Classic Poem

I hear the wondrous lyre
Of the blind bard, and see the Grecian throng
About Troy's lofty walls, and Hector slain,
The white-stained face and blackened crest,
And great Achilles crumbling on his pyre.
Then comes Ulysses sighing for his home
Afar, leaving the ruins of old Troy
For Ithaca, where oft, a glad-faced boy,
He played amid the ripening vines and heard
His father's voice ere he began to roam
The weary waves. His heart is stirred
With thoughts of home, and son, and wife,
And ever Circe holds him in her arms.
How have I longed to drift on some fair isle,
Like thee, from feverish alarms,
And voices of reproach, and earth's vain strife—
Some urnless land beyond the wile
Of grief and gold, where man can quite forget
All pain, and sleep and dream not of regret.