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...