APOSTROPHE TO GREECE[1]From the Parthenon(INSCRIBED TO THE GREEK PEOPLE ON THE SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR INDEPENDENCE)I
O land of sage and stoic— Of human deeds heroic, Of heroes' deeds divine! What braggart of the nations Shall scorn thy proud narrations— Thou who hast named the stars from thy Olympian line!
In spite of Moslem crime Thou livest! Hungry Time Can but the dead devour. Though asphodel hath strewed This marble solitude, The silence thrills with life, the ruins rise in power.
Yon sea's imperial vastness Was once thy friend and fastness; By many a curving strand, 'Twixt purple capes, on edges Of seaward-looking ledges, Rose the white cities sown by thy adventurous hand.
Nor couldst thou think of these As lonely colonies Wherewith rich Corinth lined The West, while Dorian sails Outrode Ægean gales; Nay, suburbs were they all, molds of Athenian mind.
Then could thy galleys pass From Tyre to Acragas, By Grecian islands gray That dreamed of Athens' brow, And gaily to the prow Harnessed the pawing winds to seek some Attic bay.
Here to Athene's feast, From West, from North, from East— Through Jason's fabled strait Or round Malea's rock— The homesick sails would flock, Oft with an Odyssey of peril to relate.
And what exultant stir When the swart islander, Bound for the festal week, First saw Colonna's crest Give back the glowing West Far past Ægina's shore and her prophetic peak!
I hear his cheery cries Though Time between us lies More wide than sea and land. The gladness that he brings Thrills in the song he sings, Beaching his welcome craft on Phaleron's level strand.
O harbor of delight! Strike the torn sail—to-night On Attic soil again! When joy is free to slaves What though the swarming waves Follow each other down like the generations of men!
Now, for a time, to war And private hate a bar Of sacred armistice; Even in the under-world Shall the rough winds be furled That tell of wrangling shades that crowd the courts of Dis,
'T is Peace shall bring the green For Merit's brow. What scene, O Athens, shall be thine! Till from Parnassus' height Phœbus' reluctant light Lingers along Hymettus' fair and lofty line.
With dance and song and game And oratory's flame Shall Hellas beat and swell, Till, olive-crowned, in pride The envied victors ride, Fellows to those whose fame the prancing marbles tell,
O antique time and style, Return to us awhile Bright as thy happy skies! Silent the sounds that mar: Like music heard afar The harmony endures while all the discord dies.
Not yet the cloister-shade Fell on a world afraid, Morbid, morose—the alloy Found greater than the gold Of life. Like Nature old Thou still didst sing and show the sanity of joy.
Thine is that wisdom yet That Age from Youth must get, Age pay to Youth in kind. Oh, teach our anxious days Through thy serener ways How by the happy heart to keep the unclouded mind.
II
But thou wert Freedom's too As well as Joy's. She drew From every mountain breast An air that could endure No foreign foe—so pure That Lycabettus neighbors the Corinthian crest.
Nor was thy love of life For thee alone. Thy strife Was for the race, no less. Thee, to whom wrong is done While wrong confronts the sun, The oppressor cannot crush, nor teach thee to oppress.
By thee for lands benighted Was Freedom's beacon lighted That now enstars the earth. Welcome the people's hour! Passed is the monarch's power, Dread waits not on his death that trembled at his birth.
As down a craggy steep Albanian torrents leap Impetuous to the sea— Such was thy ancient spirit, Still thine. Who that inherit Hatred of tyranny inherit not from thee?
Look to the West and see Thy daughter, Italy— Fathered by Neptune bold On Cumæ's sheltered strand (Forgot but for the hand That saved to Art her sibyl many-named and old);
That temple-sated soil, Whose altar-smoke would coil To hide the Avernian steep, Grows the same harvest now— Best increase of the plow, Fair Freedom, of thy seed, sown for the world to reap.
Though regal Rome display The triumphs of her day; Though Florence, laurel-hung, Tell how she held the van In the slow march of man— Greek was the path they trod, Greek was the song they sung.
Look farther west and there Behold thy later heir, Child of thy Jove-like mind— Fair France. How hath she kept The watch while others slept? Hath Wisdom hastened on while Justice lagged behind?
Like thee, full well she knows Through what maternal throes New forms from olden come; Her arts, her temples, speak A glory that is Greek, And filially her heart turns to the ancestral home.
For her no backward look Into the bloody book Of kings. Thrice-rescued land! Her furrowed graves bespeak A nobler fate: to seek In service of the world again the world's command.
She in whose skies of peace Arise new auguries To strengthen, cheer, and guide— When nations in a horde Draw the unhallowed sword, O Memory, walk, a warning specter, at her side!
Among thy debtor lands, See, grateful England stands; Who at thy ranging feet Learned how to carry Law Into the jungle's maw, And tempers unto Man or cold or desert heat.
All that thou daredst she dares Till now thy name she bears— Mother of Colonies. What if thy glorious Past She should restore at last, And clothe in new renown the dream of Pericles!
If she but lean to thee Once more thy North shall be Uplifted from the dust. Mother of noble men, Thy friends of sword and pen, England, though slow to justice, shall again be just.
And now from our new land Beyond two seas, a hand! Our world, for ages dumb, Part of thy fable-lore, Gathers upon her shore Each dying race as soil for one chief race to come.
But of our beating heart Thy pulse how large a part! Our wider sky but bounds Another Grecian dawn. Lament not what is gone; Pentelicus grieves not, for Fame hath healed his wounds.
III
Then, Hellas! scorn the sneer Of kings who will not hear Their people's moaning voice, More deaf than shore to sea! The world hath need of thee— The world thou still canst teach to reason and rejoice.
Yes, need of thee while Art Of life is but a part— Plaything or luxury. Greek soil perchance may show Where Art's hid stream doth flow— To rise, a new Alpheus, near another sea.
Yes, need of thee while Gold Makes timid traitors bold To lay republics low; Not ignorant nor poor Spread for their feet the lure— The kind, the loved, the honored, aim the brutal blow.
Yes, need of thee while Earth Each day shows Heaven a girth Of want and misery; Wherein there is not found Beyond thy happy bound A people brave, sane, temperate, thrifty, chaste, and free.
Then, though by faction's blunder, And boasts, of mimic thunder, Again thou art betrayed, Vain this, vain every treason; With thee are Hope and Reason, Nor Past can be forgot, nor Future long delayed.
Troy was, but Athens is— The World's and Liberty's, Nor ever less shall be! Though fallen are old fanes The vestal fire remains Bright with the light serene of immortality.
↑This ode, begun on the steps of the Parthenon in 1886, was published in the New York "Independent" of April, 1896, and, in part, in modern Greek in the "Hellas," a record of the Olympic Games of that year.
