Page:Poet Lore, volume 28, 1917.djvu/97

Rh Yet, what if the fate of Parnassus is changed? What if the Nine Fair Sisters are gone? Thou standest still, O Liakoura, young and forever one, O thou Muse of a future Rhythm and a Beautiful still to be born.'

To his birthplace, the poet dedicates one of his exquisite collection of sonnets entitled "Fatherlands" and contained in the same volume. It is the first of the series. Its lines are permeated with a fine feeling springing from the reminiscences which the description suggests and from the memory of the early death of the poet's mother:

"Where with its many ships the harbor moans, The land spreads beaten by the billows wild, Remembering not even as a dream Her ancient silkworks, carriers of wealth.

The vineyards, filled with fruit, now make her rich; And on her brow, an aged crown she wears, A castle that the stranger — Frank or Turk — Thirsts for, since Venice founded it with might.

O'er her a mountain stands, a sleepless watch; And white like dawn, Parnassus shimmers far Aloft with the midland Zygos at his side.

Here I first opened to the day my eyes; And here my memory weaves a dream dream-born, An image faint, half-vanished, fair, a mother."

But in Patras, the child did not stay long. His early home seems to have been broken up by the death of his mother, and we find him next in Missolonghi, another glorious spot in the history of Modern Greece. It does not pride itself in its antiquity. It developed late in the Middle Ages from a fishing hamlet colonized by people who were attracted by the abundance of fish in the lagoon separating the town from the sea. This lagoon lies across the Corinthian Gulf to the northwest of Patras, hardly an hour's sail from it. Its shallow waters, which can be traversed only by small flat bottomed dories propelled with poles, extend