| |
| COULD we, though but for an hour, burst through, those gates adamantine, | |
| Which, as the children of men pass onward in swift generation, | |
| Time’s dark cavern along, are heavily closing behind them! | |
| Could we but breathe the delight of the time when, fresh in his boyhood, | |
| Out of his own exuberant life, man gave unto nature, | 5 |
| And new senses awoke, through every nerve of creation! | |
| |
| Waves of the old Ægean!—I listen your musical ebbing; | |
| Smile to my eye, as you will, with smiles clear-crystal as ever, | |
| Bind, in your silvery net, fair capes and emboweréd islands, | |
| But ye can bear no more on your breast that vision of glory, | 10 |
| When in the cool moon-dew went forth the imperial revel, | |
| Dolphins and pearl-shell cars, of the queen and the people of ocean; | |
| Whose sweet-undulant murmur the homeless mariner hearkened, | |
| Over the undulant sapphire, and trembled in glad adoration. | |
| |
| How were ye voiced, ye stars,—how cheerily Castor and Pollux | 15 |
| Spoke to the quivering seaman, amid the outpouring of tempest: | |
| With what a firm-set gaze on the belt triple-gemmed of Orion | |
| Looked the serene Greek child, as he thought of the suffering giant, | |
| Panting with sightless orbs for the dawn’s miraculous healing; | |
| With what a sigh did he pass from the six proud deified sisters, | 20 |
| On to the fate of the fallen, and mourned for the love that dethroned her; | |
| Not by elaborate charts did he read that book of the heavens, | |
| For to his heart’s fine ear it was taught by a heavenly master. | |
| |
| Now from her window perchance may the maiden of desolate Hellas, | |
| When with the woes of her love and her land her spirit is heavy, | 25 |
| Yearn to the white-bright moon, which over the curvéd horizon, | |
| Climbing the air still flushed with the flames of the opposite sunset, | |
| Seems with affectionate eye to regard her, and weep to her weeping; | |
| But it is now not as when, having pined for Endymion’s kindness, | |
| She with the mourners of love held personal sympathy ever, | 30 |
| When in the sky’s void chasms a wanderer, she to the pilgrim, | |
| Over the world’s sick plain, was a dear companion in sorrow. | |
| |
| Down through the blue-gray thyme, which roofs their courses with odor, | |
| Rivulets, gentle as words from the lips of beauty, are flowing; | |
| Still in the dusky ravine they deepen and freshen their waters,— | 35 |
| Still in the thick-arched coves they slumber and dimple delighted, | |
| Catching the full-swelled fig, and the deep-stained arbutus ruby,— | |
| Still to the sea’s sand-brim, by royally gay oleanders, | |
| And oriental array of reeds, they are ever attended; | |
| But they are all dumb forms, unimpregnate with vital emotion, | 40 |
| Now from the pure fount-head, no nymph, her bosom expanding, | |
| Dazzles the wayworn wretch with a smile of bland benediction, | |
| Giving the welcomed draught mysterious virtue and savor; | |
| Now no curious hind in the noontide’s magical ardor, | |
| Peeps through the blossomy trellis, that over the pool’s dark crystal | 45 |
| Guards the immaculate forms of the awful Olympian bathers; | |
| Now at the wide stream-mouth never one, one amorous Triton | |
| Breathes to the surge and the tall marsh-blooms euphonious passion. | |
| |
| These high temples around, the religious shade of the olive | |
| Falls on the grass close-wove; in the redolent valley beneath us | 50 |
| Stems of the loftiest platan their crowns large-leaved are spreading, | |
| And the most motley of herds is adorning the calm of their umbrage; | |
| Yet ye are gone, ye are vanished forever, ye guardian beings! | |
| Who in the time-gnarled trunks, broad branches, and summer enchantment | |
| Held an essentiäl life, and a power, as over your members,— | 55 |
| Soothing the rage of the storm by your piteous moans of entreaty, | |
| Staying the impious axe in the paralyzed hand of the woodman. | |
| Daphne, tremulous nymph, has fled the benignant asylum | |
| Which, in the shape of the laurel, she found from the heat of Apollo; | |
| Wan Narcissus has languished away from the languishing flower; | 60 |
| Hyacinth dwells no more in his brilliant abode, and the stranger | |
| Reads the memorial signs he has left with a stolid amazement. | |
| |
| Thou art become, O Echo! a voice, an inanimate image; | |
| Where is the palest of maids, dark-tressed, dark-wreathéd with ivy, | |
| Who with her lips half opened, and gazes of beautiful wonder, | 65 |
| Quickly repeated the words that burst on her lonely recesses, | |
| In a sad lovelorn voice, too deep-distracted to answer? | |
| |
| What must have been thy nature, O Greece! when marvellous-lovely | |
| As it now is, it is only the tomb of an ancient existence? | |
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