Calm little figure, ivy-crowned,

How long beneath the barren tree

Where this pale, martyred god has found

Surcease from his long agony,

You watch with an untroubled gaze

Life move on its accustomed ways!

Within your childish heart there dwells

No sorrow that uprising dims

Your eye, whence not a teardrop wells

For pity of those writhen limbs,

Or for the travail of a race

Consummate in one lifeless face.

Though tinkling caravans go by

Forever over twilight sands,

With myrrh and cassia laden high

For other shrines in other lands,

No weight of grief thereat you know,

But softly on your pan-pipes blow.

From what dim mountain have you strayed,

Where, ringed by the Hellenic seas,

You dwelt in an untrodden glade

Sacred to woodland deities,

Along whose faint paths went at dawn

Endymion or a dancing faun?

From groves where sacrificing throngs

Called you by some fair Grecian name,

With ritual meet and choric songs,

Strange, that to this dark hill you came

To seek, unmindful of their loss,

A refuge underneath the cross.

There is some deeper secret lies

Hidden out of human sight

In keeping of those tranquil eyes

That shine with such immortal light,

And in their shadows gleam and glow

While still upon your pipes you blow.

All but inscrutable, your gaze

Declares your place is even here,

Sharing this martyr's cup of praise,

And year by sadly westering year,

Till the last altar lights grow dim,

Dividing sovereignty with him.