  I All the Lydian notes revealing, Son of Leto, oh, come stealing As the wind Thessalian rivers Whisper of! the wind that shivers Every ripple into stars, In the sunlight's golden bars. Touch thy harp, that haunts the oaks, With the mastery that invokes Naiad music of the fount, Oread music of the mount; And such satyr song as keeps Revel on LycÆan steeps, When night nods, a MÆnad shape, Purple with dusk's staining grape. Wake such chords as dewy grounds Echo when no mortal hounds Bell the hunt, whose spear-point shines Through Arcadia's tangled vines, When the half-awakened Dawn, Dreaming on a mountain lawn, Lets her golden sandals lie And walks barefooted through the sky; And by Arethusa's bank, Swift upon the red hart's flank, Drives Diana's buskined band Down the cistus-blossomed strand. Then Love's minors, swooning o'er The mountain hush, the ocean roar, As Selene, stealing, sails Over Lemnos' lakes to vales Where Endymion dreams and feels Love her stolen kiss reveals. II Thou hast sung of Helicon: How the sister Muses won From the nine Pierides Empire o'er the harmonies. Thou hast sung of Tempe's maid, And the sudden laurel's aid. Thou hast sung of many loves Of the gods that haunt the groves Where the marble altar stands Rose-heaped by the balmy hands Of Romance and Beauty; where, High upon the temple stair, Priest-like, bay-crowned, white of hair, Old Tradition, looking up, Pours libation from his cup. Thou hast sung, all sweet of tongue, As once wild Amphion sung, Songs,—Parnassian rocks,—that swung Each in its lyric niche, and massed Such mural heights of song and vast, Melodious walls of poesy, That Time himself shall not outlast, Enduring as eternity. III Ours shall be no island song, Suited to a maiden throng, Dancing with their wreaths of roses To the double-flute's soft closes!— But a Nation's! whose large eyes With life's liberty are wise, And consenting sympathies Of all arts and sciences. She! who stands above the storms With truth's thunder in her arms, And the star-serenity Of her hope bound burningly Round her brow; and at her knee The Spirit of Progress who is shod With ethereal fire of God.... Yea! thy last shall still be first— Some wild epopee to burst With such organ notes as rang When the stars of morning sang, And the Sons of Heaven sent Shoutings through the firmament; As our years have justified And the stars have prophesied. 1886. |
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