Classic Poem

Here is the immortality of night.
Time, tranced to marble quietude, forgets
Futurity. The wind has dropped stone-cold
To sleep on level vineyard, Attic plain
And gulfs smooth and moon-cloven. Flocks and herds
Move fitfully along the darkling slopes.
A soldier's ballad, sudden, rough and free,
The crowing of a single cock, beguiled
With infinite effulgence of false dawn,
Ephemerally have surprised the night
Like shooting stars that fade upon its heart.
Borne to reality of solemn arch
And radiant architrave and pillars reared,
Blinding with old day, from the earth to heaven,
Have I outwatched the track of hollow ship
And track of chariot, where sea and plain
Stretch naked to the consummated moon.
The lights of Athens, proud and myriad,
That seem as just about to move along
Processionally, and that yet remain,
Are tongues of fire round the city's sleep
Syllabled by the dead that speak in light
Instantly clear.


For yet a little while,
Evading despot reason's sentience
Called time and space, I have come back again.
Seaweed apparent in the early gulf,
Mysterious with distance, comes my hope,
My grave-deep fantasy. Miraculous,
Arcana-arched city, nevermore
Of Theseus nor of Hadrian, and thou
Acropolis appointed desolate
As God Himself o'er the loquacious earth,
Where is the dawn of old? For I recall
It raced in gold upon a racing sea,
In burning gold upon the wine-red sea,
An ardent charioteer, from unshored deeps
To Phaleron's blue coast, and far within
The haunt of wind-vexed reeds. Day broke so clear
On the religious town that the frail mists
Shone rose-red, beyond light; immaculate
And Cytherean, from her airy ocean,
The Parthenon emerged from rose-red mists.
I stood where yet the Propylaean gate
Was not swung open to receive a throng
Brave in the sunlight. Priest and lutanist,
Elder and warrior, those bearing trays
One after one; advancing in a file
Those bearing water vessels; cavalry
Wind-footed and compelling as the wind,
And arrow-thoughted youth, for government
Trained in assembly neath judicial stars,
Awaited. Maidens, moulded for the clasp
Of starry gods that set memorial
Of beauty constellated in the sky,
Were leading deep-browed heifers with the tread
Of sandal-fastening Nike. Yet amid
The holiday, premonitory fear
Was on me, for I felt my forehead cold
With Proserpine's unearthly asphodel,
Blasted by too much moonlight. I remained
Half dreaming. As one bodes from swallow flight
The fall of empire I blamed the gift
Of votive offering forgotten for
This swift eclipse of day, and homeward turned
To lift from scented wood the honey-bread,
The Cretan wine, the kneaded cake, prepared
Of blossoms from whose pollen bees fed not,
So early were they plucked. Even as I turned
One warned to hasten, and I mocked at him,
" The citadel will be as Ilion
Doubtless, when I return, " — whereat a shout
From myriad throats like a young eagle rose
Aloft the height, to swayless forests of
Vast-shapen gods in august conference.
Borne on the wings of that victorious shout
I passed along the highway where urned death
Upraises shapes of bright life's commonplace
To lands where death was prototype of life,
Where generations kept with scourge and sword
Memorial of the god that harrowed hell
For healing of the nations that yet groan.

It is unfitting that a mortal thought
Should outlive deity. I would my thought,
Hid in deep-rivered hills, had shared the life
Of mines as yet unquarried to the sun.
Pale centuries are dead. I have returned,
Haloed and blinded with the selfsame dream.
Past all that mortal men have reared in prayer, —
(Gigantic guesses through the wilderness), —
Argos-eyed hope, superincumbent fear
Devoted as its prey, to Attica
Possessing in the hollow of her hills
A brilliant slumber, rapt ineffably.
Around it pepper-trees like fountains wake
Selene's silver silent light to sound.
Hymettos hath forgot his heavy bees,
Pentelic slopes are stretched like perfect limbs
Of some forwandered giant night o'ertook,
And fane-crowned Lykabette, arising, strikes
His mitred head amid the glancing stars.
Orestes, Christ and Mahomet passed here.
A little stone remains; the ether shines
As when a thunderbolt, departing, leaves
Memorial night, with all its silences.
Olives coeval with philosophy,
My thought turns marble-cold! I question not,
Nor ponder overmuch how these gray leaves
Have waved the sage asleep. Long grass that runs
Oblivious of wrong o'er living word
And lost word, wrought alike by dead men's hands,
I question not nor supplicate again!
Acropolis that change has left divine.
And inarticulate as will of gods
Half-shaped from hollow cliff or haunted run
Or water, I nor question overmuch
Nor supplicate, for all my thought is turned.
Through vigil and the moon's plenipotence,
More multiform than marble, and more cold.