Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams By Walter Savage Landor: Edited with notes by Charles G. Crump |
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THE PRIESTESS OF APOLLO. |
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 | Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams |  |
THE PRIESTESS OF APOLLO.
Take refuge here amid our Delphian shades,
O troubled breast!
Here the most pious of Mycenai's maids
Shall watch thy rest
And wave the cooling laurel o'er thy brow,
Nor insects swarm
Shall ever break thy slumbers, nor shalt thou
Start at the alarm
Of boys infesting (as they do) the street
With mocking songs,
Stopping and importuning all they meet,
And heaping wrongs
Upon thy diadem'd and sacred head,
Worse than when base
Œgisthus (shudder not!) his toils outspread
Around thy race.
Altho' even in this fane the fitful blast
Thou may'st hear roar,
Thy name among our highest rocks shall last
For ever more.
Orestes.
O troubled breast!
Here the most pious of Mycenai's maids
Shall watch thy rest
And wave the cooling laurel o'er thy brow,
Nor insects swarm
Shall ever break thy slumbers, nor shalt thou
Start at the alarm
Of boys infesting (as they do) the street
With mocking songs,
Stopping and importuning all they meet,
And heaping wrongs
Upon thy diadem'd and sacred head,
Worse than when base
Œgisthus (shudder not!) his toils outspread
Around thy race.
Altho' even in this fane the fitful blast
Thou may'st hear roar,
Thy name among our highest rocks shall last
For ever more.
A calm comes over me: life brings it not
With any of its tides: my end is near.
O Priestess of the purifying god
Receive her (pointing to his sister),
and when she hath closed mine eyes,
Do thou (weep not, my father's child!) close hers.
| Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams | |