 | The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems |  |
113
CORINTH IN 1843
I
I stood at Corinth in the dying lightsOf one fair-born Mediterranean day:
The hills of Athens glimmered in its ray;
Whilst deepest shadows held Morea's heights.
Soft lines of silver traced out all the bay,—
The old, immortal bay of Salamis.
Ah me! how ill can we remember this
When all is changed, and odours of decay
Breathe from the myrtled plain where Greek met Greek,
And all his Isles came crowding here to seek
The triumph of the Games. Yet, from the ground
Lone columns rise that listened to the sound
Of murmurous feet, the tumult, and the cries,
The shouts of Victory that rent the skies.
May 30, 1892
114
II
How full this speechless sadness of the past,This sense that every young and noble brow
That rose and fronted men is mouldered now
By suns and rains and storms,—its atoms cast
In lower forms, each meaner than the last.
Alas! shall all our strivings thus be lost
Indeed? Shall all our gettings, tempest-tost,
Be scattered, like the dust before the blast
Of all-devouring Time? Shall nothing stand—
Not the great stars, nor seas, nor solid land?
I called again, ‘Is nothing worth these cries
Of high endeavour, and of great emprise?’
The answer came,—‘No wrestler for the Truth
Shall lose the laurels of immortal youth!’
Danbury: June 2, 1892
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