Byzantine Princess

Cold black curls frame her ivory face
The chiseled features of an Aphrodite in tears
Her body trembles, as she takes one last walk
Magnificent and beautiful in it's fragile elegance.

One last walk through the cloisters of home
To see her little white doves flying around
To see the sun shimmering cross the Aegean sea
To smell the fragrant thyme of the hills in spring.

O byzantine princess wither will you go?
Thou art too young too radiant to be a wife
How does your heart bear to leave this land
And marry a barbarian as your father did command?

Her eyes are the color of cinnamon and honey
Her garments glimmer gold in the summer time
What sad fate awaits thee fair maid? Why do you cry?
Fair and desperate thou art like Helen of Troy.

Highborn she may be but nothing but a pawn
In the grander scheme of imperial politics
And so she has to go, as will so many more
To seal a pact with europe's barbarian lords.

She took with her the arts, the light of her fatherland
A dowry far more great than gold and jewels combined
And she brought to distant lands the grace that delivered
Europe from the night and raised her to the sunlit sky.