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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Theocritus

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Theocritus

By Annie Adams Fields (1834–1915)

[Born in Boston, Mass., 1834. Died there, 1915. Under the Olive. 1881.]

AY! Unto thee belong

The pipe and song

Theocritus,—

Loved by the satyr and the faun!

To thee the olive and the vine,

To thee the Mediterranean pine,

And the soft lapping sea!

Thine, Bacchus,

Thine, the blood-red revels,

Thine, the bearded goat!

Soft valleys unto thee,

And Aphrodite’s shrine,

And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!

But unto us, to us,

The stalwart glories of the North;

Ours is the sounding main,

And ours the voices uttering forth

By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;

A tale of viewless islands in the deep

Washed by the waves’ white fire;

Of mariners rocked asleep

In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire

Of Neptune and his train;

To us, to us,

The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch,

The flight of gold through hollow woodlands driven,

Soft dying of the year with many a sigh,

These, all, to us are given!

And eyes that eager evermore shall search

The hidden seed, and searching find again

Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring;

These, these, to us!

The sacred youth and maid,

Coy and half afraid;

The sorrowful earthly pall,

Winter and wintry rain,

And Autumn’s gathered grain,

With whispering music in their fall;

These unto us!

And unto thee, Theocritus,

To thee,

The immortal childhood of the world,

The laughing waters of an inland sea,

And beckoning signal of a sail unfurled!