Page:Suppliant Maidens (Morshead) 1883.djvu/11



thou this gift from out the grave of Time.

The urns of Greece lie shattered, and the cup

That for Athenian lips the Muses filled,

And flowery crowns that on Athenian hair

Hid the cicala, freedom's golden sign,

Dust in the dust have fallen. Calmly sad,

The marble dead upon Athenian tombs

Speak from their eyes "Farewell:" and well have fared

They and the saddened friends, whose hands last clasp

Wins from the solemn stone eternity.

Yea, well they fared unto the evening god,

Passing beyond the limit of the world,

Where face to face the son his mother saw,

A living man a shadow, while she spake

Words that Odysseus and that Homer heard,—

I too, O child, I reached the common doom,

The grave, the goal of fate, and passed away.

—Such, Anticleia, as thy voice to him,

Across the dim gray gulf of death and time

Is that of Greece, a mother's to a child,—

Mother of each whose dreams are grave and fair—

Who sees the Naiad where the streams are bright

And in the sunny ripple of the sea

Cymodoce with floating golden hair: