These last autumnal blossoms on the tree of Greek beauty

From Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 2 of 2) by John Addington Symonds

Of Paulus Silentiarius I do not care to allude to more than the poem in which he describes the joy of two lovers (i. 106). What Ariosto and Boiardo have dwelt on in some of their most brilliant episodes, what Giorgione has painted in the eyes of the shepherd who envies the kiss given by Rachel to Jacob, is here compressed into eighteen lines of great literary beauty. But a man need be neither a prude nor a Puritan to turn with sadness and with loathing from these last autumnal blossoms on the tree of Greek beauty. The brothel and the grave are all that is left for Rufinus and his contemporaries. Over the one hangs the black shadow of death; the other is tenanted by ghosts of carnal joy:

When lust,

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin,

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose

The divine property of her first being.

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp

Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres,

Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,

As loath to leave the body that it loved,

And linked itself by carnal sensuality

To a degenerate and degraded state.