Midnight, black; and a wild horde of fears,
The brains half-knowledge and the hearts fierce pride
Questions me cold and distant to my tears;
Yet on my thought the old true Visions glide—
Tenderness, Truth, Unselfishness; their lights
Travel the wastes and glimmer on the heights.
So may I keep my way, whose avatars
Gave me a path that leads beyond the Stars.
SOURCE
“If Beauty grows old, share it before it be gone, and if it abides, why fear to give away what thou dost keep?”
BY the Alpheus, where the reeds are blown
Aslant by winds that flick the tawny current,
There runs a path that is all overgrown
With low dwarf oaks and many a vine deterrent,
Which leads past grain and broad mulberry trees
To soft Olympia’s cool sanctities.
There, where the cypress makes a trancelike shade,
White pillars gleam, and floors of old mosaic,
Hold gemmy moss and tender bud and blade,
In hints of bygone Pyrrhic and Trochic—
In those fresh petal rhythms which Nature keeps
Like poems living where the poet sleeps.
And all about the place the Games go on.
The buoyant clouds fly swift to wingéd races;
One tall fir gives an Ode to Marathon,
And down the temple paths young sunlight paces;
And that strange rare Perfection, that is Greece,
Here holds its happy spell of calm and Peace.
Dreaming Olympia, whose footpaths take
Their secret way to temple and by column,
Thou art so far away. The blue daybreak
Is all war-reddened now, and the Vow solemn;
Yet, incandescent in those aisles of pines,
Thy same still tranquil beauty grayly shines.
And this is well, for after all the pain,
And all the hate, and all the human blunder,
How we shall need to bathe us once again
In baths of pure Greek beauty! Ah! the wonder
Hellas has ever held! Shall we not need
That wonder to rebuke our shame and greed?
Sylvan Olympia, keep the untouched dream
For years to come and for a noble future!
Bind all thy classic pathways to one Theme
Of Soaring Youth and starward high adventure!
So shall thy dusks, when wistful feet come roaming;
Mean always—world-pain healed, and spirits homing.