Page:The New Penelope.djvu/300

294 To reach this goal, and founder and go down!

O impious thought, how could I wish to die,

With all that I have felt and learned unknown?

Nay, I am glad to be to future times

As much Athenian as is Pericles;

Proud to be named by men of other climes

The friend and pupil of great Socrates.

What is the gossip of the city dames

Behind their lattices to one like me?

More glorious than their high patrician names

I hold my privilege of being free!

And yet I would that they were free as I;

It angers me that women are so weak,

Looking askance when ere they pass me by

Lest on a chance their lords should see us speak;

And coming next day to an audience

In hope of learning to resemble me:

They wish, they tell me, to learn eloquence—

The lesson they should learn is liberty.

O Athens, city of the beautiful,

Home of all art, all elegance, all grace;

Whose orators and poets sway the soul

As the winds move the sea's unstable face;

O wonderous city, nurse and home of mind,

This is my oracle to you this day—

No generous growth from starved roots will you find,

But fruitless blossoms weakening to decay.

You take my meaning? Sappho is no more,

And no more Sapphos will be, in your time;

The tree is dead on one side that before

Ran with such burning sap of love and rhyme.

Your glorious city is the utmost flower

Of a one-sided culture, that will spend