Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Greece and Turkey in Europe: Vol. XIX. 1876–79.
Delos
By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885)T
The wind so faintly arched the sail,
That ere to Delos we were borne,
The autumn day began to fail,
And only in Diana’s smiles
We reached the bay between the isles.
She ruled the heavens without a star,—
A sacred image that the course
Of time and thought can hardly mar,—
As dear and nearly as divine
As ever in Ephesian shrine.
Her glorious twins Latona bore,
That for her sake the pitying God
Had fixed the isle afloat before;
And, fearful of his just disdain,
I almost felt it move again.
Such clear transparence on the wave,
From the black mastick-bushes drew
Column and frieze and architrave,
Like rocks, which, native to the place,
Had something of mysterious grace.
Arise such beauty out of stone,
Yet Paros might as well have hid
Its wealth within its breast unknown,
As for brute Nature to regain
The fragments of the fallen fane.
Where met the ancient festal host,
The peasant from Arcadia’s glades,
The merchant from Ionia’s coast,
Gladdening their Grecian blood to stand
On one religious Fatherland?”
I cried, but calmer thoughts came on,
And gratitude with sorrow blent,
And murmur turned to orison:
I thanked the gods for what had been,
And Nature for the present scene.
Signs of that old heroic show,
Hope, Memory’s sister, so sustained,
Would sink not altogether low,
And Grecian hearts once more might be
Combined in powerful amity.
Had touched the morning’s zone of pearl,
I and my boat were far away,
Raised on the water’s freshening curl;
And barely ’twixt the rose and blue
The island’s rim was still in view.
A perfect vision of the night,
A picture by moon-rays designed,
And shaded into black and bright,—
A true idea borne away,
Untroubled by the dreamless day.