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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE RETURN OF THE GREEKS, by EDWIN MUIR Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The veteran greeks came home Last Line: She, alone in her tower Subject(s): Greece; Homer (10th Century B.c.); Penelope (mythology); Poetry & Poets; Trojan War; Greeks; Iliad; Odyssey | |||
THE veteran Greeks came home Slcepwandering from the war. We saw the galleys come Blundering over the bar. Bach soldier with his scar In rags and tatters came home. Reading the wall of Troy Ten years without a change Was such intense employ CJust out of the arrows' range), All the world was strange After ten years of Troy. Their eyes knew every stone In the huge heartbreaking wall Year after year grown Till there was nothing at all But an alley steep and small. Tramped earth and towering stone. Now even the liills seemed low In the boundless sea and land. Weakened by distance so. How could they understand Space empty on every hand And the hillocks squat and low ? And when they arrived at last They found a childish scene Embosomed in the past. And the war lying between - A child's preoccupied scene When they came home at last. But everything trite and strange. The piece, the parcelled ground. The vinerows - never a change ! The past and the present bound In one oblivious round Past thinking trite and strange. But for their grey-haired wives And their sons grown shy and tall They would have given their lives To raise the battered wall Again, if this was all In spite of their sons and wives. Penelope in her tower Looked down upon the show And saw within an hour Each man to his wife go. Hesitant, sure and slow: She, alone in her tower. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE EPIC STARS by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE CHILDHOOD OF HOMER by MARY KINZIE HOMER'S SEEING-EYE DOG by WILLIAM MATTHEWS HOMER IN BASIC by KENNETH REXROTH THE HOMERIC HEXAMETER [DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED] by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER by JOHN KEATS |
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