| |
| ALL the sweet day the favoring Zephyr sped | |
| Our white-sailed pinnace o’er the wavy main, | |
| And now, at eve, we watching from her head | |
| Saw the dark outline of the Trojan plain, | |
| Misty and dim, as things at distance seem | 5 |
| Through the fast-waning light of summer eve, | |
| When, waking from their sultry, sad day-dream, | |
| The wan-faced stars grow bright and cease to grieve. | |
| And nearer yet and nearer grew the shore, | |
| Which eve was tinting sober-gray and pale; | 10 |
| And louder swelled the long, low, broken roar | |
| Of surges climbing o’er the loose-heaped shale. * * * * * | |
| Full soon we grated on the shingly beach; | |
| Soon disembarked upon that storied shore, | |
| Whose very rocks are eloquent to teach | 15 |
| A world of legend and forgotten lore. | |
| Then parted; and I musing went along, | |
| Half fearing it might prove delusion strange, | |
| Or sweet enchantment of a magic song, | |
| Which loud-spoke word might dissipate or change. | 20 |
| Still on; while overhead the moon alway | |
| Kept on its course across the sea of sky, | |
| Fathomless-blue, save for some cloudy spray, | |
| And those bright isles, the stars that never die; | |
| Until I reached a barrow long and low, | 25 |
| Which the tall grass clothed o’er and wild vines free, | |
| That still, whenever any breeze did blow, | |
| Waved shadowy like the falling of the sea; | |
| And gazing thence upon the moonlit plain, | |
| The voiceful silence of the saddening scene | 30 |
| Called up a city’s phantom to my brain, | |
| And caused me muse of what Troy once had been. | |
| How doth the memory of heroic deeds, | |
| Wrought by the heroes of the elder time, | |
| Clothe o’er thy site more than the mantling weeds, | 35 |
| And round thy brows a deathless laurel twine. | |
| Just as those fires which lit the midnight sky, | |
| Changing so many watchful tears to smiles, | |
| Wafted to Hellas the exultant cry, | |
| “Troja is fallen,” o’er the Grecian isles; | 40 |
| So doth thy story, mid the rocks of time, | |
| Echo along the unending cycles through, | |
| Pealing thy name in most melodious chime, | |
| Ne’er growing fainter, nor its notes more few. | |
| All to the magic of that world-sung song, | 45 |
| That god-breathed legend dost thou owe thy fame; | |
| The golden weft the blind man wove so long, | |
| Hath linked to immortality thy name. | |
| His tale to many another’s lyre hath given | |
| Its stirring echoes; and in every age | 50 |
| What story more than of thy woes hath riven | |
| Their hearts who dream upon the poet’s page. | |
| And though for long thou in the dust hast lain, | |
| Still, still the visions of the mighty past, | |
| The memory of thy struggle, and thy pain, | 55 |
| Thy god-built turrets,—these forever last. * * * * * | |
| Yet still ’twixt thee and Tenedos there pours | |
| Just as of old the trough of angry sea, | |
| And on the oozy sand still breaks and roars, | |
| As when the black keels lined the yellow lea. | 60 |
| And still the pines of Ida wave aloft | |
| Their tuneful, scented, dove-embowering shade; | |
| And ’neath them twilight broods as gray and soft | |
| As when of yore the shepherd Paris strayed | |
| With glad Œnone; while their bleating flocks | 65 |
| Grazed the wild thyme bright with ambrosial dew; | |
| And lovers piping ’neath the o’ershadowing rocks | |
| Laded with love the breezes as they flew. | |
| Still Simois wanders mid his voiceful reeds, | |
| And Xanthus rolls his slender length along, | 70 |
| Telling the story of thy mighty deeds, | |
| In lagging accents of a tearful song. | |
| All these, O Troy,—thy streams and woody hill, | |
| Thy barren beach whereon the long ships lay, | |
| Thy famous isle,—the invaders haunt,—are still; | 75 |
| But Priam’s Ilion hath passed away. | |
| Hath passed, I said; thy memory ne’er can fade! | |
| The muse hath won thee from the dead again; | |
| A golden glory crowns for aye thy shade; | |
| Thou livest, O Troy, forever unto men! | 80 |
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