This is the completion of the 1st and 2nd Meetings poem. In fact, I have so far posted these Antinous&Hadrian poems in reverse order. This is the first, as the series at present stands; \'Alexandria&Canopus\' comes second; \'Hadrian and His God\' third. There are other poems in the sequence, not yet finished. I am very happy to report that Hadrian and His God is currently the most watched of my videos on You Tube. Ave Antinoe!III.\n\nWhat was this?\nWhat spoke to me through him?\nWhich of the Olympians?\nApollo in form and with Apollo\'s voice\nentrancing the birds and trees,\nall the surrounding landscape and my soul:\nentrancing, changing, uplifting,\nuntil this place seemed Heaven and we both gods.\n\nI had known and half-lovedmany boys\nand yet I felt when I saw him again,\nas he taught me the words of that ancient hymn\n(he enchanted at my trick of memory -\nperfect memory is only a trick),\nI felt, and I wrote it down in my private book:\n\nI fall, am made again, am made anew\nin depth and height, in being and in spirit.\nThese valleys and these mountains dance,\nthe stream rolls on, clouds condense to rain\nand scatter across the earth. I am cloud and stream,\nmountain and valley, earth and sky.\nI am all this and more, both him and me.\n\nAnd I felt, and I wrote this down too in my book:\n\nThe beams of his eyes have shatteredtwo worlds;\nnothing but ruins, nothing but ruins.\nThe quiet pool of the mind is now stirred up\nand the outward world is burning, all aflame.\nMyself am from myself far far away.\nThe weak and feeble soul has left its cave\nand wanders in the ways of earth and air.\n\nPeople say my poetry\'s extreme, is precious,\nover-precious, lacking the Latin clarity.\nThe Senate laughed at my provincial accent;\nand now they say I am too much the Greek.\nBut this boy spoke as I did, understood\nthe purpose and the striving of my song.\nIV.\n\n\nAt our second meeting\nhe was dressed befitting\nthe guest of the Emperor\nandhis eyes were shining.\n\nI wore my most beautiful jewels\nand precious raiment;\n(Did I wish to dazzle him? I did!) \nthe priest\'s hood over my forehead\nas I addressed my god,\npontifex maximus welcoming his lord.\nAlso like a father with his child,\nfond father to this beautiful, \nthis modest Bithynian boy.\n\nHe was not shy. He carried it off\nas an everyday event,\nyet with due reverence\nto our separate stations.\n\nI took him out into the gardens.\nWe wandered there for many hours\nbeside the streams, among the bowers.\nAnd in an arbour seated face to face,\nmy arm along the back of his marble chair,\nmy fingers playing with his luxuriant hair,\nhe taught me his Spartan rhythms, Spartan rhymes,\nhis low voice husky now with speech still clear,\nthe gentle breathing and the lion\'s roar\nof these transfigured verses in his mouth;\nwatching each others lips and teeth and tongues\nas I repeated after him that victorious song.\n\nThe sun was going down behind the hills,\nthe birds all singing, the small green frogs all choiring.\nThe sunset glowed upon his glorious skin,\nhis eyes were huge. I thanked him then,embraced him; and he smiled.The memory of that smile was with me stillwhen I lay down that evening on my couch,my brain repeating the ancient verse,my inner eye rehearsing all I had seen.His figure strolled beside me in my dream;his hand was in my hand.V.\n\n\nAfter our second meeting, I wrote this,\nthinking of his Spartan rhythms,\nthe tenor of his voice, his eager eyes\n(what other lad so loved his poetry?),\nstaring at me as he mouthed the words,\nwatching each others lips and teeth and tongues.\n\nI have chosen you. Nothing will now suffice\nbut thatI own and hold you as my own;\nbut that you take the gift which I extend;\nbut that the gift by him to whom it is given\nis accepted in the spirit with which I gave -\nnot as a sign of amity\nnor in worship of your perfect natural parts \nbut as a symbol\nsignifying that here,\nwithin your breast, within mybreast,\nthe withdrawn and recalcitrant world of the senses,\nfor but one moment cleared of eddying mists,\nrevealed itself;\nand as in a mirror seen\nsurveyed what yet it might become\nand recognised the goal to which it moved.\n\nNot bad for a provincial,\neven if in Greek and not in Latin!\nI wrote this,I the Emperor wrote this\nto that young boy,\nto that Bithynian boy Antinous.\n\n\nThe music here is the fourth of Richard Strauss\'s beautiful \'Four Last Songs\' : \'Twilight\' sung by the lovely Elisabeth Schwarzkopf who died in the autumn aged 90. I dedicate this to the memory of her incomparable voice which will long outlive her. antinous, arts, bryant, charles, elisabeth, gay, hadrian, performing, poetry, richard, schwarzkopf, spoken, strauss, word