The Comrades :: :: University of Virginia Library

Throughout the land and sea from ancient days
The wonder had been rumoured, that the god
Born on the radiant hills i' the dazzle of dawn—
Asklepios—healed the sick and raised the dead.
The world gave credence gladly. Human faith
With human anguish grew; and, doubtless, God
Was pitiful in heaven, when unaware
Of Whom they sought, men called Asklepios.

Thus, four-and-twenty centuries ago,
At Epidaurus, on that rocky point
Washed north and south with violet sea, the sick
Dropped sails. Beyond the cornfields, olive-groves
And hamlets of the Dusty-feet—for so

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Our townsmen named the rustic folk who tilled
The sweet brown earth 'twixt mountain-cirque and sea—
A green gorge opened on the beautiful
Still valley in the sunned hills' flowery heart,
Where, throned on gold and ivory, the god—
Chryselephantine, mighty-bearded, ringed
With golden head-rays—held his knotty staff
In one hand, and in one his serpent, wreathed
In shining coils, while near his footstool lay
The first dumb friend man found among the brute.

Oh, marvellous beneath those purple peaks
Glittered the long white marble terrace-walls,
The pillared aisles, the gardens of the god,
The altars white, and white immortal shapes
Half-seen in fragrant bowers where pine and plane
Assuaged with slumberous shade the blaze of noon.

And hither out of furthest lands and isles
Amid remote dim sea-ways came the blind,
The dumb, the deaf, the palsied, scald, and maimed—
All loathsome shapes of pain and broken strength

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And hopeless wasting—if perchance the god
Might heal their stricken bodies.

Shafts of stone
Bore of the midnight vision and the cure
Full many a marvellous record. One who came
From far green-gardened Lampsacus the god
Had graciously made whole; from Halike—
A town whereof none now in all the world
Aught knoweth save the graven name—came one;
And one from cold Torone in the north,
From joyous Mytilene one, and one
From that Hermione, whence Hades-ward
So short the downward way that never coin
Is laid upon the dead man's tongue to pay
The ferry of shadows.

But within the shrine
Hung costly gifts of men made glad to live—
Great vases, gems and mirrors; jewelled eyes,
Fingers of silver, arms and legs of gold;
Rich models of invaluable parts,
And precious images of fleshly ills
From which no quittance were too highly priced;

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And, mixed with these, rude gifts of grateful hearts
Whose poverty was not ashamed to give.

Upon a time, among the folk who sought
Surcease of suffering from Asklepios,
Was brought a schoolboy from the white-walled town
Upon the rocky point—Euphanes, frail,
And fever-flushed, and weak with grievous pain;
And as the lad, beneath the clement stars,
Lay wandering in his mind, and dreamed perchance
Of sailing little triremes on the shore,
Or making, it might be, a locust-cage
With reeds and stalks of asphodel beneath
The trellised vines, it seemed as though the god
Stood by him in the holy night and spoke:—
“What wilt thou give me, little playfellow,
If I shall cure thy sickness?” And the lad,
Thinking what pleasure schoolboys have in these,
Replied: “I'll give thee my ten marbles, god!”
Asklepios laughed, right gladdened with the gift,
And said: “Then, truly, I will make thee well!”
And lo! when morning whitened on the hills,
And in the valley's dusk the sacred cock
Clapped wings and sang, the urchin went forth whole!

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Full four-and-twenty centuries ago
Euphanes saw the god; and yesterday
The pillar bearing record of the cure
Was dug from wreck of war and drift of years.
“Ten marbles! quoth the child. Asklepios laughed;
But on the morrow forth the lad went whole.”
Thus closely had the Greek in ancient times—
Through some prophetic prompting of pure love
God's unfulfilled events divining—drawn
Man's heart unto the human heart in God.