Atys

O CATULLUS, still among us strides the thing you celebrated,
Fly ing yonder through the shadows where the modern maenads throng,—
Sexless, sad, self-mutilated, that which God as Man created

Wails in mad despair of manhood, beats the timbrel, shrills the song!
Ah the pity! for the Muses round his cradle sang a poean,
Hover'd o'er him and around him where a happy child he ran,
But he join'd the flocks Circean, drank the cursed wine Lethean,
And now the gods deny to it the birthright of a man!

Ah, the pity! —oft there cometh from its lips that murmur madly
A tone that still reminds us of the song that might have been!
While the face that once shone gladly looms despitefully and sadly
From the haunted Phrygian forest of the
Goddess Epicene!