Lemnos! Lemnos! Thine enfolding arms <br />Have held too much, they patterned hills are over shorn <br />Of all their one-time freshness. Loud alarms <br />And trampling tread have left thee stained and torn, <br />Oh, gone those bleating lambs! Those grinding mills! <br />Those smiles of peace that were thy constant joy. <br />Hast gathered to thyself too much those ills <br />And pains smoke-fouled from off the plain of Troy. <br />Which, bruised and bloody in its modernness, <br />And wet with tears, as those Achilles shed <br />For Patroclus, has spoiled thy loveliness. <br />And housed thy bosom with its wear dead. <br />Lemnos! There are those who still can trace <br />Soft lines of beauty on thy dusty face.<br /><br />Leon Gellert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lemnos-revisited/
