The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
 |
| << previous page | Contents | next page >> |
There is a ryhme scheme for the octave Muse,
Stirred by a painted pattern to her verse,
The heart itself does in blood beat its use,
The music is one that none can rehearse,
Who can tell what is the most fair to fair?
Is the sun for the moon, or the moon the sun?
Is April for the first flower or dawn?
Who can tell from which event love is born?
Here is a story of apparent love:
Where power met innocence uncorrupt,
From which look did the bond of lust erupt?
A bearded giant of forty-seven
Took a slender acolyte of thirteen,
To show him sights yet unknown and unseen.
- II -
For the young boy's name was Antinous,
As fair as the word itself fair can make sense,
The giant of this tale was none other
Then the lord of the known world Hadrian.
The legend is well known as all but true,
For when the man meets youth, the pact is done,
Is the sun for the moon, or the moon the sun?
Who can tell from which event love is born?
In this a story of apparent love,
As we can never know what is below
Or above, with first look, what seed was sown?
To think a King needed a young seedling
To sow his bed, and to harness his own.
We will never know the truth of it all.
- III -
As we read a tale from an age so past,
And Time has defaced all meaning to us,
We'll never know, alas, the cost of love.
For happiness exacts a higher price
When greatness meets difference in such a vice.
Mortals are eternal slaves to its page,
As was the dear fairest Antinous,
For his fate was sealed, yet he did not know
That his young years would breathe only six more.
How can the young know what fate has in store?
Death is a thought none so fair wish to choose
Or that when you win, of what you lose,
So he lay with the father of the world,
Though not to bear a son, but his own soul.
- IV -
For die he did a mysterious death,
Before he could take his twentieth breath.
The cause of it, is lost to buried age.
All that is known of his last, sad refrain
Is the seabed in which his young age drowned,
And of his father's rage when he was found,
A seedling truly now to sow the ground
But never again the Emperor's bed.
So it came to be, the young man was dead.
From boy to man, six years a single breath,
The hungry ocean of His kingdom's shore
Had taken the young boy, in beauty made more.
For he had played the greatest part in heart
And all omens did Hadrian ignore.
- V -
Hadrian wept to have that which he lost,
And to never know the cost that bought woe;
For the Hades below, lies in the head.
It lies in the memory of the dead,
Of answers to mysteries left unsaid:
Why would young love want to kill itself so?
And that fair face placed on every statue
Was a cruel reminder of love's lost fool.
The blood will do, but the love does not cool.
The rivers run dry but the seas still rule.
Statues alone told the tale of the boy,
Who was once the right hand of an old king.
To think a King needed a young seedling
To sow his bed, and harness his own joy.
- VI -
Yet, who truly weeps for Antinous?
For a full life lived only for a breath.
Had he lived to see a natural death
To age the child in his face and body,
Would a King's love have still sung so sweetly?
Or was his loss of beauty to cruel Fate,
Not to see Time deface his frame or state,
Which filled the old Emperor with such woe?
For would the great love of an Emperor
Rule when the boy had become thirty-two?
Or would there be any marble statue
For an Antinous of fifty-two?
But what might have been cannot now replace
The terrible fate of Antinous.
- VII -
Politics do now enter his brief tale,
As the dark augurs of storm and ocean
Render a boat to opposing motion,
Thus boy was caught 'tween an elderly lust
And a Senate who thought their King unjust
To Rome; for his influence would weaken
The chain of Empire in the known world,
If their great ruler was mocked as a girl.
What was once thought a transient folly,
Now permanent would sow much discontent,
And Antinous had but one choice sent,
To finally pay the Emperor's rent,
To be murdered as was meant, or to die
By his own hand in secret agreement.
- VIII -
 |
 |
Thus a young lamb was sent to the slaughter,
For Rome's peace of mind, and an old King's vice,
On Neptune's altar as a sacrifice.
The choice made was one that none can rehearse.
What is the truth of his short story's verse?
Did he die willing, for love of his King?
Here is the song that time does not sing of,
For who gives up his life, if not for love?
We will never know the truth of it all.
When greatness meets difference on such a stage,
Mortals are eternal slaves to its page,
And not even the greatest sage can tell
Where it must begin and where it shall end,
Though death is every mortal's final friend.
Published 14 April, 2026
