  Athene! Virgin! Goddess! Queen! descend, Come to us and befriend. Set up your shrine among us and defend Our realm against corruptions which impend. ***** Divinity of order and of law, Most powerful and wise, Our land reclaim. Patron of the assemblies of the free, Our cities shame! Dethrone our bastard Demos, partisans Of Moody, Campbell, all the Wesleyans. Come down with awe, Enceladus and Pallas strike, who rise Against your father and his hierarchy. Smite the giants Superstition, Force, Fanaticism, Ignorance and Faith In village gods, and bury them beneath Volcanic mountains. Yoke them to the course And labor of your wisdom. Fling your shield, Medusa faced, before the brows of clay, Who rule our clattering day; Flash it before their brows and make Stones for the pavement of the way Whereon you drive your chariot, golden-wheeled. Descend, O Goddess, for the memory's sake And for the hope's sake of your son, Franklin, your herald, Washington, Who dreamed to make perpetual Our Parthenon, column, court and hall. And save it from the donjon, minaret, The cross, the spire, the vane, the parapet! ***** We have no god but Jesus, No god but Billiken. Nature and Dionysius Come back again! Jehovah is an alien tyrant, rules us From arid Palestine, Who mouths a heaven that fools us, And curses the olive and vine, And the smiles of the lyric nine. Gods are they, hard and full of wrath Who drive us on the unintelligible path. Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work Too puerile or despotic, or with feet That drip blood on a mercy seat. They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk, Or weaken us with poison sweet. Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel In our delirium, no less, that life Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel Set up to feed this world of strife By Mary's son, Mary the wife—— Come from the Islands of the Blest, Goddess, and give us wisdom, vision, rest. Reveal a Beauty for our hearts to love. The wooden ark of Moses, overlaid With strips of gold, And all the spurious covenant thereof By which our life is obelised We would no more behold, Who have so vainly with it temporized. Fruitless our spirits have these centuries prayed Before the Janus cross, The oracle that speaks in riddles, asks Penitence, obedience, tasks Which nature interdicts. We are the body on the crucifix, Not Jesus; we, the race, are crucified, And die upon the cross, For centuries have died. Come and restore our loss Of truth, the eyes of spirits undeceived, Courage with nature, strike the opiate joss To ruin with your sword, O most adored! Give us Reality, O lover of men, Republics, cities, lands. Uplift our eyes to Beauty, once perceived We may rebuild the Areopagus, With wiser eyes and hands. Bring Thought, the Argus, consciousness That looks before and after, And grace perpetual of Mnemosyne— Remembering we shall be free! Save us, O Goddess, from the drifting crowd, Wondering, witless, loud, The lovers of the minute who possess No reverence and no laughter! ***** Goddess! with silver helmet, guardian You may be, if we worship at your shrine, Before the gates of Boston and New York, Chicago, San Francisco, through the span Of continents and isles; your heart incline Toward our turbulent blood from many climes, Worships and times. Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths; The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths, Bring rain and dew, Plant olive trees, Set on our hills the emblem of the vine; Bring to our hearts the lofty purities Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew Temples of beauty and academies! ***** Set up your golden altar In Parthenons in every village and shire. The crucifix and psalter, The ikons and the toys of vain desire We cast into the fire. We keep the lover Jesus, for his hope, His humanism and his flaming zeal. He will approach your altar, he will kneel At last before you, for the horoscope Of life misread in youth And youthful dreams and faith. Goddess! our globe that hungers for the truth Between the roar of life, silence of death Cannot be stayed or cowed. But, oh, descend First to our soil, Atlantis, and befriend. Make us a light across the fathomless sea Of centuries to be, Even as Athens is, divinity! |
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