Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Thomas LakeHarris

431 California

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.