Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE FLOWERS OF HELICON, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The solitudes of helicon Last Line: To her own western world again. Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord Subject(s): Flowers; Helicon (mountain), Greece | ||||||||
THE solitudes of Helicon Are rife with gay and scented flowers, Shining the marble rocks upon, Or mid the valley's oaken bowers; And ever since young Fancy placed The Hieron of the Muses here, Have ceaseless generations graced This airy temple year by year. But those more bright, more precious, flowers With which old Greece the Muses wooed, The Art whose varied forms and powers Charmed the poetic multitude, The Thought that from each deep recess And fissure of the teeming mind Sent up its odorous fruitfulness, -- What have those glories left behind? For from those generous calices The vegetative virtue shed, Flew over distant lands and seas, Waking wide nations from the dead; And e'er the parent plants o'erthrown Gave place to rank and noisome weed, The giant Roman world was sown Throughout with that ennobling seed. And downward thence to latest days The heritage of Beauty fell, And Grecian forms and Grecian lays Prolonged their humanizing spell, Till, when new worlds for man to win The Atlantic's riven waves disclose, The wildernesses there begin To blossom with the Grecian rose. And all this while in barren shame Their native land remote reclines, A mocked and miserable name Round which some withered ivy twines; Where, wandering mid the broken tombs, The remnant of the race forget That ever with such royal blooms This Garden of the Soul was set. O breezes of the wealthy West! Why bear ye not on grateful wings The seeds of all your life has blest Back to their being's early springs? Why fill ye not these plains with hopes To bear the treasures once they bore, And to these Heliconian slopes Transport civility and lore? For now, at least, the soil is free, Now that one strong reviving breath Has chased that Eastern tyranny Which to the Greek was ever death; Now that, though weak with age and wrongs, And bent beneath the recent chain, This motherland of Greece belongs To her own Western world again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FOUNTAIN OF AGANIPPE by JAMES GATES PERCIVAL COLUMBUS AND THE MAYFLOWER by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES FROM THE IONIAN ISLANDS by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD MORNING by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES LONDON CHURCHES by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES SHADOWS: 2 by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES SWITZERLAND AND ITALY by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES THE BROOKSIDE by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES THE GREEK AT CONSTANTINOPLE by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES A CHILD'S SONG by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES |
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