Cyrano de Bergerac

Rostand picked up your old book, Cyrano, And only blew the dust off your name

When Paris as you strode it long ago

Leapt into light, rekindling your flame:

Swaggering Gascon, fierce foe, tender friend,

Poet and soldier, first man from the moon,

Withholding your long love until the end

Of court gazette, end of an afternoon -

Gallant and gifted, yet humiliated

By your own profile on the garden wall

(Coquelin, Hampden, Ferrer recreated

Nightly the nose you could not bear at all) -

Roxanne too late saw past your friendship's bars.

Windmills had swung, and flung you to the stars.