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Robert Laurence Binyon - Mediterranean VersesRobert 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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