PALLAS ATHENE
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!