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Robert Laurence Binyon - Mediterranean Verses
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I
 The desert sand at day`s swift flight
 Drank of the dew--cold vivid night
 Where Nile flows as he flowed
 When first men reaped and sowed

 As though his stream since Time began
 Bore all the history of Man,
 Vast ages lapsing brief
 As noiseless as a leaf.

 But when the first high star, concealed
 Itself by shadowing boughs, revealed
 The glinting ripple, it seemed
 As the great water streamed

 That ears attuned might hear the strings
 Plucked by the harpist for those kings
 Who in persistence fond
 Would be companion`d

 Through the faint under--world, and still
 Press the firm--clustered grape, and feel
 Wind from the fanning plume
 Sweetened with incense--fume;

 Still watch the honey--coloured grain
 Stiffen to ripeness on the plain,
 Or dancers with slim flanks
 Circle in chiming ranks.

 For Time, so old, must abdicate:
 Eyes and a smile that have no date
 Respond from chiselled stone
 Young as, each day, the dawn;

 And pulsings of the carver`s wrist
 So subtly in those curves persist,
 The presence in the form
 To touch is almost warm.

 But like the pictures dreams make glow
 On darkness, that in daylight go
 So soon, except they find
 Some lodging in the mind,

 Only by beauty can these cross
 The dark stream of the dead to us.
 Only the hot sun dwells
 `Mid those long parallels

 Of broken pillars, roofed with air,
 In temples of unanswered prayer;
 And Gods unfeasted own
 Naught but a granite throne.


II
 Rain and the scolding wind`s uproar
 And the black cloud befitted more
 The towering walls that hem
 Teeming Jerusalem;

 City of wailing, wrath, and blood,
 The city of the grave and shroud,
 Whence arose the Word
 That brought so sharp a sword.

 O city stubbornly enthroned!
 The city that the prophets stoned,
 Over which Jesus wept,
 And proud Rome vainly swept!

 But as from heavens of brooding love
 A peace unearthly beamed above
 The hill--surrounded sea
 Of lonely Galilee.

 And we beneath those silent skies
 Walked among flowers of paradise,
 As if their happier seed
 Knew peace on earth indeed.

 Peace, by the world praised and eschewed,
 Lived in that ageless solitude
 And with no phrases deckt
 Shone richer in neglect.

 And under stony hills severe,
 Where sounds are few, we still could hear
 The shepherd from the rock
 Pipe to his wandering flock.

 Remote beyond the Syrian bay
 At close of a long burning day
 Into the dusk still shone
 The snows of Lebanon.


III
 Morning came dancing, Morning warmed
 The blue sea--circle, whence she charmed
 Isle after isle to rise
 Rock--pointed toward the skies,

 Whose names transfigured strand and cape
 Into a legendary shape
 Re--peopled from afar
 But to be brought more near;

 As if old ships and oar`d galleys
 Still swept along the silent seas;
 Sailors of Tyre in quest
 Of the remoter West;

 Athenians racing to undo
 Their own decree, before it slew;
 And Cleopatra`s sail
 From Actium flying pale;

 And traffickers with rich Byzance
 Past Patmos fading, lost in trance;
 And Paul, on fire within
 The sad world`s soul to win;

 And Rudel in love`s dear duress
 Turned eastward to his Far Princess,
 To die for that one bliss,
 The first and the last kiss;

 And doomed Othello Cyprus--bound.--
 The islands rose and sank around,
 And when the day declined
 Their shadows filled the mind.

 Dim in the dawn stood Hector`s ghost
 Upon the mound where Troy lies lost.
 But through the straits we sped
 Turned to our dearer dead.


IV
 The hills divide, the seas unite
 The valleys of a land of light,
 But O how bare beside
 That Hellas glorified

 Which, wasted, clan by warring clan,
 Yet made a splendour shine in Man
 By that inquiring will
 Whose way we follow still;

 Built in the mind his palace rare,
 Towered high as thought can dare
 And thronged with images
 Of joys and agonies,

 Confronting destiny and wrong
 With the high--symbol`d scene, and song
 Threading its music through
 The tale of wrath and rue.

 But Time, so tender to a thought
 That branches up from living root,
 Has here unbuilt, defaced,
 And Beauty dispossessed,

 Conniving with men`s minds inert,
 Brute blows, and stupid skill to hurt,
 As if `twere half their joy
 To maim and to destroy.

 O Delphi, where all Hellas came
 To hear the awful Voice proclaim
 Fate, how beneath your steep
 Is all--forgetting sleep!

 No voice, no votary, no shrine;
 Though the long vale be still divine
 From that blue bay below
 To the far mountain snow,

 And soundless noon that idly warms
 The scattered stones and shattered forms
 Only the shadow brings
 Of wheeling eagles` wings.


V
 In the last light some column glows
 Where once a white perfection rose
 Imperfectly divined
 By the rebuilding mind,

 Which treasures up a shape, a thought,
 From footprint or from echo caught;
 Hard gleanings, that attest
 Oblivion has the best.

 Fade coasts and isles, where the seed sown
 Still flowers in all we are and own.
 A future presses near
 Clouds of unshapen fear.

 And now the ghostly, vast night--fall
 Like an age closing past recall
 Seems, and this darkening sea
 The wastes of history;

 The sea that no proud trophy claims
 For sunken ventures, foundered fames,
 Dishevelled navies tost,
 Ships like a bubble lost;

 That keeps no sure abiding form
 And rises in unconscious storm
 Whipt by an ignorant blast,
 And when the fury`s past,

 Sleeking its waves, mile after mile,
 Into the image of a smile.
 Is this what Time does still,
 Working a witless will?

 But through the dark, stopt by no seas,
 Pass other Powers and Presences
 Unseen from shore to shore,
 Armed and at conscious war,

 Ideas, mightier than men,
 That seize and madden, free or chain.
 The things unprophesied
 Our prophecies deride;

 But end is none, though the storms break
 And the mind pale, and the heart shake.
 Out of that future ring
 Far trumpets challenging.
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