Anacreon Bacchus and Cupid

Jean-Leon Gerome

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Keywords: AnacreonBacchusCupid

Work Overview

Anacreon, Bacchus et Cupid
Jean-Léon Gérôme
1848
Oil on canvas
211 x 136 cm


Poet of her face divine,
Curb this over-zeal of thine!
Doves wing frighted from the ground
At a step's too sudden sound,
And her passion is a dove,
Frighted by too bold a love.
Mute as marble Hermes wait
By the blooming hawthorn-gate.
Thou shalt see her wings expand,
She shall flutter to thy hand.
On thy forehead thou shalt know
Something like a breath of snow,
Or of pinions pure that beat
In a whirl of whiteness sweet.
And the dove, grown venturesome,
Shall upon thy shoulder come,
And its rosy beak shall sip
From the nectar of thy lip.