Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Minerva Medica
By Bessie Rayner Parkes (18291925)I
Around whose aged feet
The tide flows up from many lands,
And eddies through the street;
To break its waves on Rome,
And gathers from a thousand shores
Its scallop shells and foam.
Its altars dark and bare,
The goddess of the marble brow
No longer worshipped there.
The fevered pulse to heal,
And unrelenting, if implored,
Were deaf to each appeal.
“The homage which ye gave,
And when laborious pains ye pay,
I will consent to save.”
Where snow-white Athens shines;
How beautiful her servitors,
How stately were her shrines!
And by the unknown sea,
What goddess was so well beloved,
So much revered, as she!
In Athens and in Rome;
Her honors everywhere declined,
Her priests without a home.
And what she symbolled then,
Is banished out of human thought,
And quite forgot by men.
And makes a mute appeal,
“Give helpful blessing, all ye lands,
On women bent to heal.”