Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord Beauty
The ancient Greeks loved beauty, all its forms.
Men prized the patterns that enquiring minds
Discovered, loving it because it warms
The brain and body, loving curved behinds
Marble statue of the Three Graces Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by Victorgrigas
On girls and boys, on women and on men.
Among the ancient Greeks the male ones fixed
Their souls on beauty. Poetry and then
The loveliness and purity found mixed
In mathematics called up reverence, shapes
Beyond men’s off-white lust. Men turned to neat
Philosophy. Yet still they found that napes
Of necks with curled hair could make men bleat
Like satyrs, neigh like centaurs, write strong lines,
And turn their colt-like lovers into shrines.