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
Phaebus' 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.