Nemesis, <br />And Rhadamanthus, wiped their eyes. <br /> <br />"Behold," she said, "this lovely boy," <br />While streamed afresh her graceful tears, <br />"Immortal, yet shut out from joy <br />And sunshine, all his future years. <br />The child can never take, you see, <br />A single step without a staff-- <br />The harshest punishment would be <br />Too lenient for the crime by half." <br /> <br />All said that Love had suffered wrong, <br />And well that wrong should be repaid; <br />Then weighed the public interest long, <br />And long the party's interest weighed. <br />And thus decreed the court above-- <br />"Since Love is blind from Folly's blow, <br />Let Folly be the guide of Love, <br />Where'er the boy may choose to go."<br /><br />William Cullen Bryant<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-and-folly/
