Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908)

(With a copy of the Iliad)

BAYARD, awaken not this music strong,

While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze

Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas

O’er which Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song!

Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong,

And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease;

But later, when these high ancestral trees

Are sear, and such Odyssean languors wrong

The reddening strength of the autumnal year,

Yield to heroic words thine ear and eye:

Intent on these broad pages thou shall hear

The trumpet’s blare, the Argive battle-cry,

And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear,

And mark the Trojan arrows make reply.