Or if thy wilder mood
Incline to solitude,
Eternal verdure girds the lonely hills,
Through the green gloom of ferns
Softly the sunset burns,
Cold from the granite flow the mountain rills;
And there are inner shrines
Made by the slumberous pines,
Where the rapt heart with contemplation fills,
And from wave-stricken shores
Deep wistful music pours
And floods the tempest-shaken forest corridors.
Oh, give the gift of gold
The human heart to hold
With liquid glamour of the Lesbian line;
With Pindar's lava glow,
With Sophocles' calm flow,
Or Aeschylean rapture airy fine;
Or with thy music's close
Thy last autumnal rose
Theocritus of Sicily, divine;
O Pythian Archer strong,
Time cannot do thee wrong,
With thee they live for ever, thy nightingales of song.
We too are island-born;
Oh, leave us not in scorn --
A songless people never yet was great.
We, suppliants at thy feet,
Await thy muses sweet
Amid the laurels at thy temple gate,
Crownless and voiceless yet,
But on our brows is set
The dim unwritten prophecy of fate,
To mould from out of mud
An empire with our blood,
To wage eternal warfare with the fire and flood.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234