QUEEN of the double sea, beloved of him Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast seen Glory in all her beauty, all her forms; Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind, Above the ocean's roar and cormorant's flight, So high that vastest billows from above Show but like herbage waving in the mead; Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games, And pass away, -- the beautiful, the brave, And them who sang their praises. But, O queen, Audible still, and far beyond thy cliffs, As when they first were uttered, are those words Divine which praised the valiant and the just; And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge So perilous, him who brought before his eye The Colchian babes. "Stay! spare him! save the last! Medea! -- is that blood? again! it drops From my imploring hand upon my feet! -- I will invoke the Eumenides no more. I will forgive thee, -- bless thee, -- bend to thee In all thy wishes, -- do but thou, Medea, Tell me, one lives." "And shall I too deceive?" Cries from the fiery car an angry voice; And swifter than two falling stars descend Two breathless bodies, -- warm, soft, motionless, As flowers in stillest noon before the sun, They lie three paces from him, -- such they lie As when he left them sleeping side by side, A mother's arm round each, a mother's cheeks Between them, flushed with happiness and love. He was more changed than they were, -- doomed to show Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarred Grief hunts us down the precipice of years, And whom the faithless prey upon the last. To give the inertest masses of our earth Her loveliest forms was thine, to fix the gods Within thy walls, and hang their tripods round With fruits and foliage knowing not decay. A nobler work remains: thy citadel Invites all Greece; o'er lands and floods remote Many are the hearts that still beat high for thee: Confide then in thy strength, and unappalled Look down upon the plain, while yokemate kings Run bellowing, where their herdsmen goad them on; Instinct is sharp in them, and terror true, -- They smell the floor whereon their necks must lie. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON VENUS ARISING FROM THE SEA by ANTIPATER OF SIDON SCAMPS OF ROMANCE by WILLIAM ROSE BENET BALM OF NATURE by ALICE GILL BENTON TO A DYING CLASS by ANGELO PHILIP BERTOCCI RAWDON BROWN by ROBERT BROWNING THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: KING LIMOS by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. THE STONE-CUTTER by EDWARD CARPENTER |