{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_75533/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_75533","id":"gutenberg_75533","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75533","summary":null,"tags":["American poetry -- 20th century","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Greece -- Poetry"],"text":"Greek Wayfarers\n\n                                  and\n\n                              Other Poems\n\n                                   By\n\n                         Edwina Stanton Babcock\n\n                          G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons\n                          New York and London\n                        The Knickerbocker Press\n                                  1916\n\n\n\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1916\n                                   BY\n                         EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK\n\n\n                   The Knickerbocker Press, New York\n\n\n\n\n                                   To\n\n                               MARI\u00c1NTHE\n\n\nThe author believes that Greece today--largely because of her people\u2019s\nopportunity in America--knows conscious renewal of her endless spirit\nwhile she still keeps wonder and glory for all who approach her.\n\nWhatever her destiny, her natural beauties have not betrayed her,\nand through her glorious wildness and barrens her people are looking\noutward and forward. Therefore, if these verse-pictures of ancient and\nmodern Greek life bring to those familiar with Greece any refreshing\nmemory and to those who do not know this beautiful country an awakened\ninterest, they will justify their existence.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n\nTHE AMAZONS AT EP\u00cdDAUROS                                               3\n\nTHE BLACK SAIL                                                         5\n\nWIDOWED ANDROMACHE                                                     6\n\nTHE SACRED SHIP FROM DELOS                                             7\n\nTHE LITTLE SHADE                                                       9\n\nTHE CONTRAST--VOLO                                                    10\n\n\u201cSHE HAD REVERENCE\u201d--VOLO                                             11\n\nTHE GLORY--GOOD-FRIDAY NIGHT, ATHENS, 1914                            12\n\nSUNSET ON THE ACROPOLIS                                               15\n\nTHE STREET OF SHOES (ATHENS)                                          16\n\nON THE ELEUSINIAN WAY--SPRING                                         18\n\nIN THE ROOM OF THE FUNERAL STEL\u00c6 (ATHENS MUSEUM)                      20\n\n\u201cTHE SEVEN-STRINGED MOUNTAIN LUTE\u201d                                    22\n\nGREEK WAYFARERS                                                       23\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR                                                   30\n\nBY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS--THESSALY                                     32\n\nTHE VALE OF TEMP\u00c9                                                     35\n\nTHE ENCOUNTER                                                         37\n\nEASTER DANCE AT MEGARA--FIRST PICTURE                                 40\n\nEASTER DANCE AT MEGARA--SECOND PICTURE                                41\n\nPEACE, 1914                                                           44\n\nDELPHI                                                                46\n\nTHE DESCENT FROM DELPHI                                               49\n\nTWILIGHT ON ACRO-CORINTH                                              51\n\nROMANCE                                                               53\n\nNIGHT IN OLD CORINTH                                                  55\n\nAQUAMARINE                                                            57\n\nTHE SHEPHERDESS                                                       60\n\nMAY-DAY IN KALAMATA                                                   63\n\nFROM THE ARCADIAN GATE                                                66\n\nTHE ABBESS                                                            68\n\nGREEK FARMERS                                                         70\n\nSONG                                                                  73\n\nTO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES                                                75\n\nGREECE--1915-1916                                                     78\n\nTHE SINGING STONES                                                    80\n\nTHE OLD QUEST                                                         83\n\nTHE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND                               86\n\nTHE SEA OF TIME                                                       87\n\nON THE THOROUGHFARE                                                   89\n\nAT P\u00c6STUM                                                             90\n\nPHIDIAS--A DRAMATIC EPISODE                                           95\n\nEPILOGUE                                                             118\n\n\n\n\n                            GREEK WAYFARERS\n\n\n\n\nTO THE AMAZONS AT EP\u00cdDAUROS\n\n\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n    Militant women, careless of tunic and limb;\n    Sinuous torsos, naked legs boy-like and pressed\n    Close to the warm horse\u2019s flank, while the wild battle-hymn\n    Fixes the eyes with the far-reaching look of the quest;\n    Caring no more for the places of mother and bride;\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n    Arrow-swift warriors galloping over the plain,\n    Feverish, urged ever onward with furious rage;\n    War-fretted golden-hair tangled with wind-fretted mane;\n    One-breasted heroines, vigorous, quick to engage,\n    Hot with the vigor of pulsating, vehement pride--\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n    Penthesil\u00e8a falls by Achilles\u2019 drawn bow.\n    Fell she, the Queen, by the white tents of bold Priam\u2019s side?\n    Leaderless women, on to the battle ye go--\n    Plunging on, speeding on; galloping Vengeance, astride\n    Horses that feel ye victorious, with gods allied--\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n    Fearless stone-women, ardent and flushed with the race,\n    Gleaming like swords, ruthless of body and breast;\n    Nothing shall utterly quell ye, nor wholly deface,\n    Ye shall ride onward forever, on ultimate quest.\n    Spirited! Splendid! Time shall not turn ye aside.\n    Ride, Amazons, ride!\n\n\n\n\nTHE BLACK SAIL\n\n\n    How did it seem, that warm thyme-scented day\n    When emerald figs hung swelling in the dark\n    Rose-nippled glooms of laurel and of bay,\n    And pomegranate flowers burned their spark\n    Through cypresses, to wait \u2019neath temple frieze,\n    Scanning the hermless highways of the seas,\n\n    Watching for one white canvas far away,\n    And when the morning seemed to grow so late,\n    Going, amaracus and grapes to lay\n    With reeds and gums on Nike\u2019s stylobate,\n    Muttering: \u201c\u2019Tis the Day--he cannot fail!\u201d\n    Then on a sudden, seeing--the black sail!\n\n\n\n\nWIDOWED ANDROMACHE\n\n\n    \u201cFull in the morning sun I saw him first\n    And followed him through meadows, flower-massed,\n    All his steep, toilsome ways, I, too, traversed;\n    After his battles all his wounds I nursed,\n    From our tent gazing to the cities passed.\n\n    \u201cThen, to the Trojan walls, where battle burned\n    And every altar had a bloody rim,\n    I trod his ardent footsteps, though I yearned\n    For fields so free; but until back he turned\n    My only way was onward, after him.\n\n    \u201cThe summons came while I was following, true,\n    Eager, alert, though bruised by thorn and stone.\n    Had he but paused to tell me, ere he drew\n    His cloak about him, what I was to do,\n    I would have kept the path, yea, all alone!\n\n    \u201cBut he was silent, answering not my woe.\n    He muffled him against my prayers and tears.\n    I raise my arms, hung with the links of years,\n    Hung with his broken chains, my right to show\n    But--o\u2019er his Unknown Paths, I may not go!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE SACRED SHIP FROM DELOS\n\n(The Pilot speaks)\n\n\n    \u201cStrange, how I felt the homeward voyage long;\n    As I looked back to Delos o\u2019er our wake,\n    And heard the priest\u2019s song, saw our sails out-shake\n    Under the round sun hanging like a gong\n    Mid-heaven. All night long I lay on deck\n    Remembering how he taught us in the Porch;\n    Yet, the black waters\u2019 phosphorescent torch\n    Gave me no Sign, no word in white foam-fleck.\n\n    \u201cWhen we passed Sunion, methought I saw\n    Red fires burning \u2019mid the holy white\n    Of sacred columns; but the Athenian law\n    I did not know! And then, the reef\u2019s long jaw\n    Foamed at us. Through the hollow night\n    We fared, unwitting; putting forth our might;\n    Speeding with oars our fated way upon,\n    Till the white Dawn ensilvered Phaleron.\n\n    \u201cAt the Pir\u00e6us, when I saw the throng,--\n    Crito and Ph\u00e6do, there, to meet us,--I\n    Gave myself no portentous reason why,\n    But thought: \u2018He\u2019s free!\u2019 (Forsooth he did no wrong)\n    Then I remembered lofty words he said\n    Of freedom as its dangerous truth he read,--\n    Great Zeus! The cowards might as well indict\n    Sea-circled priest or mountain anchorite!\n\n    \u201cCrito it was who told me, voice all raw\n    With grief, and on my shoulder his kind hand:\n    He saw me flinch,--\u2018Tremblest?\u2019 he said, \u2018Nay, stand\n    Here in the shadow. \u2019Twas _thy_ ship they saw,\n    _The Sacred ship from Delos_, ere they gave\n    The signal for the hemlock--and his grave!\n    He drank the cup: the while, methought, thy prow\n    Would have steered Hades-ward, didst thou but know.\u2019\n\n    \u201cI made no sign. No trite word left my lip.\n    I turned from Crito, and saw Ph\u00e6do, grave,\n    Join him. Alone, I went back to my ship,\n    Sails furled with garlands riding harbor-wave;\n    I looked at her, rehearsed the sacred rite,\n    And purified me; set my torch alight:\n    \u2018Socrates! Master!\u2019 I sobbed once; set then\n    Aflame the Sacred Ship of Ill-Omen!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE LITTLE SHADE\n\n\n    No longer that grey visage fix,\n              Charon,\n    Asking me how I come to mix\n    With this pale boat-load on the Styx,\n              Charon.\n\n    I am so very small a Shade,\n              Charon,\n    Holding the vase my father made\n    And toys of silver all inlaid,\n              Charon.\n\n    Ferry me to the golden trees,\n              Charon,\n    To isles of childish play and ease\n    And baths of dove-like Pleiades,\n              Charon.\n\n    Ferry me to the azure lands,\n              Charon,\n    Where some dead mother understands\n    The lifting of my baby hands,\n              Charon.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONTRAST\n\n \u201cNeither my Magnesian home, nor Demetrias, my happy country mourned\n for me, the son of Sotimos; nor did my mother Soso lament me,--for no\n weakling did I march against my foes.\u201d--_From a painted stele at Volo,\n Thessaly._\n\n\n    \u2019Tis said, when young Greeks went to die,\n      Greek mothers would not weep;\n    And steadfast mien and tearless eye\n      Controlled themselves to keep.\n\n    Ah!--they were trained to bloody deed;\n      We--in this time so late\n    That life seemed gentle, know our breed\n      More tragically great!\n\n    Had we foreseen, no tear would fall.\n      Now mothers, too, could smile ...\n    Only, we proved men brave ... and dead\n      In such a little while!\n\n\n\n\n\u201cSHE HAD REVERENCE\u201d\n\n \u201cO Rhadamanthos, or O Minos, if you have judged any other woman as\n of surpassing worth, so also judge this young wife of Aristomachos\n and take her to the Islands of the Bless\u00e8d. For she had reverence for\n the gods and a sense of justice sitting in council with her. Talisos,\n a Cretan city, reared her and this same earth enfolds her dead; thy\n fate, O Archid\u00edke!\u201d--_From a painted stele in the Museum at Volo._\n\n\n    The dear dead women Browning drew\n    Lean forth in happy watchfulness;\n    With them Rossetti\u2019s Starry-tress:\n    And Tennyson\u2019s royal maidens press\n    To bring you to their Sacred Few.\n    Lovely companions wait for you,\n    Dear _Archid\u00edke_, wife divine,\n    With asphodels your locks to twine;\n    Thus crowning with celestial vine\n    That noble reverence you knew!\n\n\n\n\nTHE GLORY\n\nGood Friday Night, Athens, 1914.\n\n\n    Myriad candles windy flaring\n    Over faces stilled in prayer;\n    Silken banners, icon-bearing,\n    Jewelled vestments, laces rare--\n    All the people in a daze,\n    Walking in a candle-haze,\n    Of uplifted pure amaze.\n    All the people in a stream,\n    Crowding in an Easter dream;\n    While choragic song\n    Pours from out the throng--\n    \u201cIt is the Glory--holy holiday.\u201d\n    So, smiling, good Athenians say.\n\n    Priests in choir, softly singing,\n    Carry the Pantokrator,\n    While the city-bells are ringing\n    In their wild two-toned uproar;\n    All the people, in a mass,\n    With the purple-robed Papas,\n    Bearing crosses made of brass,\n    Scarlet cap, and fustanelle,\n    Turkish fez, and bead, and bell,\n    While choragic song\n    Leads the tranc\u00e8d throng.\n    \u201cIt is the Glory--holy holiday,\u201d\n    So, smiling, good Athenians say.\n\n    Colored lights, and dripping torches,\n    Burn on Lykabettos crags;\n    In the narrow streets and porches\n    Whole-sheep roasting never flags.\n    Bonfires all the country light,\n    Up to dark Hymettus\u2019 height,\n    Making all the hillsides bright.\n    Still the surging crowds advance,\n    Moving, moving in a trance;\n    While choragic song\n    Leads the tranc\u00e8d throng.\n    \u201cIt is the Glory--holy holiday,\u201d\n    So, smiling, good Athenians say.\n\n    In their wistful majesty,\n    See them waiting for a sign,\n    Of religious unity\n    From the human or divine;\n    Faithful, yearning, poor, uncouth,\n    Pagan-born, yet craving truth--\n    Old grey-heads and stripling youth.\n    All the people in a stream,\n    Holding candles in a dream,\n    While choragic song\n    Swells throughout the throng.\n    \u201cIt is the Glory--holy holiday,\u201d\n    This, smiling, good Athenians say.\n\n\n\n\nSUNSET ON THE ACROPOLIS\n\n\n    If ever I have freed me of all time,\n    Let me so free me now, that I have brought me\n    Near to these hill-top temples, which have caught me\n    Up to their soaring heights and Vision wrought me\n    Of things serene, and stricken, and sublime.\n\n    Let me, the titled, spurious Christian, face\n    This solemn wistfulness of Pagan yearning--\n    This aspiration of white columns, burning\n    With golden fires, their pillars deep inurning\n    The tragic, sunset beauty of the place.\n\n    Let me stand silent, under evening skies,\n    Watching this radiance grown cold and hoary;\n    In death-white, black-stained ruins, read the story\n    The Parthenon tells of ancient Grecian glory,\n    Reiterating beauty as it dies.\n\n    Let me stand silently and humbly, there,\n    Seeking that Unknown God Greeks apprehended;\n    That, as the temples fade, and day is ended,\n    My own hope with this ancient faith be blended,\n    And I be part of this eternal prayer!\n\n\n\n\nTHE STREET OF SHOES\n\n(Athens)\n\n\n    Now, while the Bulgars creep in stealthy crews\n    To Macedonian borders, do they stay\n    In Athens as they were one April day--\n    The busy cobblers in \u201cThe Street of Shoes\u201d?\n\n    I wonder: for the faces leaning there,\n    Had Oriental heat, the hands that sewed\n    Had look of readiness; some skillful code\n    The hammers rapped on leather-scented air.\n\n    The old shoemakers, hung about with hide\n    In cave-like booths, with beads and fringe adrip,\n    Muttered their restless words beneath the clip\n    Of shoe-laces, or hammered, sombre-eyed;\n\n    Red-capped, white-bearded, keen for petty strife,\n    They hammered and they stitched; while, might and main\n    Down their small, narrow, red-morocco lane,\n    They cut the scarlet shoes with gleaming knife.\n\n    How would it go, if mad Bulgarian hordes\n    Invaded here with pillage and abuse?\n    I like to think that in the Street of Shoes\n    Those old, gnarled hands would fiercely leap to swords!\n\n    I love to think how fiery faces there\n    Would light like lurid skies before the storm,\n    And that Athenian shoemakers would swarm\n    To guard the city with ferocious care.\n\n    Then, if the foe to trample Athens choose,\n    I pity them if those Greek cobblers still\n    Stick to their lasts. These would not wait to spill\n    A brighter red than red-morocco shoes!\n\n    Bulgars would know how nimble fingers use\n    Flayed skin to keep the needles very bright;\n    They would learn much before they took their flight\n    Forever from the valiant Street of Shoes!\n\n\n\n\nON THE ELEUSINIAN WAY--SPRING\n\n\n    Hush! Walk slowly;\n    All this winding road is holy;\n    Place your votive image in a niche\n    By Pass of Daphne, where rocks forward pitch.\n    Now, sit lowly--\n    Under dim firs that cool the dust-white way\n    Curving from Athens to Eleusis Bay.\n\n    Soft! Speak lightly!\n    See\u2019st this myriad Concourse? all the sprightly\n    Luminous Myst\u00e6? Naked flower forms\n    Dancing in close commingled color-swarms\n    So brightly?\n    Follow them in their green-hot M\u00e6nad flame,\n    Their sweet mysterious rapture of no name.\n\n    Watch! Far-seeing\n    Demeter\u2019s yellow torches fitful fleeing.\n    And seed processions moving towards the shrine\n    Where motion, moisture, act in soft sunshine;\n    And being\n    Earth-taught, flower-figures of desire\n    Sway toward white Oreads quick with fire.\n\n    Take, unceasing\n    Joy of powers these Myst\u00e6 are releasing\n    Eternal, they, who seem so lovely-brief.\n    Soft luminous shapes of petal and of leaf\n    Increasing,\n    They sweep across Semele\u2019s ancient fields\n    Handing the torch the calm Earth-mother yields.\n\n    Yea--the senses\n    Have their holy truths and recompenses\n    Sweetly simple may their teachings be\n    \u201cWine flashing clusters from a sacred tree\u201d;\n    Defences\n    From all our sorry wisdoms have these flowers\n    Who teach deep truths with Dionysiac powers!\n\n\n\n\nIN THE ROOM OF THE FUNERAL STEL\u00c6\n\n(Athens Museum)\n\n\n    O\u2019er all the world I wandered with my grief,\n    My human grief, that would not be forgot,\n    Finding no face, no word, nor any spot\n    Where haunted heart and brain could find relief.\n\n    Until the morning I unwitting stept\n    Into the stel\u00e6-halls and the great peace\n    Of the Greek sorrow over Life\u2019s surcease\n    Enveloped me, even in woe inept.\n\n    Here, marble love in simple human sense\n    To nearest friend gives earthly treasure up,\n    A matron handing maid a box or cup;\n    A man from dog and slave turning him hence;\n\n    A soldier springing out into the dark;\n    A wife slow fading in her husband\u2019s arms;\n    The inexorable Fact, its vague alarms\n    And Love grown suddenly aloof and stark!\n\n    Yet no breast-beating here, nor frantic woe,\n    Nor bitter tears, nor loud outcry of pain.\n    Only the question: \u201cWill they live again?\n    Go they forever from us, when they go?\u201d\n\n    Majestic sorrowers the figures stand,\n    Absorbed in contemplation of One Thing ...\n    No promises, nor priestly counselling,\n    Only the longing eyes and clasping hand!\n\n    Down the long halls I wandered; Athens\u2019 Spring\n    Radiant without, with almonds\u2019 rosy spray,\n    And violets crowding on the hills. That day\n    My dead heart stirred to marble comforting!\n\n    For the Greeks _knew_! Death is the only thing\n    That keeps its dignity. So Death they met\n    Ready to pay to him a subject\u2019s debt;\n    Going out awe-struck as to meet a King.\n\n    The Greeks _knew_! nothing any more can heal\n    The heart Death once despoils of sorrowing.\n    With proud simplicity they felt the sting,\n    Then wore the mystery like sacred seal!\n\n    Calm-eyed, controlled, those marble figures gaze\n    Into the depths no mortal eyes have known,\n    Then, Grecian head thrown back, the world is shown\n    Sorrow\u2019s transfigured face, immortal ways!\n\n\n\n\n\u201cTHE SEVEN-STRINGED MOUNTAIN LUTE\u201d\n\n \u201cHomer, Sappho, Anacreon, Pindar, \u00c6schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, the\n very names are a song.\u201d--M. C. M.\n\n\n    I knew, no matter how they plucked at me\n    Like golden fingers--all those cadenced names--\n    That never could I answer; for the power\n    Of their majestic harmonies was perfect flower.\n    No greater song, nor lovelier verse could be\n    Unless Greece lived another golden hour.\n    I tried to echo them. I vainly sought\n    Timid expression of their rhythmic fire;\n    My melodies with halting effort caught\n    Faintly their classic motive and desire.\n    Yet, while I failed, a miracle was wrought,\n    Themselves did sing! Thus, humble, I was taught\n    These names that are the plectrum and the lyre.\n\n\n\n\nGREEK WAYFARERS\n\n\nI\n\n    Around the Hellenic coast the dark-blue bands\n    Of circling waters, like a loin-cloth, wind\n    The stalwart nakedness of seaward lands;\n    Bronze crag, and beach, and rock and terrace bind\n    As foreground for the somber swelling tent\n    Of purple mountain. On the morning sky\n    Pale azure summits, with their sides snow-rent,\n    Loom in the distance; slowly, solemnly,\n    The coasts of Greece define; their misty chains\n    Backed by soft clouds and silver sky-moraines.\n    While we sail on, reverent vision-sharers,\n    To read the romance of the Greek Wayfarers!\n\n\nII\n\n    Those serrate ridges toward the southward brew\n    Grape-colored mist, snow-frothed; the foamy crest\n    Of Mount Ta\u00ffgetos bursts on the blue\n    Peloponnesian pinnacles, repressed\n    Back of fair bays and coasts. Rich lands of corn,\n    \u201cSlopes that the Spartans loved,\u201d the Headlands Three\n    Hide from the eye; but nearer shores forlorn\n    Wounded and Ancient, scarred of rock and tree\n    Looming beyond the starry-clustered Isles,\n    Where fire-blue waters surge on circled strand,\n    Lead to far cliffs, which once were beacon-bearers\n    In early wars, for early Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nIII\n\n    Each azure-rippled, rock-encrusted beach\n    Tells of the dusky, strong Ph\u0153nician sails\n    That came from Sidon, passed the stormy reach,\n    And touched at islands, dark as wave-tossed bales\n    Left floating in the murex-stain\u00e8d sea\n    Where restless fishers, full of dawning schemes\n    Cruised in the tunny waters; sailing free,\n    Drawn by the Tyrian Purple to new dreams.\n    Adventurers, traders, heard the sailor-boasts\n    Of civilized beginnings on the coasts,\n    And in black vessels brought the new Space-Darers\n    Whose reckless sea-paths made them Greek Wayfarers!\n\n\nIV\n\n    Thus rovers came, and dark-skinned traders planned\n    New villages by fertile pasture lures\n    In lonely valleys; by succeeding hands\n    Minoan vases, Mycenean ewers\n    Were fashioned; then the tribes fought hill by hill,\n    And coast by coast, for wealth, till Knossos\u2019 tombs\n    And Tiryns\u2019 palaces had dawning skill\n    Of goldsmith and of craftsman in their glooms.\n    The legends grew, the wooden statues raised\n    New, mystic Cults. Where rams and young kids grazed\n    Distaffs sprang up, and primitive sheep-shearers\n    Brought snowy fleece to clothe the Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nV\n\n    Delphi, Eleusis, guided human awe\n    By mystic voices and by legend thrill;\n    Then, one by one, came templed porch and floor\n    Gleaming by sea or on some fir-crowned hill.\n    Far back in forest, or on Islands, rose\n    Transcendent loveliness of chiselled stone,\n    And in the secret shrine Artemis chose\n    To hear, or not to hear, the victim\u2019s moan.\n    The entrails burned; worshippers at the feet\n    Of Gold-Apollo knew the saving-sweet\n    Comfort of God-in-life, evolved from terrors\n    Of Nature-forces by the Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nVI\n\n    And then the restless ichor in Greek veins\n    Created dreams of new posterity,\n    And mother-cities planning greater gains\n    Sent emigrants exploring on the sea.\n    Before Ionians, strange \u00c6olians went.\n    To Chalcedon came \u201c\u0153kist\u201d altar-fire;\n    Silver, and iron, and flax, for commerce sent\n    Dorians roving with renewed desire;\n    And coins and woolens, pottery and dyes,\n    Marked with age-seal each eager new emprise;\n    And shrines and temples followed all the eras\n    Of settled colonies of Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nVII\n\n    To vale and coppice, every forest place,\n    Came note of Syrinx and the sound of flutes;\n    And golden ball and pomegranate trace\n    On priestly robes; and \u2019mid the cool volutes\n    Were public treasures heaped; the Councils met;\n    Athens and Corinth grew to haughty names,\n    And glorious youths and lovely boys were set\n    To daring deeds at the Olympic Games.\n    By mountain paths and solitudes they trod,\n    They set the votive offerings to their god\n    Invoking glory--happy olive-wearers--\n    Consciously beautiful, as Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nVIII\n\n    Then sculptors wrought and painters ground the crude\n    Colors, and potters found the yellowish glaze;\n    And out of Cretan bowls and bottles rude\n    Came polychrome and monographic vase.\n    The echoing, marble theatres curved in hills,\n    Where master-voices, with dramatic art,\n    Chorused all joys and passions, and all ills--\n    And touched with deep emotion every heart,\n    Till poet-minds flowered to richer truth;\n    Forsaking earlier thoughts and laws uncouth,\n    With nobler aim to be the way-preparers\n    Of philosophic thought for Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nIX\n\n    While every river mothered daughters fair,\n    And clouds conceived, and ancient trees enslaved\n    Satyr and hama-dryad ... then the flare\n    Of the Greek torch too happy-high was waved--\n    The jealous East was plotting, Persians lay\n    In plundering splendor, with their blazing hosts,\n    Till Marathon and grim Thermopyl\u00e6....\n    Then, envious cities, roused at Athens\u2019 boasts\n    Of glittering power, crushed the Golden Age.\n    Under the Spartan and B\u0153otian rage;\n    \u201cLeagues\u201d and sea-struggles, Macedonian terrors,\n    Dragged to a desperate pass the Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nX\n\n    Yet after Byzantine and Ottoman\n    Settled despotic heel upon the land,\n    No cruel Venetian yoke nor Turkish ban\n    Forced the brave Greeks\u2019 unconquerable stand.\n    Outsiders saw the Cause inviolate,\n    Byron\u2019s hot poet\u2019s heart and cosmic brain\n    Urged on the struggle, to once more create\n    An independent Greece, unchained again.\n    The whole world watched the piteous battle fought,\n    And hailed small triumphs, passionately bought\n    With faith, until, from wild, despairing errors,\n    The struggling Greeks once more were Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nXI\n\n    Now on Greek highways, where the wagons roll,\n    Piled high with wineskins, or with bags of flour,\n    Past schools and churches and the fountain bowl,\n    New hope springs in the peasants hour by hour.\n    Greeks know that through their sordid modern strife\n    They walk in poetry, believing well\n    They are the children of enchanted life,\n    That sends them forward messages to tell\n    Of Greek restraint and hospitality,\n    Greek love of beauty, and Greek dignity,\n    Making them, in their toil, devoted carers\n    For new and better goals for Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\nXII\n\n    What are the goals to be, and what the gain?\n    As soldiers camp in valley and on hill\n    Do Spartan youths leap on the dusty plain?\n    Does spirit of Leonidas keep still\n    One death-defying purpose? Will the blood\n    Leap of a sudden out of the Soros,\n    And Marathon with bright phalanxes flood?\n    Do all Greeks bear the title _agathos_?\n    Ah, Greece! Ah, Greece! dare for the precious Past,\n    And throw your lot with gallant men that cast\n    Eternal die, to be the Spirit-Bearers\n    For all the world and all the Greek Wayfarers.\n\n\n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR\n\n \u201cThis mess of hard-kneaded barley-bread and a libation mixed in a\n little cup.\u201d--_Greek Anthology._\n\n\n    There\u2019s a white stone-paven floor\n    Set in a jade-green field\n    Where the spiked acacias yield\n    A shadow, and the four\n    Earthen pots on a round well-wheel\n    Come up drippingly full and spill\n    Where the white horse runs his circle round\n    Drawing water for garden ground.\n\n    The white foundation here\n    Has ne\u2019er held temple-plinth,\n    But mint and terebinth\n    Perfume is in the air.\n    And here, at the harvest-time the wains\n    Rattle along the sunburnt plains,\n    And the peasant\u2019s arms are bared to thresh\n    Food from the golden barley mesh.\n\n    Before the morning\u2019s long\n    Comes drowsy, sliding snatch\n    Of primitive threshing-song;\n    Down in the garden patch\n    The murmurous sleepy drone of bees\n    Blends with the stir of the poplar-trees,\n    And the rustle of bundled grain\n    Tossed from the wagon train.\n\n    Ah! the _Mavrodaphne_ wine\n    Is fruity and sweet to taste,\n    And the oranges are fine\n    And the blocked Louko\u00fami paste.\n    But I long for a crust of peasant bread\n    Eaten with honey from Parnes\u2019 head,\n    And I hunger the more and more\n    At sight of the threshing-floor!\n\n\n\n\nBY THE WALLACHIAN TENTS\n\n\nTHE BOY\n\n    Over dripping washing-trough\n    Bends my mother busy drubbing,\n    Father\u2019s fustanella rubbing\n    With the dark soap, smeary--rough.\n    There my goats go, wild careering\n    From the sound of wagons, nearing.\n    Oootz--Ella--Whooff--!\n    Out of there, you silly kid,\n    By the old soup-kettle hid.\n\n\nTHE MOTHER\n\n    That boy, lying in the thyme,\n    Sheepskinned loafer in the grasses,\n    He is carelessness sublime,\n    Sunned in yellow iris masses.\n    Thinks he of the dead men sleeping\n    Far away from flocks he\u2019s keeping,\n    Piled in bloody mountain-passes?\n    With the brutal guns again\n    Booming: \u201cGive us men! More men!\u201d\n\n\nTHE BOY\n\n    Baby hanging from the tree,\n    Peeps from out his bright bag-hollows,\n    While the white dog rolls and wallows\n    Bitten by an angry bee.\n    Forth for those sheep he must sally,\n    Where they by the cold brook dally.\n    Oootz--Ella--Deee!--\n    Now the fools, in silly mass,\n    Scamper toward the mountain-pass.\n\n\nTHE MOTHER\n\n    Far off, on the dusty plain,\n    Reels my drunk Wallachian,\n    Coming up from town again.\n    Drinking in the village khan,\n    All our Balkan coin he\u2019s spending;\n    As his stupid way he\u2019s wending\n    I the future scan.\n    Ugh! I hear those guns again\n    Surly--growling: \u201cMen! More men!\u201d\n\n\nTHE BOY\n\n    Swift the smooth Peneios flows\n    Smoky-white to sea\u2019s blue gleaming.\n    Where the battleships are steaming\n    Ready for their foes,\n    I should like to fight and bear me\n    Fiercely. Nothing there would scare me.\n    Ella--Ella--Pros!\n    With this high-swung shepherd-stick\n    That old bucking ram I\u2019ll hit!\n\n\nTHE MOTHER\n\n    St. Spiridion! He beats\n    That old ram as \u2019t were his woman!\n    What a fine, big, brawny human\n    Have I suckled at these teats!\n    Ah! I have my mother-reasons\n    To distrust Rumanian treasons,\n    When our Council meets.\n    Bah! those dirty guns again\n    Booming: \u201cGive us men! More men!\u201d\n\n    When my man comes, o\u2019er and o\u2019er\n    I will bluster--Not will hunger\n    Nor your beatings make me monger\n    Sons to angry war.\n    That brown boy, in sunshine dreaming,\n    I\u2019ll not feed him to the teeming\n    Snorting cannon-maw!\n    Move we now our tents again,\n    Far from guns that roar: \u201cMore men!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE VALE OF TEMP\u00c9\n\n\n    The river that winds through the Vale of Temp\u00e9 is white,\n      Smokily white, like water opaque with a charm,\n    Olympus knows why. He towers there, frostily bright,\n      And Ossa forth stretches a slaty, precipice arm,--\n    Deepening silvery pools into green-clouded light,--\n      So that Temp\u00e9 is hidden and secret and free from alarm.\n\n    But the green Vale of Temp\u00e9 leads forth to the stir of the Sea\n      Where the battleships growl and where Salonica is held\n    Fast in the grip of the Powers, who fight for the key\n      Unlocking the Border-doors; if Temp\u00e9 were shelled,\n    Then the white Peneios, veiled as for bridal, would be\n      Scarlet with blood of soldiers, like forests felled.\n\n    Pindar, Spenser, Shelley, Byron,--ye bards--\n      Lyric-tongued all! What if the fair Temp\u00e9 glade,\n    Where delicate flowers gleam on the virginal swards\n      And the cuckoo pipes to the shy-footed dryad-maid\n    And the trees hide Daphne,--What if the horror-mad hordes\n      Trample this Pastoral, where old Mythology stayed?\n\n    They answer not and the soft Peneios is veiled,\n      \u2019Mid the joy of the fauns and flowers and river-born shade.\n    But an old Belief in the smoky-white water is trailed--\n      Who knows but Apollo, fierce for his pagan glade--\n    Will hasten, haughtily, in shining sun-armor mailed,\n      And carry it off to the Greek gods\u2019 ambuscade?\n\n\n\n\nTHE ENCOUNTER\n\n\n    \u2019Twas there in Temp\u00e9 that he lay\n      Under a plane-tree, fast asleep,\n    His pipes far-flung.--Pan! growing gray;\n    Lines on his mocking face; his gay\n      Scuffling hoofs forgot to leap.\n\n    The river pleaded, \u201cWake the God\u201d;\n      The birds sat by with soft aside;\n    Up from the delicate spring-sod\n    I saw the eager flowers nod,\n      And little leaves my language tried.\n\n    I woke Pan. Bore the deep earth-gaze\n      On my false being, false to life\n    By all the dreary modern ways:\n    \u201cPan,\u201d I dared whisper--\u201clong the days--\n      One needs thy music in the Strife.\n\n    \u201cFull many a spring when poppies fired\n      This brook-side, did I play for you.\u201d\n    Pan answered me: \u201cMy music tired,\n    For colder music you desired;\n      So be it--I am weary too!\u201d\n\n    \u201cForgive me for my sad unworth,\n      Oh, patient Pan,\u201d I murmured low.\n    \u201cI know that I have failed the earth;\n    Only, perhaps, by spirit-birth,\n      My children thy wild pipes will know.\u201d\n\n    Pan frowned: \u201cNay, all the world doth rave;\n      Against the Pipe; they rant, like you!\n    Go, people my deserted cave\n    With theories and books. Zeus save\n      That I should hinder what you do!\u201d\n\n    Far back in Temp\u00e9\u2019s leafy glade\n      The dappled sunshine filtered through,\n    And dewdrops opalled every blade.\n    I was not of the god afraid.--\n      And still there was a thing to do.\n\n    \u201cAh, Pan, dear Pan,\u201d I softly cried,\n      \u201cWho is it that shall save but thee?\n    Thy music, god, the whole world wide,\n    Is listened for on country-side,\n      And every dreamer bows the knee!\n\n    \u201cBy musky grapes in rosy hands,\n      And all the golden fruits that glow,\n    A happy lover understands\n    Thy fluting, hearts in sober lands\n      Languish till they thy clear pipe know!\n\n    \u201cAh, Pan--play on! Forgive the souls\n      Whom knowledge cheats of love; forgive\n    That life exacts its bitter tolls\n    And leads to artificial goals.\n      Oh! Play! that we may surelier live!\u201d\n\n    I bent, I touched the shaggy hoof,\n      The horns; I looked into the eyes\n    Clear as rock pools, and yet aloof\n    Like wild bird\u2019s, then I saw the proof\n      That Pan is kind beyond surmise.\n\n    Tears! In Pan\u2019s eyes!--I sprang away\n      (Not even Pan should see me weep)--\n    Yet on through Temp\u00e9, all that day\n    I heard wild, happy piping.--Yea,\n      I wakened Pan!--He\u2019s not asleep!\n\n\n\n\nEASTER DANCE AT MEGARA\n\n\nFIRST PICTURE\n\n    Green lizards flash along the walls\n    Curd-white against the fire-blue bay;\n    The pepper-trees\u2019 fern branches sway\n    Their delicate, hot, scarlet balls.\n\n    The link\u00e8d maidens wreathe the square,\n    Blazing with festal coinage, hung\n    On brown necks; yellow kerchiefs, flung\n    O\u2019er dusky, long, twin braids of hair.\n\n    The Attic maids, with Attic mirth\n    Subdued and shy, from hill and plain,\n    On Easter holiday, at birth\n    Of spring, weave altar-pac\u00e8d chain.\n\n    And sing a song, to shepherd flute,\n    Its shifting, three-toned lilt is cold,\n    Only--it is so very old,\n    The wonder is it is not mute.\n\n    But so, they say, did maidens dance\n    In dim Eleusis, near the shrine.\n    And that is why these dark eyes shine\n    With classic-cultured ignorance.\n\n    And that is why, from near and far,\n    Greek peasants come with stately pride,\n    They know that Past from which they glide\n    Into the dance at Megara!\n\n\nSECOND PICTURE\n\n    In his long smock, and farmer\u2019s cotton cap,\n    Demetri dances.\n    The old crones smile, the little children clap,\n    The young girls\u2019 glances\n    Follow him, tall and grave, and deep of eye,\n    Marvelling at him, yet aloof and shy;\n    His fellow-dancers jostle roughly by\n    With rude askances.\n\n    The piper plays his reediest, shrillest tune,\n    And at his leisure\n    Demetri, as though pacing in a rune,\n    Treads out a measure.\n    The elders laugh: \u201cDance there, fantastic fellow!\n    Tread down the grapes, while harvest moon is mellow,\n    Give thy feet wings, fly o\u2019er the sunset billow\n    At thy good pleasure!\u201d\n\n    The little glasses of brown resin-wine\n    Are quaffed; beads slipping\n    Through the Greek fingers, slender, brown, and fine,\n    Accent his skipping.\n    They nudge, to see his hand curve on his shoulder,\n    They marvel as his dark eyes burn and smoulder,\n    And note his step less vague, his bearing bolder,\n    And go on sipping.\n\n    Around him dance the peasants, pacing slow\n    With rhythmic swinging,\n    But in and out he threads their simple show\n    \u2019Midst childish singing.\n    Reels past old bearded Greeks, their grave tales weaving,\n    And fierce Wallachians come for Easter thieving;\n    Albanian women with bold bosoms heaving\n    To children clinging.\n\n    Spell-bound, all watch him reel, and swerve, and bend;\n    His dizzy spinning\n    Dazzles their eyes. Word goes from friend to friend:\n    \u201cHe is beginning!\u201d\n    For now with somber eyes, unveiled and burning,\n    From peasant dance they see Demetri turning\n    To an old trance of rapturous discerning--\n    Loud plaudits winning.\n\n    The sun shines paler on the kerchief\u2019s gold,\n    The church-bell\u2019s tolling;\n    The sea grows purple, and the distance cold,\n    With dark waves rolling.\n    The long lines break, the black-haired maidens wrangle;\n    With exclamation all the dusty tangle\n    Comes to a halt, \u2019mid glint of peasant spangle\n    And soft song trolling.\n\n    But tall Demetri lost in dreaming pace\n    In solemn swaying,\n    Keeps on alone, with tense and mystic face\n    As he were praying.\n    With hand upraised, as holding the caduceus,\n    He looks away to old far-off Eleusis,\n    Devising Dionysiac curves and nooses,\n    Old Laws obeying.\n\n    Why, in his face that mystic peering gaze\n    Like a faun, waiting?\n    Why does he pace his lonely, occult ways\n    His eyes dilating?\n    \u201cDemetri!\u201d \u201cMitchu!\u201d tease the girls. Their screaming\n    He does not hear, lost in far other seeming,\n    In strange dance-spell, in old blood-tutored dreaming,\n    Old rhythms creating.\n\n\n\n\nPEACE, 1914\n\n\n    Why do the women walk so free and strong\n                  In Thessaly?\n    It is because the Turks wreak no more wrong;\n    The Balkans ended, sunburnt soldiers throng,\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n    Why do the old monks pray so hard for rain\n                  In Thessaly?\n    It is because the mountain slopes again\n    Roll in green terraces of silver grain,\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n    Why does the shepherd wear a broidered shirt\n                  In Thessaly?\n    Because \u2019tis peace; clean is the goat-herd\u2019s skirt,\n    The women spin; the needles are alert,\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n    And why the young kids, white as snowy curds,\n                  In Thessaly?\n    The farmers are successful with their herds;\n    The highway\u2019s loud with guttural teamster-words,\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n    Why are the threshing-floors so thickly set\n                  In Thessaly?\n    Because, when harvest comes, and youth is met,\n    Comes the old will of Nature, sturdy yet,\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n    And these deserted hovels that we see\n                  In Thessaly,\n    Where the Peneios winds about the tree?\n    The villagers have gone across the sea\n                  From Thessaly.\n\n    And this trim town of plaster and of thatch\n                  In Thessaly?\n    America hangs fortune on the latch,\n    Our sons come back, then blooms the garden patch,\n                  In Thessaly!\n\n    Then, this is no decadent race I see\n                  In Thessaly?\n    Oh, stranger, who can tell? Hard things must be.\n    Only, the \u201cGreeks were Greeks,\u201d and Greeks are we\n                  In Thessaly.\n\n\n\n\nDELPHI\n\n\n    Matrixed \u2019mid purple mountain steeps,\n    An ancient Grecian city sleeps.\n    Where rock-hewn fountains spill\n    Down scarlet-poppied hill;\n    Long time ago its temples fair\n    Rose, Doric-columned, on the air,\n    And voices told of riddles strange\n    That echoed down the mountain range;\n    And men and cities brought their all\n    To Delphi and the priestess\u2019 thrall.\n    While in the mountain-pass a pipe\n    Played on and on and on--\n    A pipe played on.\n\n    Now up the aisles of olive-trees\n    Come wistful souls from over-seas,\n    From the Itean shore,\n    Past rose-hung cottage door,\n    And in the sacred fount they dip,\n    Or tell the lore with alien lip;\n    Or, dreaming, scan far snow-crowned heights,\n    Lit, as of old, with pagan lights.\n    While through the thyme, \u2019mid rock and pool,\n    The sheep-bells tinkle, water cool,--\n    And in the mountain pass, a pipe\n    Plays on and on and on--\n    A pipe plays on.\n\n    While glowworms blur the dewy gorse,\n    And stars float from their tidal source,\n    And Grecian peasants steal\n    By creaking wagon-wheel,\n    We ponder on this Life and Death\n    Within the taking of our breath;\n    So old, these ruined fanes that lie,\n    Beneath the temple of the sky!\n    So old these sacred stones that gleam\n    With the strange shining Delphic dream.\n    While in the mountain-pass the pipe\n    Plays on and on and on--\n    A pipe plays on.\n\n    So old, this silence trembles, brought\n    To solemn tension with our thought--\n    Deep as the mystic strain\n    Born in Apollo\u2019s fane:\n    \u201cDear God, \u2019tis well no Pythoness\n    For us may prophesy or bless!\n    Well, that no riddle-verse controls\n    The will that slumbers in our souls!\n    Well, that we choose, calm, clear-eyed, free\n    To live and learn our truth from Thee!\u201d--\n    Still in the mountain-pass the pipe\n    Plays on and on and on--\n    The pipe plays on.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DESCENT FROM DELPHI\n\n\n    Dawn, pallid and cold,\n    Parnassos, grave in the mist\n    Like the shrouded form of a priest;\n    No light in the East,\n    Save thin stars, worn and old.\n\n    Under the \u201cShining Ones\u201d\n    The temple-steps, in white,\n    Chromatic, gleaming, light,\n    Mount to the stadion\u2019s\n    Oval of crumbling stones.\n\n    Dawn, stealthy and still,\n    Frostily fills the fields,\n    Dew sprinkles the maize;\n    Where ranging cattle graze,\n    His pipe a shepherd plays.\n\n    Sun, striking the snow\n    On far off mountain height,--\n    Day, solemn and slow,\n    Rises from Long Ago\n    Clothed in pure samite.\n\n    A scarlet rug in a field;\n    A man and a woman asleep--\n    Around them, dogs and sheep,\n    Where the maize is quivering gold,\n    As the broad day is unrolled.\n\n    The man and the woman asleep--\n    Alone in the Delphian field!\n    And the world, once more revealed\n    Young, and all time is healed\n    The Oracle unsealed!\n\n\n\n\nTWILIGHT ON ACRO-CORINTH\n\n\n    From the Venetian arch, the doubting owl\n    Sends forth his whimper; where the sheep-dogs lope\n    Sounds donkey\u2019s thirsty octave, call of fowl,\n    And near green-silver maize and poppied slope,\n    Goat-bells ring jangling on the tether-rope\n    As, truant from some hooded shepherd\u2019s scowl,\n    Dim, horn\u00e8d shapes in black thyme-bushes grope.\n\n    I look four ways down all the rich descents\n    To mountain, cliff, and sea. First to the South\n    Where Argolis in purple permanence\n    Gives sumptuous breast to dark sea\u2019s hungry mouth.\n    Enthroned in mountain fastness, warm, immense,\n    Or, lying prone by misty olive-fence\n    Losing herself in languid, dusty drouth.\n\n    Far Eastward, islanded \u00c6gina keeps\n    Her tree-girt shrine, and Sunion the prow\n    Of white sea-temple lifts on Laurion steeps\n    Where mines are hid, and silver quarries show.\n    Then, like a bee, the eager eye upsweeps\n    To Athens, where the Acros-flowers grow\n    And the dim road to far Eleusis creeps.\n\n    I look toward Athens, over golden gorse,\n    Purple anemones, Saronic seas,\n    Powerful, kingly blue. I see the source\n    Of all Mind ever was, and then the trees\n    Blurring, I turn me West, perforce\n    Sweeping Arcadian ridges, as light flees\n    And over paling skies cloud-horses course.\n\n    B\u0153otia, Phocis, Lokris ranges tread\n    Vast gorges \u2019round the Gulf\u2019s imperial shores;\n    Like citadels, their summits, thunder-bred,\n    And at their feet are sacred river-floors,\n    And many a mountain stream its crystal bed\n    Has hidden beyond those labyrinthine doors\n    From whence down winds the clue-like glancing thread.\n\n    And as the night surrounds me and the stars\n    Climb up the clouds like mountain-pastured flocks,\n    I muse on Progress, that which hurts and scars\n    Nature with blood, machines, and battle-shocks.\n    But, as I gaze, the whole wild sky unbars\n    War\u2019s end portending; the new time unlocks\n    Ultimate peace no human passion mars.\n\n\n\n\nROMANCE\n\n\n    The \u201cwine-dark\u201d sea menaces as of old,\n    When young Odysseus dared; and all our ship\n    Shudders against the midnight mountain-waves\n    Hurrying to crush the steamer, in her plunge\n    On black path, under wind-blown scattered stars.\n    Strange is the contrast! Strange it is to lie\n    Cabined and berthed, feeling like crystal, hid\n    In a night-moving mountain; thence to see\n    At port-hole\u2019s glimmer, land, solemn and strange!\n    Old as all prayers, all vigils, and all hope!\n    As the ship stops at Patras, and bells ring,\n    To look out on the mole-lights, red and white,\n    And see the black, unreadable night-shore.\n    And then, to lie back, ponder the mystery\n    Of that one man--that little ugly man--\n    Reviled, unknown, and unbelieved, who burned\n    So fiercely with his message, that he sailed\n    From port to port, to give it. My age boasts\n    Its Christian ethics cool expedience.\n    That age, simply knew a man named \u201cPaul,\u201d\n    Who fought with beasts, endured the stripes, to give\n    His flaming, tender, strong epistles; wrote\n    To the people, as \u2019twixt starvings and shipwrecks\n    He sailed these waters, from the \u201cupper coasts.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nNIGHT IN OLD CORINTH\n\n\n    A hill trembling with grain\n    And a winding path.\n    Shadowy sheep on the slopes;\n    The sound of bells and sea,\n    The sound of a peasant song,\n    The sound of pipe and drum ...\n    And in the twilight grey\n    Apollo\u2019s temple.\n\n    Wide doors and the cottage fire,\n    Bright coffee-coppers; plates\n    Of white curds and of fish;\n    A man in a scarlet cap,\n    Turning a roasting spit;\n    A woman by the fount ...\n    And in the twilight grey\n    Apollo\u2019s temple.\n\n    How was it when Paul came?\n    Corinth was blazing white,\n    Walled and rich and corrupt.\n    They \u201csat to eat and drink\n    And rose up but to play!\u201d\n    The Purple Sellers knew ...\n    But in the twilight gleamed\n    Apollo\u2019s temple!\n\n    The fountain\u2019s hung with moss\n    But the cypress-trees are tall,\n    And little wing\u00e8d shapes\n    Say \u201cN\u00edke\u201d in the ground.\n    The Jews \u201crequiring signs,\u201d\n    And the Greeks \u201clooking for wisdom,\u201d\n    Still in the twilight, see\n    Apollo\u2019s temple!\n\n\n\n\nAQUAMARINE\n\n\n    I think, when I grow tired of the world,\n    I shall go back to Greece (in spring, of course),\n    By forest trail, and oleander source,\n    Past snow-peaks on green mountain lawns impearled.\n\n    To Trypi: where, from saddle I shall slide,\n    And hear my donkey\u2019s bell jerk as he feeds\n    On herbs and simples--growing to his needs--\n    By rosy roofs set in the green glenside.\n\n    Far down the valleys I shall hear the call\n    Of white-garbed peasants; throaty cattle-cry;\n    The little Trypi brook will rustle by\n    Among the poplars, silver-green and tall.\n\n    I shall watch Greek girls, toiling up the height,\n    Laden with brush and whorls of scented thyme,\n    And see their youthful climbing pantomime,\n    Ere I lie down to ponder with my might\n\n    On three sweet subjects, simple village themes,\n    And yet so strange, so subtle, I have met\n    No man, nor woman, who can tell me yet\n    The answers, nor have found them in my dreams.\n\n    First: The Greek plane-trees, cool ancestral trees,\n    Biblical-strong, like mighty tents of Saul,\n    What earth power spreads their green ethereal\n    Canopied gloom, their soft immensities?\n\n    Next, the Greek fruits and flowers; what godlike soil\n    Nourishes orange, fig, and olive stretch,\n    So that no child goes forth the goats to fetch\n    But fills his cap with colored orchard spoil?\n\n    Last, I shall ponder (never sure, quite,\n    Imaging richly, merged in miracle)\n    Wondering what source conceals the mystic shell\n    Staining with blue the \u00c6gean\u2019s mica-light.\n\n    Lies in it some great Pool, that slow distils\n    Azure of flowers and skies to pigment bold?\n    Or do the encircling mountain-chains enfold\n    A vat of purple, whence wine-color spills?\n\n    \u00c6gean Blue, that crimson-orchil tide\n    Bold, deep, intensest, incandescent flame,\n    Pure well of Azure, fitly has no name\n    But Greece in her inimitable pride\n\n    Of worship on strange occult secret planes\n    The hidden sponsors of her visual life\n    May, long ago, \u2019neath sacrificial knife\n    Have loosed the gods\u2019 blue blood from Dacian veins.\n\n    One can see Spartan blood flow down Greek shores,\n    In crimson poppy-tide, in scarlet waves;\n    But it is \u201cwine-dark\u201d energy, that laves\n    Gold-bronz\u00e8d rocks and hidden sea-cave floors.\n\n    Ah! it is not enough for me to say\n    \u201cFaery silver-azure! Clear, superb\n    Cobalt no chemistry of sun can curb,\n    Attar of purest lapis-lazuli.\u201d\n\n    \u2019Tis not enough for me to invent a name\n    Like Nauplian Blue, Greek Blue, Blue of Emprise,\n    As I re-vision golden argosies\n    Or red-sailed moth-boats sailing molten flame.\n\n    No--I must ponder (never sure quite),\n    Always a-dream in Trypi, where the trees\n    Whisper adventurous old names of seas,\n    Through silver valley-eve and mountain night.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHEPHERDESS\n\n\n    Not only mulberry vendors travel Langada Pass,\n    Rough soldiers and black-fezzed peddlers take that trail\n    And stop to drink at a khan \u2019neath the rocky mass,\n    Where the pine-trees root in the drifts of sliding shale,\n    And a half-crazed Greek sells resin-wine and cheese\n    And \u201cThalassa\u201d mutters, pointing to far-off seas.\n\n    For Langada Pass is miles of precipice rock\n    Where the rug-hung pack-mules scramble with fumbling feet\n    Sliding unsteadily over the cobbles, that shock,\n    Stone upon stone, in monotonous noontide heat.\n    But a mountain girl, fleet-footed, with brown knees bare,\n    Flutters along the crags, where the great pines flare.\n\n    Now the mulberry vendors are fuddled with Spartan rum,\n    They howl in the ca\u00f1ons and kick the sides of their steeds.\n    The soldiers are merry, they sit on the rocks and hum\n    And talk politics and twiddle their malachite beads;\n    Hardly a shrine for a maid, or a convent roof,\n    Under the blue sky, classic and calm and aloof;\n    The goats stand cynical, cloven of horn and hoof.\n\n    But she whistles and calls and scrambles up to her flock,\n    High on the bronze-grey peaks of Langada Pass,\n    With warm eyes mote-flecked, bright as the quartz gold rock\n    A deer-like, dryad-like fierce, shy, crag-born lass,\n    Perching where orange anemones spangle the banks\n    And white streams flash down thicketed mountain flanks.\n\n    We told her the tale of the world and the dreams of men,\n    We poured out wine-of-the-world in her shepherd cup,\n    She took it calmly, thoughtfully, drinking up\n    All that we were, quaffing us, thirstily, then:\n    \u201cSalute your cities,\u201d the wild little shepherdess said,\n    And swift as an eagle, far up the precipice sped.\n\n    Washington, New York, and Boston have new renown!\n    Their rivers of seething light, where the witch wires hold\n    Clustering, bright-balled fruits, and the chimneys frown\n    Like satyrs drunk with smoke through the sunset gold--\n    All these must bow, in turn, to a little lass\n    Who \u201csalutes the cities\u201d out of Langada Pass!\n\n\n\n\nMAY-DAY IN KALAMATA\n\n\n    In Kalamata, where the harvests are\n    Purple and crimson for the currant-bin,\n    When merchants close their shutters with a jar,\n    The young night-gallant twangs his brown guitar,\n    And first begins the merry May-day din.\n\n        All night they strum the mandolins and lutes;\n        Glyco, the jolly merchant of the fruits,\n        Sings to accordion: \u201cO nux kal\u00e9!\u201d\n        In Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n    Morning comes. See the church across the street\n    Its doorway wreathed! See Anastasia pass,\n    Twining her pretty shoulders with the sweet\n    Mountain-born orchids, brought on tireless feet\n    By lads from Sparta o\u2019er Ta\u00ffgetos.\n\n        All night they strum the lute, and mandolin,\n        Georgio, the dark-eyed, plays the violin,\n        Sings under balconies: \u201cO nux kal\u00e9!\u201d\n        In Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n    The cottage-doors are hung with poppy-wreaths,\n    To keep away the evil spirits: hats\n    Are garlanded with oleander. Leaves\n    Fair, golden-braided Marianth\u00e9 weaves\n    Into a veil for her long sunny plaits.\n\n        All night they sound the flutes and castanets;\n        Mitchu, in pompommed shoes, fingers the frets,\n        Quaffs resin-wine,--\u201cAha--! O nux kal\u00e9!\u201d\n        In Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n    To the _Platea_, all the booths astir;\n    Mulberry vendors clad in goat-skins come;\n    Here are embroidered bags and fragrant myrrh,\n    And silver-handled knives; and the drum-whirr\n    Beats like a heart throb in the village hum.\n\n        All night they play the rough accordion;\n        The sailors from the \u201cskala,\u201d to a man,\n        March, drunk with mastika, along the quay,\n        In Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n    Along the railroad all the stations fill\n    With children garlanded; the peasant throngs\n    Sing at car windows. From a laurel hill,\n    Rings \u201cZito\u201d with the happy springtime thrill,\n    While rose-crowned maidens chant their merry songs.\n\n        All night they play the violin and drum;\n        And to the windows tawdry women come\n        Bright-eyed and bold, to hear: \u201cO nux kal\u00e9!\u201d\n        In Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n    May-day, down all the silver-olive plain,\n    Along the mountain trail, and torrent track,\n    May-day on ships on blue Messenian Main,\n    On locomotives, where the young Greek swain\n    Hangs lily wreaths upon his engine stack!\n\n        All night I hear the zither; the guitar\n        Maddens my northern pulses, and from far,\n        Far up the mountainside: \u201cO nux kal\u00e9!\u201d\n        Wakes Kalamata on the first of May.\n\n\n\n\nFROM THE ARCADIAN GATE\n\n\n    From Arcadian Gate, with its tower-topped bulk,\n    White on Ith\u00f3me\u2019s war-ridden hulk,\n    A road winds down past the artichokes,\n    And the almond-trees, and acacia-spokes.\n    And, silver-harnessed, the small brooks fly\n    Down to Messenian industry.\n    And, here one sees, under the trees,\n    Greek women making the cheese.\n\n    Black kettles hang from the giant plane,\n    Where children gather, and where you gain\n    A charming sight from your donkey-mount,\n    For the wash-trough\u2019s set by the village-fount,\n    And, hanging high on the olive-boughs,\n    Where, grey, light-fingered zephyrs drowse,\n    Swaying in bags, in the summer breeze,\n    Greek babies take their embroidered ease.\n\n    In old Dodona, so they say,\n    In a time when priest-craft had its sway,\n    \u201cThe Will of the Gods\u201d came jostling,\n    Through the oak-leaves\u2019 gentle rustling,\n    And the Priest of the Oracle carefully hung\n    Brazen vessels, which, easily rung,\n    By moving branches, in many keys,\n    Instructed the Greeks how their gods to please.\n\n    \u2019Tis an old Greek fashion this hanging of things;\n    Many the legends from which it springs.\n    Twists of scarlet, and bright-dyed flax,\n    Hang on the rough Arcadian shacks,\n    Where the railroad follows the mountain base.\n    They hang brown jugs by the watering-place.\n    Amulets hang on the goats and the swine;\n    Wreaths hang high on the house and the shrine.\n\n    And now the pots for the cheese\n    And the babies in black-eyed reveries\n    Sway, like the brasses long ago.\n    Hanging on high branch and on low!\n    Somehow the sight doth strangely please,\n    This new fruit on the old Greek trees!\n    One hears \u201cWill of the Gods!\u201d in speech\n    Babbling from olive and oak and beech.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ABBESS\n\n\n    Pink oleander lamps the brook-bed trails,\n    And orange-trees hang fruitage o\u2019er the grain,\n    And there are hedges, green with fitful rain,\n    And cyclamen in white the hillside veils.\n\n    While through the villages, \u2019neath Mistra\u2019s height,\n    The children run to give a rose and stare\n    At strangers riding where grey olives flare\n    Mistily in the long hills\u2019 summer light.\n\n    Rose-pinnacled, a Franco-Turkish wall\n    Trailing with ivy, rears its crumbling mass,\n    Pantassa Church\u2019s apse and mouldered hall\n    Look down upon the plain of Eurotas.\n\n    Byzantine tower\u2019s clear octagonal,\n    Jewel-like and fretted, circles on the sky;\n    A pav\u00e8d walk leads to the nunnery,\n    Past moss-grown arch and ruined capital.\n\n    And here, an Abbess, old, yet maiden-faced,\n    Sits in a frigid pomp, in solemn pride:\n    Stately, aloof, the church\u2019s pallid bride,\n    Greets us with countenance austere and chaste.\n\n    The Abbess leads the way, with rigid calm,\n    Detached, haughty, imperious; her eyes\n    Pompously ignorant, religious-wise,\n    Cool as the blank intoning of a psalm.\n\n    There are great piles of rose-leaves in the room,\n    Convent-brewed wines and bright bags, needle-wrought;\n    There is an ancient fountain in the court,\n    And guttering candles in the Church\u2019s gloom.\n\n    \u201cThe times have changed,\u201d we said; \u201cwomen no more\n    Hide them from life. We mingle and we work.\n    Christ only asks that not a soul shall shirk\n    Or flinch from bearing burdens that He bore.\u201d\n\n    The Abbess smiled. \u201cSilence,\u201d she said; \u201cwe learn,\n    On this hilltop we women watch the East,\n    The morning sun o\u2019er Sparta is our priest,\n    The mountain stars like midnight tapers burn.\u201d\n\n    We looked at her; her eyes were crystal clear,\n    Passionless, pure and cold as moonlit snow.\n    Something she felt that we could never know;\n    Our vision to her eyes could not appear.\n\n    We left her in the shadowed court to brood,\n    Where Frankish frescoes peer through shadows dim,\n    And cloistered nuns in tuneless, wailing hymn,\n    Chant Faith untried in mountain solitude.\n\n\n\n\nGREEK FARMERS\n\n\n    In green Laconia, where the hedges are\n    Spring-starred with flowers, and the little brooks\n    Wake all the mountains from their solemn dreams\n    Of the old days, when gods moved strong and white\n    On hill and sea, or slept within the clouds;\n    There are great slopes, broken with tillage, rough\n    With clumsy ploughing, thick with olive-trees.\n    And here they stand, the tall, black-bearded men,\n    Whose eyes, unblinking, look into the sun.\n    Men, plainly bred from tribal wanderings,\n    Whose blood is fevered fire, men whose lands\n    Are bare with waste and bloodshed; men who stand\n    Gazing at strangers with shy interest;\n    Who, when you question their fresh peasant-eyes\n    Straighten up from their field-tasks and reply:\n    \u201cThese are our flocks and pastures--we are Greeks!\u201d\n\n    Black-bearded men who sow, What is the Seed?\n    For Greece has lain beneath the Turkish plough,\n    And all her hills and mountains smoke again\n    With treachery, rape, and murder. On the seas\n    The nations wait to grasp; the kings and crews\n    Who play the Blood-game snap at little lands\n    Like dogs at flies. Yea, that fair seed ye sow,\n    Is it Greek seed? though sown by mongrel hands?\n    Seed of a greatness far exceeding theirs,\n    The lands that would despoil Greece? Will it grow\n    That seed, Deucalion\u2019s hope, Athena\u2019s pride,\n    Is it once more the sacred seed that fell\n    Out of Demeter\u2019s hand on holy ground?\n    Or, is it Cadmus-sown, for crops of Hell?\n    Truthfully, farmers, can ye stand and say:\n    \u201cThese are our fields and pastures, we are Greeks\u201d?\n\n    They make no answer--strong, black-bearded men,\n    Grimly at work on the Phigalian Hill\n    Where the grey Bass\u00e6 Temple guards the corn.\n    They make no answer in the mountain towns\n    Arcadian, where pink-roofed houses splotch\n    The hillsides and where hidden teamsters climb\n    Thicketed bridle-paths beside the streams.\n    They cannot tell us, if they know, what seed\n    The sculptors, patriots, and statesmen sowed;\n    Nor even if these furrows that they plow\n    Will bring a season\u2019s harvest to their doors.\n    But, as we pass them, under upland oaks,\n    Under the fig-trees in the rocky gorge,\n    They walk with strange, fleet steps, so tireless,\n    So strong, with eyes set on some distant goal,\n    Till we, too, puzzled, murmur: \u201c_They are Greeks_.\u201d\n\n    Oh, fateful World! insatiate modern life--\n    Driven by urgencies too great to tell,\n    Destroying, recreating, balancing--\n    What of this Old World, dreaming modern dreams,\n    Yet with the old dream dwelling in the land\n    To teach it Pride? Shall we dare face a Greek--\n    With all his shining temples at his back,\n    With the eternal Thought behind his name,--\n    As he were German, Russian, Turk, Chinese?\n    If these black-bearded mongrels share the pride\n    Of Argonauts and claim a classic birth\n    And till the wild land, dropping in the seed,\n    Forever saying softly, \u201cWe are Greeks,\u201d\n    Why should they garner any other crop,\n    Why should they bend and toil for better gain\n    Than seeing New Greece realize her dream?\n\n\n\n\nSONG\n\n\n    Toil on, fishermen!\n    Pan sits on the cliff,\n    Smiles and watches the fare,\n    Wreaths him with flowers there,\n    Bites at a lettuce leaf,\n    Binds him a poppy sheaf,\n    Drinks from a painted jug,\n    Watching the full nets tug;\n    Toil on, fishermen!\n\n    Work on, harvesters!\n    Demeter rests on the hill,\n    Near to the threshing-floor;\n    Near to the cottage door,\n    Girds her with fruited vines,\n    Blows foam from the wines,\n    Drinks from a golden bowl,\n    While corn-filled wagons roll;\n    Work on, harvesters!\n\n    Rest well, goat-herds!\n    Hermes cares for the sheep,\n    Flashes across the sun,\n    Burnishes helmet wings,\n    The wreathed caduceus brings,\n    To swift talaria-flight,\n    Through the sheep-scattered night;\n    Rest well, goat-herds!\n\n\n\n\nTO THE OLYMPIAN HERMES\n\n\n    Now let the formal, folded curtain fall\n    Over this majesty of mellowed stone.\n    Let me go forth with eyes alight with joy\n    From this god-gazing. Let me not pause nor stay\n    Till by some clear word I have given faith\n    To doubting minds, how Greeks ennobled form\n    And carved high meaning in a body\u2019s truth.\n    Yet, Hermes, fair god, consciously the flower\n    Of the Greek dream, sculptured so lofty-kind,\n    Stainlessly physical, superbly true;--\n    Who is to tell thee that thou hast one fleck\n    On that pure manliness, and dare to speak\n    Something against thy calm that seems to say,\n    \u201cEarth has no greater gift than perfect limbs,\n    And god-like manhood\u2019s straight significance\u201d?\n    Forgive me, Hermes, I had thought to take\n    Thy princely healthiness to ailing worlds;\n    To meanness and to littleness and lust,\n    Bidding them gaze upon thee in thy calm,\n    Telling them: \u201cThis is all. This Hermes stands\n    For Greek expression of a definite truth\n    Speaking its message to the world of men\n    And placing beauty as a final goal.\u201d\n    But then I pondered: What will be the gain\n    If men say: \u201cHermes is very kind and fair,\n    Wholesome and generous and unafraid\n    And--soulless! Let be! we\u2019ll no longer hope\n    For strength more than the body--loftier calm\n    Than this superb control of manly limbs,\n    Friendly with sun and rock, and sea, and life.\n    Now yield we up that old, defeated claim\n    Of soul, the ugly, hunted, harried thing,\n    And trust us to a pagan manliness,\n    Stand Hermes-like, unpuzzled, unamazed!\u201d\n    I knew, oh Hermes! Greek perfection, lit\n    Like stately lamp with one clear, shining joy,\n    That of well-being, I knew life ended not\n    With just the beauty of a human form;\n    Marble, translated into mystery\n    Must needs have line to make it fair and right;\n    And that is all.... Thy unknown sculptor knew\n    The pagan mind and set thy godhood high,\n    In an unsullied semblance of a man\n    Untouched by sorrow, poverty, and shame.\n    Immortal _semblance_--then the cleavage comes!\n    Real men must live (we mortals know the fight),\n    Hot-blooded, passionate, forlorn, astray;\n    We know how men determine to be true\n    To some one Greatness,--struggle to the test\n    Baffled and crucified;--in bitter shame\n    Leaving the unsolved meaning of their lives.\n    And now we know, by those French faces torn\n    To rags, around the dumbly loyal eyes;\n    By English soldiers, done to crippled wrecks\n    And hideous mangling, how men dare to die,\n    Or live their silent, agonizing days.\n    And then we know there is a human thing\n    Transcending any body--called a Soul!\n    Yea, let the formal, folded curtain fall\n    O\u2019er all that graciousness of mellowed stone.\n    The Pagan knew the beauty of the flesh.\n    We, Modern, view that beauty with resolve\n    Firm and unswerving that it be outdone,\n    Firm that all ugly, bruised, and broken things\n    Shall stand invested with a deathless pride\n    Before our eyes--that see them beautiful;\n    Determined that the perfect ones approach\n    Humbly with sense of some imperfectness,\n    And kneel in homage to the shattered brave.\n\n\n\n\nGREECE, 1915-16\n\n\n    Yea, taunt me, World Voice--I am dumb and blind,\n    My body broken, and my heart unclad.\n    Yet am I silent, while strange forces wind\n    The chains about me. Helpless, scorned, maligned,\n    I answer not. The Greece of long ago\n    Speaks for me in this newest time of woe.\n\n    Europe reviles me. Yea, I stand alone\n    Like woman left before the ruined door,\n    Like woman who, beneath her outraged moan,\n    Remembers sacred hours. Like a stone\n    I am cold, passionless, mid the wild uproar,\n    Murmuring \u201cPeace\u201d and \u201cHellas\u201d o\u2019er and o\u2019er.\n\n    Apollo\u2019s beauty sprang from out my womb;\n    Socrates called me, mother. Every hill\n    And templed glade, and solemn-urn\u00e8d tomb,\n    Bids me refrain; no longer to resume\n    War and rapine, no longer blood to spill,\n    Nor hate engender, nor intent to kill.\n\n    Europe! Greece speaks, Greece, who so deeply drank\n    The bitter cup of ravage; who has laid\n    A new foundation: near her altars, blank\n    Of by-gone fires, she phalanxes the rank\n    Of golden grain. And bids the new-born Greek\n    Old classic words with modern tongue to speak.\n\n    Homer withholds me, \u00c6schylus restrains,\n    \u201cHuman Euripides\u201d exhorts me--\u201cStay!\u201d\n    I was despoil\u00e8d once; strike off my chains,\n    Unsay the insult! Greece nor plots nor feigns,\n    Only withholds her, agonized, at bay,\n    But loyal to her hallowed cliffs and plains!\n\n\n\n\nTHE SINGING STONES\n\n \u201cRemember me, the Singing Stone ... for ... Ph\u0153bus ... laid on me his\n Delphic harp--thenceforth I am lyre-voiced; strike me lightly with a\n little pebble; and carry away witness of my boast.\u201d--_Greek Anthology._\n\n\n    Beyond brute Titan dissonance, black, bitter strains\n    Of Warfare; through the smitten fields of wheat;\n    Upon the bloody bridges, where the wains\n    Roll drone chords between marching soldier-feet;\n    Through mob-voice, robbed of cadence and of beat,\n    I hear the Stones of Sunion\n    Singing by the sea:\n\n    \u201cLift we on high our time-defying shafts!\n    Our white-wing on the promontory stays,\n    Our age-old glory from the Ancient wafts\n    Godward out of an old, blind, Pagan mood,\n    While in the surging blue the Islands brood\n    In dim, time-purpled haze.\u201d\n\n    Out of the din of sociologic strife,\n    Of hoarse-voiced men, embruted by their work,\n    Of women, low-intoning lesser life,\n    From the rich Theme, which modern voices shirk,\n    Where all the forced, half-harmonizings lurk,--\n    I hear the stones of Delphi\n    Singing in the rain:\n\n    \u201cBlack swell the mountains, guarding well the Cleft,\n    Clear spills the water, o\u2019er the fountain rim,\n    The worshipers are gone, the priests bereft.\n    Men keep no light upon the altar dim;\n    No Council meets, but ah, the hope is left,\n    The dream goes on, new voices chant the Hymn.\u201d\n\n    To the soft twilight of \u00c6sthetic ease,\n    Where a smile is no smile, a tear no tear;\n    Where the fruit has no seed, the wine no lees,\n    No strong song comes. Yet, faintly year by year,\n    \u2019Mid those who listen, wistful, and in fear,\n    I hear the stones of Bass\u00e6\n    Singing on the heights:\n\n    \u201cGrey comes the dawn upon the mountain crest,\n    Warm lie the vines on the Phigalian Hill;\n    The deities are gone, their secrets rest\n    Hidden by time. But still the Sun-God smites\n    Altar and soil, and richly thus requites\n    The farmers\u2019 faith, and all the fields fulfill.\u201d\n\n    And everywhere my wistful head is bowed,\n    Pensive, absorbed, to find significance,\n    I hear stone chorus; the immortal crowd\n    Of pillars round some vocal radiance--\n    Chant Spirit-Song of new inheritance--\n    I hear all Pagan Temples\n    Singing in the dawn:\n\n    \u201cLift we on high our columns shining white!\n    Our broad wings on the promontories stay;\n    For us forever was the world\u2019s first light,--\n    Ignorant God-seeking. Ye, that follow, may\n    Soar to a higher vision! \u2019mid the Pagan night.\n    We were the singers of a brighter Day.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE OLD QUEST\n\n \u201cFeed in joy thine own flock and look on thine own land.\u201d--_Greek\n Anthology._\n\n\n    \u201cFriend! hast thou seen the rosy mass\n    Of cyclamen along the pass\n      To Arcady?\n    Doth the green country sweep enlarge\n    Beneath the white cloud\u2019s floating barge?\n    Does the sun lift a gleaming targe\n      On Arcady?\n\n    \u201cHold.... Do the trees keep happy nests\n    Between the young leaves\u2019 trembling breasts\n      In Arcady?\n    Does running water laugh and sing,\n    Do butterflies waft wing-and-wing?\n    Spins the white moon her mystic ring\n      O\u2019er Arcady?\n\n    \u201cSpeak!--Are there greenwoods cool and dense,\n    Do flower-grails gleam out from thence\n      In Arcady?\n    Do pines the aisles and arches blur,\n    With frankincense and breaths of myrrh,\n    Veiling the happy forms that stir\n      Through Arcady?\n\n    \u201cThou seest that I am blind,\u201d--said he,\n    \u201cBut hast thou been where I would be\n      In Arcady?\n    Oh! didst thou see within the gate\n    The one who promised me to wait?\n    Stays she for me, though I come late\n      To Arcady?\n\n    \u201cI wonder that she doth not send\n    A clue to show the roads that trend\n      To Arcady--\n    But thou canst tell me. Does it rise\n    Empinnacled to azure skies?...\n    Thou sayst?... _None knoweth where it lies,\n      Fair Arcady!_\u201d\n\n    _\u2019Tis sunset and the end of day,\n    The roads are closed--so all men say--\n      To Arcady.\n    The birds and butterflies are fled;\n    The honey quaffed; the perfume shed;\n    The feet that used to dance are sped\n      From Arcady._\n\n    \u201cThe roads are closed?... Oh, not to me!\n    Thou seest that I am blind,\u201d said he.\n      \u201cAnd Arcady?...\n    Full well I know thou liest now,\n    Hast thou the world-mark on thy brow?\n    Hast thou no one to \u2019wait thee--thou?\n      In Arcady?\u201d\n\n    He wanders down the darkling way\n    The mute horizons watch him stray\n      Toward Arcady.\n    His feet are bleeding, he is blind,\n    He dreams of that he will not find,\n    But in his wide unconquered mind\n      Lives Arcady!\n\n\n\n\nTHE GODS ARE NOT GONE, BUT MAN IS BLIND\n\n\n    Over the hills the gods come walking,\n    Where the black pines draw their swords,\n    And the spell-bound leaves cease talking,\n    For the High-Priest sun comes stalking\n    And \u2019tis no time for words.\n\n    And oh! the gifts the gods are bringing--\n    Stretches of happy heath,\n    Jewels with souls, and flowers singing;\n    Smiling stars, and new hope springing\n    With the wing\u00e8d hope called Death!\n\n    Over the hills the pipes are playing,\n    And the gods come strong and fair.\n    Alas! they know not of the straying,\n    The faithlessness and bitter saying:\n    \u201cWe know no gods, nor care....\u201d\n\n    Over the hills--the day-sky kindles\n    On a blackened world of clods;\n    Dead and dry are the flaxless spindles,\n    The cruse is drained,--the fire dwindles ...\n    No worshipers for the gods!\n\n\n\n\nTHE SEA OF TIME\n\n\n(Sappho sings to Alc\u00e6us)\n\n    Only our few short hours,\n      For you and me;\n    Temples and groves and bowers,\n      And then--the Sea!\n\n    Only our finite word\n      For you and me,\n    Who knows what gods have heard\n      Under the Sea?\n\n    Love, though the gold moons wane\n      For you and me,\n    We shall not meet again\n      Down by the Sea.\n\n    Ours shall be hidden ways;\n      For you and me\n    Stretch the long separate days--\n      Mist on the Sea!\n\n    Artemis--will she say\n      For you and me\n    What Law we must obey\n      Moves in the Sea?\n\n    Moves, till the faces worn\n      By you and me,\n    Luminous, dream-forsworn\n      Change in the Sea?\n\n    Change, for unending tides\n      Bear you and me\n    And the Self in us glides\n      From Sea to Sea.\n\n    Love, shall the sailing souls\n      Of you and me\n    Float where new shore unrolls\n      Rimmed by the Sea?\n\n    Comes then the meeting place\n      For you and me?\n    Silence ... white bubbles trace\n      Foam on the Sea!\n\n\n\n\nON THE THOROUGHFARE\n\n\n    To-day I go to buy some dates\n    From Glyco\u2019s cart.\n    \u201cTen cents,\u201d my smiling fruitman states,\n    And then we part--\n    I to the mart,\n    He for the next fig-buyer waits!\n\n    Back to my world I go, its keen\n    Quick energy\n    And competitions sharp and mean,\n    Its flippancy,\n    And sophistry,\n    And tampering with things unclean;\n\n    But Glyco waits; he has ten cents;\n    And he has hope,\n    And back of him, antecedents\n    Give him such scope!\n    With his traditions\u2019 affluence\n    I cannot cope!\n\n\n\n\nAT P\u00c6STUM\n\n\n    The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,\n    A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,\n    The far blue reaches of Salerno\u2019s bay,\n    Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.\n\n    These are the caskets of the sun-sealed years;\n    \u2019Mid tides that ebb and flow, \u2019neath stars that set,\n    Deathless their grave and tranquil beauty ... yet\n    Buried in silence, in eternal tears.\n\n    Beneath these tympana the Dorians trod;\n    Here, Doric priests upon an alien shore\n    Made sacrifice, perhaps these myrtles wore,\n    And garlanded the offering to their god.\n\n    Demeter saw the bright libations spilled;\n    To Hermes leapt the scarlet through the fleece.\n    Amid these columns moved the gods of Greece;\n    These lofty spaces with the p\u00e6an thrilled.\n\n    This, centuries ago. Demeter now\n    Is known no more. Poseidon, too, hath fled.\n    \u2019Twould seem that Pan and Hermes both are dead;\n    No Nike springs upon a Grecian prow.\n\n    Yet is this sacred pause, this pillared calm\n    Still stirred by whispers from Tyrrhenian waves\n    While near the shadows of these architraves\n    Lie smiling shores of terraced fruit and palm.\n\n    And springing from Demeter\u2019s altar site,\n    Where the old dream of gods hath died away,\n    And the Greek torch burned down to ashen grey,\n    There blooms a star shape, mystical and white.\n\n    One mystical white star! Oh! Pagan fire\n    Whose temples stand, whose gods have been forgot,\n    One goddess holds in memory this spot,\n    Else why should Nature thus in bloom aspire?\n\n    Why else in this dim fane the sea intone,\n    And sun send fire to the altars bare,\n    And moss and lichen trace strange scripture, here\n    The lizards flash like symbols o\u2019er the stone?\n\n    The low, flat marshland, myrtle overrun,\n    A palm, a Roman wall that skirts the way,\n    The far blue reaches of Salerno\u2019s bay,\n    Then ... the three temples standing in the sun.\n\n\n\n\nPHIDIAS\n\nA DRAMATIC EPISODE\n\n_Dungeon in an Athenian prison; a small grated window near the ceiling\nshows a patch of blue sky. The scene discloses Phidias, prostrate and\nmanacled. In the dusk of the cell lingers the_ JAILER.\n\n\n    JAILER (_curiously_). What sayst thou, Phidias, who art accused?\n      The old plaint, snarling that thou art abused?\n\n    PHIDIAS (_lifting his head wearily_).\n      What do I answer? Yea! what thing thou wilt!\n      What care I for this legendary guilt?\n      Who makes or unmakes Unity? Accused?\n      Why, any fool accuses. It amused\n      The enemies of Pericles to stab\n      At him through me. Let gossips spread their blab,\n      The sea is just as broad, the sky as clear\n      And I as blameless.\n\n    JAILER (_persisting_). But that brought thee here,\n      Took thee from royal favor, once the dear\n      Adviser, friend of Pericles. It seems\n      Here is the end of all thy mighty dreams;\n      \u2019Twas Pericles who made thee, and there lurks\n      His royal patronage about thy works.\n\n    PHIDIAS (_sullenly_). So reason vulgar minds; as well to say\n      Heph\u00e6stus made me, manacled this way,\n      Hammered to fever, bent to twisted woe.\n      No, clown! no tyrant brought this overthrow,\n      Nor my once vivid glory, but the fate\n      That overtakes the artist; whether late,\n      Slow, poisoning, by deadly world-born things,\n      Or early blight of strong imaginings\n      Too fervent for his frame. Athens is free\n      From every blame. Not Pericles made me!\n\n    JAILER (_wagging his head obstinately_).\n      \u2019Twas love of Pericles that cast thee here,\n      Ungeniused thee, put thee to rot in drear\n      Murk of this den; and if not he who made\n      Thee what thou wast--aloof and haughty blade\n      Fellow I watched in Agora, as one\n      Treading on air, thy white himation\n      Streaming like wings back of thy eager form,\n      As thy swift sandal moved among the swarm\n      Of merchants, gamesters, thieves; while deep gaze drank\n      Of something that was neither wealth nor rank--\n      Why then,--who made thee? for that thou hast fame\n      \u2019Tis granted, when the rabble speak thy name.\n\n    PHIDIAS (_moving restlessly, clenches his hands, answering\n      impatiently_). I made me, fool, made this unfinished self,\n      Nourished me as a child, in happy health,\n      Fostered the thirst my mother gave to me\n      With her electric milk. Ecstatic tree\n      Charmides planted, I did grow and thrive,\n      Adding to that, what Greece alone could give!\n      Studied cult-statues, studied Xoana, saw\n      Paralysis in Polygnotus\u2019 law,\n      Wondered that Hegias and Hageladas wrought\n      Hardly beyond the cold Egyptian thought.\n      Out of their almond-eyed archaic things,\n      New butterfly, my free Athena springs!\n      My Zeus Olympian came to my prayer\n      To see a god. I saw, then made him there!\n      (_To jailer._) Poor ragged dolt, clanking thy silly keys,\n      Did Pericles make me as I made these?\n      Did Athens tell me what a man must do\n      Who sees instinctive _life_, and sees it true?\n\n    JAILER (_impudently_).\n      How now! What saw\u2019st thou that _I_ might not see?\n      A rosy nymph at bath! Aphrodite\n      Caught in a net of foam? Hermes\u2019 disguise?\n      Come now, what is this power within thine eyes?\n\n    PHIDIAS (_speaking dreamily as if to himself_).\n      What is the power? Life! The heroic thing\n      Streaming magnetic from a sea-gull\u2019s wing,\n      That light in stars, in waves, in children\u2019s eyes,\n      In green plane-tree, or in deep, sphinx-like skies\n      Of unknown countries, where the grasses blow\n      Unseen of man; where flower-laced streamlets flow\n      Past mystic herbs, Demeter loves to keep\n      Secretly growing on the mountain steep.\n      I saw the curves of fruits, saw Grecian sails\n      Take fire-blue seas; saw the soft, misty veils\n      Of maidens wrap their limbs, saw horses, shields,\n      Victories, warriors, priests, and battlefields;\n      Each man a poem; women each a jar\n      Filled with soft, psychic flame, an avatar\n      Shaped to a noble outline, lofty truth\n      From some great vital Source--\n      (_The Sculptor breaks off suddenly, scrutinizing the jailer\n      and continuing._)\n                                     Rascal, uncouth\n      As are thy words and gestures, I can see\n      Some trace of life-light.--Gods! were I but free--\n\n    JAILER (_interrupting with smug complacency_).\n      Which, proper thanks to Theseus, thou art not,\n      Thou light-fingered; thou dingy-robed sot!\n      Carving thy way to treason, selling State\n      For greasy coin, with Hermes as thy mate\n      Slanting his profile on it. Dreamer,--thou!\n      \u201cBronze-worker.\u201d Yea! By Dionysus! How\n      Thou workedst guilty things for Athens\u2019 shame,\n      Thinking to hide behind thy Patron\u2019s name!\n      Athens, the famous city; thou, a worm,\n      Coiling in earth, no four-eyed marble herm\n      Will mark. Our furry worms that make the silk\n      Munch the mulberry; but thy crafty ilk\n      Munch the fine gold, for sickly marble shapes\n      Of statues stoned by every Jack-a-napes;\n      \u2019Twas thou, worm, coiled \u2019round thy princely friend,\n      And gained War-Treasure for thy braggart\u2019s end.\n\n    PHIDIAS (_sadly musing_). The fool is glib. His lesson he has got\n      From Agora and Propyl\u00e6a, not\n      The polished utterance of Bema\u2019s Hill.\n      But that crowd\u2019s word, that bodes or good or ill\n      From a fierce thirst; sneering pitiless breath,\n      Freezing a man, or scorching him to death.\n\n    JAILER (_scratching his head, expectorates knowingly and argues_).\n      Why are thy statues costly? with the urns\n      Of Dipylon Gate, the passer-by discerns\n      Good lusty statues, made by Such-an-one,\n      Quite comely, they, and all of porous stone;\n      Why use Pentelic marble? so much gold?\n      Thou dreamer-schemer, sculptor overbold?\n\n    PHIDIAS (_with a moan turns from his tormentor to face the stone\n      wall, muttering_). \u201cDreamer,\u201d he called me. Is it by that name\n      My curse comes? Verily; I dreamed my shame,\n      My rich accusings. Dreamed brook-flowing folds\n      Of draperies, dreamed my young hero-moulds,\n      Dreamed men who sat their horses, as they rode\n      Clouds over seas, dreamed Panathenaic ode\n      In singing-rhythm round the Parthenon;\n      The frieze and metopes of Theseion;\n      Dreamed the sweet-bodied girls, whose maiden strength\n      Poise vase and basket all the Temple length.\n      Dreamed the slow, garlanded, portentous beasts,\n      Led by the veiled and sacrificial priests;\n      Dreamed the young, leaping horseman\u2019s haughty ease\n      Pediment grouped, or filleted in frieze.\n      Was it a dream only to-day shall know?\n      Lives it no longer than this artist\u2019s throe?\n      If that must be, then butterfly most drear\n      I sink back to the worm-thing crawling here.\n\n    JAILER (_having curiously listened, now struts forward and faces the\n      Sculptor. He eyes him stupidly and shakes his finger at him_).\n      Why, were it not for Pericles who gave\n      Thee marble, color, gold for statues brave,--\n      Poured out his coffers,--we should amply be\n      Equipped for Persia. Bronze and ivory\n      Changed back to drachm\u00e6, all the sacred rock\n      Would stand as staunch, to the barbaric shock,\n      As when Pisistratus, with hardy race,\n      Made the Acropolis his fortress place.\n      And look ye, with that gold Athena wears\n      (Filched from State monies, for thy stone affairs),\n      We could plant ships in Pir\u00e6us, array\n      Our strength to Corinth, where the Persians may\n      Once more with envy strike.--But, thou wouldest bring\n      To a State\u2019s need thy stone imagining!\n      Fie! but for gold, thy dreams would be as vague\n      As fat my wife scrapes from altar-dreg,\n      And boils to stuff to make my chiton white;\n      Ethereal substance, wind-shaken, alight\n      With lambent iridescence, very fine,\n      From the amphora gushing forth like wine.\n      But look you, in a moment, just a trace\n      Of foam is all that froths from out the vase,\n      And nothing\u2019s left but the damp greasy lees;\n      So knave, with thee, without thy Pericles!\n\n    THE SCULPTOR (_with scornful amusement to himself_).\n      He mouths that name as if it were a mask,\n      Through which a stupid actor says his task,\n      Forgets, mistakes, yet struts around the place\n      Thinking the mask gives him a certain grace.\n\n (_Phidias wearily rises and stretches himself, the jailer meanwhile\n curiously observing him._)\n\n    PHIDIAS (_abruptly_).\n      Slave, thou art childish, many a name like this\n      Links close to art, for its own ego-bliss,\n      To have possession, be the master, who\n      Owns, keeps, controls, the work we artists do.\n      Pericles views the height of Athens\u2019 power,\n      Pomp of Acropolis, where every hour\n      In golden, crimson, blue, and creamy dye\n      Ecstatic marble forms sing to the sky,\n      And hears them sing! (This for his kingly wage:)\n      \u201c_Nikomen_, Athens, Pericles, Golden Age!\u201d\n\n    JAILER (_looking at the prisoner with heavy curiosity_).\n      And what, by Hades, _is_ the thing they sing?\n\n    PHIDIAS (_turns impulsively to answer; then a fierce reticence makes\n      him draw himself up and turn away_).\n      Torture me not with thy coarse questioning;\n      My sorrowing answers, for the ribaldries\n      Of bath or games: \u201cThus spluttered Phidias,\n      Maddened at being walled up.\u201d So the crass\n      Idling crowd, jostling in brainless mass,\n      Gapes, sneers, and marvels, at my grim defeat;\n      Mud covers stately names where rascals meet.\n\n    JAILER (_with offended dignity_).\n      Well, then, good-night. I leave thee to thy prayers.\n      No friends, no patron, for thy artist-wares,\n      Unless, indeed (_grinning back of his hand_)\n        Zeus showers thee with gold\n        Like Dana\u0113.\n\n    PHIDIAS (_steadily and reverently_). Yea, most mighty Zeus can hold\n      Me to my service, to that Ageless Thing\n      Higher than he, called Beauty.\n\n(_He breaks off suddenly, goes eagerly to the now departing jailer,\nsaying authoritatively_.)\n\n                                      Fellow, bring\n      Here to my cell, some wax, a tool or two,\n      Some clay, a lump, stuck in thy cap will do--\n      A hand\u2019s length of the white, Pentelic stone,\n      From where it sleeps within the mountain, grown\n      Pregnant by streams and flowers, for some birth\n      Of wing\u00e9d dream, out of hypnotic earth.\n\n    JAILER (_backing mockingly away, mimics coarsely_).\n      A jewel, a star, a little bit of wax!\n      Some tiny thing this mighty genius lacks!\n      That pearl, perchance, Aspasia\u2019s bosom decks,\n      Or blood-red stones hung round Hetair\u00e6-necks!\n\n    PHIDIAS (_beseechingly_). Only some clay, man, in the dark my touch\n      Will fashion thee a goddess-image, such\n      As still they place in niches, who obey\n      \u201cSea-wards, oh! Myst\u00e6,\u201d on Eleusis-Way.\n      I\u2019ll mould thee woman\u2019s hand, or horse\u2019s head,\n      A dreaming faun, Marsyas as he bled;\n      A babe\u2019s round, dimpled, saucy little back;\n      A vine-wreathed satyr, with his grape-filled sack.\n\n    JAILER (_pompously drawing aloof_).\n      By Dionysus! that were illy done.\n      Artist is one thing. State another. Shun\n      Thee and punish thee, doth Will of State,\n      Who art no artist more, but he who late\n      Sculptor to Pericles, now is a knave,\n      Who sits and twists his thumbs in prison-cave!\n\n (_The_ JAILER _finishes by an insulting gesture and departs_. PHIDIAS\n _going to the heavy door listens to his retreating footsteps. He draws\n a long sigh and, standing with his back to the door, looks up at the\n patch of blue sky, in silence. At last he speaks._)\n\n    Thus they leave Phidias, worker in the bronze,\n    Breather of life! breaker of chisel-bonds!\n    He is, they think, a man, a common thing--\n    All yellow, freckled, thin-blooded; they wring\n    His soul, because of policies.\n    Make him a sacrifice to fallacies;\n    \u201cDrop him,\u201d they say, in any dungeon now;\n    \u201cGods, grant in time his traitor\u2019s neck shall bow\n    To death, for that he trifled with the State!\n    Strike his face from the shield where he dared mate\n    That face with Pericles,\u201d--Oh! lofty Hill\n    High Sacred Rock, where sun-bathed columns thrill;\n    Proud statue-gleaming, gold Acropolis;\n    Dreamed I so high, to fall as low as--this?\n    Athens, I made thee out of my heart\u2019s blood;\n    Rising by ages, from Time\u2019s \u2019whelming flood.\n    Deucalion-fashion, soar my stones that sing\n    The beauty of this age\u2019s visioning.\n    Out of Iktinos\u2019 soul the Parthenon grew--\n    Those glorious Doric shafts, that taper through\n    The blaze of morn or eve. Athena\u2019s shrine,\n    Lodging her ivory maidenhood, is mine!\n    \u2019Twas I who gave the Lemnian her life,\n    Knew god-like action whether peace or strife.\n    Knew how a god would stand, breathe, smile, or frown,\n    And by that knowledge, deities\u2019 renown,\n    I was a god-creator. Yet I lie\n    Here in befoul\u00e8d darkness, with the sky\n    Still burning blue upon the mountain tops\n    Surrounding Athens; where the Sun-God stops\n    Of evening, all his golden fingers laid\n    On marble chords of rhythmic colonnade,\n    And plays so strange, so Delphic-high a strain,\n    That hopes ethereal fill men\u2019s hearts again.\n    Oh! Athens, marble glory, is it naught\n    Phidias lived, and dreamed, and planned, and taught?\n\n (_In his agony the Sculptor buries his head in his hands. There is a\n long silence, suddenly broken by the alighting of a_ CRICKET _upon the\n small grated window; the_ CRICKET _keeps up a steady trilling and is\n not at first noticed by the Sculptor_.)\n\n\nTHE CRICKET\n\n    Greet, greet, greet,\n    Pan with hymning sweet.\n    Wine and corn are here,\n    Grapes and honey clear;\n    Olives, purple-black,\n    Burst from tawny sack.\n    Through Olympian night\n    Temples glimmer white\n    Stars their tangled vines\n    Wreathe around the shrines.\n    Shepherds all alone\n    Under mountain tree,\n    By the midnight sea,\n    Shall pipe songs of thee\n    Singer in the stone!\n\n (PHIDIAS _listening intently, passes his hand over his eyes, creeps\n nearer under the grating, straining his gaze upward_.)\n\n    Prometheus! but I think this minstrel wrings\n    Wise melody from gauzy zither-wings,\n    A healing balm, like to the lustral wave\n    At Delphi, comes my broken soul to lave.\n    For, as he perches with his roundelay,\n    Methinks he counsels me; not for to-day\n    Only is artist-pride and feverish bliss--\n    Perchance my spirit still may suffer this\n    Infamy, yet go singing down the years!\n\n (_The Sculptor pauses doubtfully. Still looking upward, he presses\n closer beneath the little window._)\n\n    Answer me, Cricket, are my stricken tears,\n    My empty hands, proof of a thing to be,\n    That I dreamed true? If Beauty nourished me,\n    Mothered and saved; shall I in ages more\n    Stand firm and proud, telling what guise she wore\n    These days? For with young Myron I would hold\n    There is a law of Beauty, which, controlled\n    By men\u2019s stern truth, becomes a sacred thing,\n    Expanded from our holy cherishing.\n    It is not static, cold, but lives and grows\n    Out of the All of Life, the artist knows.\n\n (_The_ CRICKET _after another silence, again chirps. This time the\n rhythm is feebler and grows fainter and fainter, as the Sculptor, face\n upwards, eagerly listens_.)\n\n\nTHE CRICKET\n\n    Sweet, sweet, sweet,\n    Praise is full and meet;\n    O\u2019er the architrave,\n    Beautiful and brave,\n    Strong and good and fair,\n    Poise in hallowed air.\n    In the violet clime,\n    In the winter rime,\n    On the poppied steep,\n    In the passes deep,\n    All the temples know\n    Paths that Greece shall go\n    Toward posterities\n    Far beyond the seas!\n    Far as man is known,\n    Thou shalt speak to men\n    Far beyond thy ken,\n    Beyond tongue or pen,\n    Singer in the stone!\n\n (PHIDIAS _at the close of the lilt lifts both arms appealingly. The_\n CRICKET _is silent a moment_.)\n\n    PHIDIAS. Hist!--the green minstrel, god-of-little-things,\n      Thinketh perchance he strums his lyric wings\n      On dark Hymettus, where bees sip so long,\n      They lose their way in all the flower throng,\n      And many a little waxy dot of fuzz\n      Is caught in honey-prison. (_Whimsically._) Thou dost buzz\n      Cricket, as loud as I, encased\n      In this hard prison, bitter to my taste.\n\n (_The_ CRICKET _after a long pause trills for the last time_.)\n\n    Fleet, fleet, fleet,\n    The ways of fame are sweet.\n    A marble head of dreams\n    Conquers the world, meseems.\n    Beautiful vases tell\n    How happy peoples dwell.\n    Beautiful bodies speak\n    New message to the weak.\n    Greece adown the years\n    Is the song of Seers.\n    Kora still intones\n    Nike still responds:\n    \u201cWielder of the wands.\u201d\n    \u201cWorker in the Bronze.\u201d\n    \u201cSinger in the Stones.\u201d\n\n    SCULPTOR (_suddenly and rapturously_).\n      Xaire! thou little herald, Xaire! thou\n      Hast cheered me, saved me! See my courage now!\n      What foul, damp cell can ever hold me here?\n      What slander stain my work of yester-year?\n      Upon the Hill my glowing children call\n      To the unborn of Artists; to the All,\n      Great Fusion of the races, who\n      Shall yet unite, some holy thing to do,\n      Before this strange world on its journey far\n      In trackless space shall move an empty star.\n      For portico and frieze and vase and fane.\n      Fountain and stele, that our utmost main\n      Our utterest patience brought to perfect whole\n      Will cast strange, spellful seed, and where the soul\n      Of art is known, its free, broad, ardent wing,\n      \u201cGreece,\u201d will be whispered like a sacred thing!\n      (_To the_ CRICKET.) Yea, Yea! thou little herald, \u201cwing\u00e8d pipe,\u201d\n      So I\u2019ll indite thee in thy wisdom ripe--\n      Now will I write my comrade young and lithe\n      P\u00e6onius, how I imprisoned writhe.\n      Yet for his comfort will I softly tell\n      The cricket message to my dreary cell.\n      Luck! that I hid the chalk lump in my sleeve!\n      Joy that I have the parchment! Who\u2019ll believe\n      That this is _all_ he hath, who was the friend\n      Of Pericles brought to this bitter end!\n\n (_The Sculptor with the parchment on his knee, busies himself in\n writing. Occasionally he pauses and reads aloud what he has written._)\n\n    P\u00e6onius, good comrade, merry Greek,\n    Walking Olympian groves, watching the freak\n    Of scarlet-flowered pomegranate vine\n    Tasting the cool jugs filled with pine-tree wine,\n    Fruits like warm bowls of amber nectar hung\n    And figs from branches o\u2019er the streamlets flung--\n    Read and reflect, and if thou com\u2019st to see\n    Some supple scheme to set thy brother free,\n    Act on it swiftly; only be advised\n    _Pericles\u2019 day is over_. What he prized\n    Was proud display, but what the people want\n    Is arms and ships that they may proudly vaunt.\n    (Since Marathon no Greek knows how to smile\n    Passing the Soros\u2019 valiant hero-pile,\n    And still they say in Sparta, athletes wait\n    To teach barbarians how Greece is great.)\n    I, the poor Sculptor, lived too near the throne,\n    Therefore, I lie now on the dungeon stone!\n\n (PHIDIAS\u2019S _gaze wanders, he becomes absorbed, intense, then once more\n he applies himself to the letter_.)\n\n    Last summer, passing Sunion, my sail\n    Red-burning down the stormy silver trail\n    O\u2019er clouded blue, I humbly turned my sight\n    Up to that white fane, on the bronz\u00e8d height,\n    All its upspringing columns touched with sun\n    As the slow golden clouds walked high upon\n    Wave buttressed paths, to purple Cyclades\n    Those mystic islands of Saronic seas.\n    And as the molten sapphire round me sprayed\n    O\u2019er the eye-painted prow, I humbly prayed\n    Poseidon, that Pir\u00e6us I might gain;\n    Offered no cock, no vase, oil to contain,\n    But vowed a frieze from my young pupil\u2019s skill,\n    New, daring sculpture for the Sea-God\u2019s Hill\n    In Parian marble, calm and haughty white,\n    To gleam for sailors passing in the night.\n    How I was timid then! who after dared\n    Dispute with Pericles, and proudly shared\n    His vast ambitions for that golden realm--\n    That Athens, which the vulgar overwhelm.\n    That I did promise, wilt thou execute?\n    So will these singing stones, out of the mute\n    Parian marble, form immortal choir\n    Chanting \u201cPoseidon\u201d to the ocean\u2019s lyre.\n\n (PHIDIAS _pauses once more. He draws a long sigh, then continues\n writing._)\n\n    Well, brother-artist, here I agonized,\n    Until a cricket, by great Zeus apprised,\n    Perched on the window-bar and chirped a thing\n    Wise as Athena, took away the sting\n    Of the world\u2019s serpent-sayings. Friend, I give\n    Faith to the cricket message while I live.\n\n (_The Sculptor, head in hands ponders deeply then again resumes\n writing._)\n\n    He trilled, P\u00e6onius, a theme like this:\n    What we _do_ lives, though after all the bliss\n    Of our own living, must our bodies pass!\n    Hast ever caught the perfume of sweet grass\n    Dying beneath the sickle? Our breath goes\n    Thus to the gods indifferent, \u2019mid the snows\n    High on Parnassos\u2019 or Kiona\u2019s crest,\n    Where mountain after mountain heaves a breast,\n    Black, billow-deep, sky-ranging, in a chain\n    Tumultuously, serene around the plain.\n    But what we make of beauty keeps its power\n    Down the long years, from the conception\u2019s hour.\n    For mark ye, lad, I never sensed my work,\n    But did it all unconscious; now in murk,\n    In prison black, I see it flying forth,\n    The strong wings of my friezes! All the worth\n    Of Laurion silver in Colossi paid\n    And proud Athena, ivory o\u2019er laid.\n    Gold-sandalled, springing, mellow-marble feet,\n    Olive-crowned heads in pensive bending, sweet\n    Backs, limbs, and bosoms! Noble eye and tress,\n    Caught in the dream of their own loveliness--\n    I see it all, so calm! \u201cNothing too much,\u201d\n    Tunics in solemn folds, majesty such\n    As comes with purity; things strong and free;\n    White to the sky and naked to the sea.\n    Women and men that move adown the days\n    Out of the forest deep, through shimmering maize,\n    In fructifying suns, in cooling dews,--\n    All tranquil, noble, filled with God, or Muse\n    Of deathless Greece.--Yea, all my strife,\n    My will, my soul, was this portrayal--Life!\n\n (_Moved by what he has written, the Sculptor gets to his feet and\n paces feverishly his narrow cell. He goes on writing as he walks and\n reading aloud._)\n\n    I now see by prophetic cricket-voice\n    That Life is deathless, that my works rejoice\n    For all rejoicing. Brother mine\n    We carve for worlds to come. Beyond the line\n    Of horizons, untravelled, rise the lands\n    Hungry of spirit, waiting at our hands\n    Bread of True Vision. Yea, where rusty wars,\n    Hot blood of nation-struggle, stain these shores,\n    Women and men shall bleed with sacrifice\n    To a dead god, called Progress, and the Vice\n    Of chance-worship, on sickly, pampered knees\n    And counting gold in languors of disease.\n    Can\u2019st picture these, coming to look upon\n    My glorious horsemen of the Parthenon?\n    Seeing your Nikes tread triumphant air?\n    Our marble dreams forever beauty-clean\n    And dark heroic bronzes stained with green,\n    By fire and sword and water all unspoiled,\n    Their perfect limbs\u2019 clear candor unassoiled?\n    Mark ye, those stranger eyes shall take and take,\n    Still the thirst grow and still the joy to slake\n    From Old-World beauty. Till we sculptors stand\n    Supreme World-life within our pulseless hand!\n    Think, lad, when father\u2019s little ones shall tell\n    How Greeks saw, felt, and struggled, conquered, fell!\n    Fear not, P\u00e6onius, our spirits win\n    Out of this age to call all ages kin.\n\n (PHIDIAS, _sighing as one relieved of a burden, pauses awhile, then\n writes a few more lines_.)\n\n    Smile not upon this, friend--All fancy--Yea!\n    But, by the Etruscans, gone but yesterday\n    To Italy, and now established there;\n    By Dorians, building temples by the fair\n    Purple Tyrennian, so I think\n    Greek soul o\u2019erflows, as over fountain-brink,\n    And that we circle out and out, our creed\n    Begetting world-dream for an unborn breed,\n    Ardent posterities!--Thus do I then\n    Bid now farewell to my own race of men!\n    And for a future permanence, new clime,\n    Lift statues in the peristyles of Time\n    And trust my message, where that message seeks\n    Its own fulfillment. Hail to the happy Greeks\n    Hail to that Race; keen, wistful, passionate,\n    That shall know Greece, Athens, the gods, the State!\n\n (_The paper hangs listlessly in the hand of_ PHIDIAS, _who sits in\n revery, lost to all around him_.)\n\n    JAILER (_entering_). Rise! thou infamous sculptor! A decree!\n      Follow! Thy haughty judges have demanded thee!\n\n (PHIDIAS _wearily rising, stares stupidly at him, then looks up to the\n little window where the_ CRICKET _perched and makes a slight gesture\n of salute and farewell_.)\n\n    PHIDIAS.                                        \u201cSo be it.\u201d\n      (_Hastily aside._) See this coin? Of all good fees\n      The best, with head of high Themistocles--\n      Thine--if thy hand this simple scroll wilt bear\n      To the great sculptor at Olympia.\n      To give to him my farewell words and tears,\n      (_The Sculptor pauses, looking unseeingly at the_ JAILER _and\n      adding softly_.) As I pass outward--down the faithful years!\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE\n\n\n    As children keep\n    Some spiraled shell or crystal crusted stone\n    For wonder and for solace, when alone\n    They fall asleep,\n\n    So do I soft caress\n    And guard through days of World-dark such a charm\n    And cherish from indifference and harm\n    One loveliness.\n\n    And every Grecian vase\n    And sculptured fragment to my eyes doth mean\n    Life, calm and balanced, simple, and serene,\n    Transcending Race!\n\n\n\n\n                          Transcriber\u2019s Notes\n\nObvious punctuation errors and omissions have been corrected.\n\nPage 37: \u201cgrim Thermoypl\u00e6\u201d changed to \u201cgrim Thermopyl\u00e6\u201d\n\nPage 108: \u201cthe rythm is feebler\u201d changed to \u201cthe rhythm is feebler\u201d","title":"Greek wayfarers, and other poems","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":14982}