| |
| YES, yes, ’t is Greece! full many a fane | |
| Around me gleams, as white | |
| As when it gladdened cape or plain | |
| The first time with its light; | |
| And living choirs, far-eyed and virgin, | 5 |
| Once more through Time’s old shade emerging, | |
| With dew-brushed sandal and soft sound | |
| Salute the dedicated ground. | |
| |
| Each hill of asphodel and bays | |
| Sufficient deems its height | 10 |
| If steep enough its arch to raise | |
| A temple into light. | |
| From cape to cape, across the deep | |
| The “winged Pines” in panic sweep,— | |
| Among their forest-sires so ran | 15 |
| Shy wood-nymphs in the days of Pan! | |
| |
| In every bay the yearning billows | |
| Swell up, as proud as when | |
| White Nereids slid from purple pillows | |
| Under old Homer’s ken. | 20 |
| Above them still the Acacia throws | |
| The warm shower of her sun-touched snows | |
| Profusely as when Zephyr first | |
| Deflowered the blooms himself had nursed. | |
| |
| Those theatres the white cliffs gird, | 25 |
| Those hollows gray and wide, | |
| With tamarisk feathered, and moss-furred, | |
| Those blue rifts far descried, | |
| Those sinuous streams that blushing wander | |
| Through labyrinthine oleander, | 30 |
| Those crocus mounds, that wind-flower hill,— | |
| Hail, ancient land! ’t is Hellas still! | |
| |
| Range beyond range the mountains rise; | |
| Smooth platform, and meet stage | |
| If demigods for chariot prize | 35 |
| Fraternal strife should wage. | |
| Glad clouds are launched along the wind, | |
| As though each snowy tent enshrined | |
| Olympian choirs borne lightly by | |
| With sound of spheral melody. | 40 |
| |
| Behold that goat yon rift beneath, | |
| Eying those rocks pine-cloven! | |
| Nor lacks yon mound its living wreath | |
| Of goatherds dance-inwoven, | |
| Now measuring forth with Attic grace | 45 |
| (Like figures round a sculptured vase) | |
| The accent of some mythic song, | |
| Now hurled, a Bacchic group, along. | |
| |
| That old man ’neath the palm who sits | |
| Trolls loud a merry lay; | 50 |
| Round him as genial fancy flits | |
| As when his month was May. | |
| Still from the nectared air he quaffs | |
| As happy health, as gayly laughs, | |
| As when he clomb yon breeze-swept hill | 55 |
| And see, those maidens fly him still! | |
| |
| Yon mighty ilex, vast and grave, | |
| Flings far its restless shadow; | |
| But through its trunk, a windowed cave, | |
| Long lights divide the meadow: | 60 |
| Its roots all round like serpents creep, | |
| And honey-dews its branches steep: | |
| Thus beamed Dodona’s oak afar | |
| Fawn-haunted and oracular. | |
| |
| What vale was that wherein the Nine | 65 |
| Were used with harmony to play? | |
| Between the juniper and vine | |
| They roam each vale to-day! | |
| What stream was that o’er which, flower-wreathed, | |
| Her passion Aphrodité breathed? | 70 |
| Each lilied bank that stays each rill | |
| From that wild breath is quivering still! | |
| |
| Yon children chasing the wild bees | |
| Have lips as full and fair | |
| As Plato had, or Sophocles, | 75 |
| When bees sought honey there. | |
| But song of bard or sage’s lore | |
| Those fields ennoble now no more: | |
| It is not Greece,—it must not be,— | |
| And yet, look up,—the land is free! | 80 |
| |
| I gazed round Marathon. The plain | |
| In peaceful sunshine slept; | |
| Eternal Sabbath there her reign | |
| Inviolably kept: | |
| “Is this the battle-field?” I cried. | 85 |
| An eagle from on high replied | |
| With shade far cast and clangor shrill | |
| “Yes, yes,—’t is Hellas, Hellas still!” | |
| |
