Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.

Asia Minor: Ida, the Mountain

Mount Ida

By Seymour Green Wheeler Benjamin (1837–1914)

NOW twilight gently hovers o’er the deep.

The winds are hushed; becalmed the isleman’s bark

Shows its white pinions on the increasing dark,

And mournfully at foot of yonder steep

The dying surf rolls up the lonely shore.

Lo! heaving hoary-headed to the sky,

In stern but venerable majesty,

Mount Ida distant stands. There, times of yore,

The shepherd prince his pastoral syrinx played;

And there did lofty walls and turrets gleam

(Whose very memory seemeth like a dream)

That stood coeval with Achilles’ shade.

O, since the Cyclades with beacons shone,

What ages have bewailed for Troy o’erthrown!