| |
| THE GRECIAN MUSE, to earth who bore | |
| Her goblet filled with wine of gold, | |
| Dispersed the frown that Ages wore | |
| Upon their foreheads grim and cold, | |
| What time the lyric thunders rolled. | 5 |
| |
| O’er this new Eden of the West | |
| The mightier Muse enkindles now: | |
| Her joy-lyre fashions in my breast, | |
| And wreathes the song-crown for my brow, | |
| Ere yet her loftier powers avow. | 10 |
| |
| Though like Tithonus old and gray, | |
| I serve her mid the swords and shields; | |
| Her being opens for my way, | |
| And there I find Elysian fields; | |
| And there I dwell while Nature yields. | 15 |
| |
| My Dian of the sparkling West, | |
| My lady of the silver bow! | |
| Here, where the savage man made quest | |
| For golden spoils in earth that grow, | |
| She leads the Golden Age below. | 20 |
| |
| Beneath her feet the maiden May | |
| Sits crowned with roses where I sing. | |
| My brows with frosted age are gray, | |
| But all my being glows for spring: | |
| A golden youth ’t is hers to bring. | 25 |
| |
| So in her, for her, I abide, | |
| And taste the goblets of her bliss; | |
| Upon the hills with morning dyed, | |
| All as a new acropolis, | |
| Her shrine shall yet arise, I wis. | 30 |
| |
| And here shall greater Hellas burn, | |
| Irradiant for the Solar Powers; | |
| And men the love of strife unlearn, | |
| Tasting from lips that breathe of flowers, | |
| Made young by joys that live from ours. | 35 |
| |
