Classic Poem

First I salute you, guardian hills of Crete,
With careful brows and hands uplifted high —
Dicte, where in cold splendours of the moon
The lonely Goddess dwells, from whose bare crag
Maid Britomartis, virgin shy and pure,
Cast all her delicate treasure to the sea
And by death saved her life; next, Ida, thee,
Veil'd in thine immemorial eypress robes,
Dark with the murmurs of perpetual peace,
Ida, whose haunts Zeus knew, and loveth still
And also you, O holiest sentinels
About Cydonia ramparting the sea!
Sisters, who linkt in ice
With glittering crowns a-row,
Watch over Crete while night pursueth day,
And fiercer than day's light
Dazzle all eyes that dare affront your beams
O ye dread haunts of God, by man untrodden,
Only by man adored from very far!
By that great strength ye are,
Holding a steadfast way
Through good and ill report,
Through tempest and dismay,
Through blinding snow and frost;
Ye only that abide
Where all is chance and change, for no man liveth
Who knew or heard his fathers tell that day
When ye were not inflexible as now! —
Listen, each haunted place,
Ye hills, each crown'd with God,
Listen, most evil case
Is on us, our feet have trod
The splintry steep that leadeth men astray
By pain from Heaven's clear way:
We have slipt in our own blood,
And each new morn hath summon'd wearier day.

Wherefore, seeing to no man it is given
To read the will of Heaven;
Seeing the blessed Gods remotely reign,
Not pitying our pain,
Nor stooping down at all, rather pursuing
Their sport in our undoing;
It doth become that man whose love is law
To clothe himself with awe,
And gazing on your strength win strength to abide
What fortune may betide.
Yet, O ye patron Gods, who watch our going,
Withal unfathomable and unseen,
Withal aloof and ruthless, no man liveth
To dare against ye any rite undone;
Nor can remove his eyes
From your reflected state,
Knowing how excellently great
Ye are, how beauteous, swift, supremely wise,
Nor stay to seek (since without beauty dies
Man's better part) uncheckt that thing he flies!
Therefore to you, swift pair,
Whom patient Leto bore your Father Zeus
In Delos mid the folded Cyclades,
To thee, O Archer-Phaebus, to whom the Sun
Is but a mantle flaming at the edge;
Thee, Hymnia, stripling huntress of the air,
To whom soothsay pertains
And keener shafts than ever arrow shot —
Lo now, in perilous pass I bring you my despair.

Eileithyia, thee next I invoke,
As women when the stroke
Of their most heavy pains
Falleth, and new life strains,
And their fray'd life to meet it maketh stress,
Yet often fainteth out through feebleness!
O who with bent down head
Dost hang above the bed,
And with thy torch's light
Direct the new-born sight
Unto thy holy face,
That its first view be grace!
Be merciful ere all our land
Faileth, bid stay the hand
Red to the wrist with carnage, that it cease
And the end be peace!

And thou, demesned in Crete,
O Queen Demeter, watchful over wheat!
And lonely Mother long inured to pain;
If now a little thought of our fair fields
Linger in thee who blest them once,
What time by Ida's valleys thou wert glad
When the green corn peer'd out
Glimmering upon the brown and dusty earth: —
So do thou turn thine eyes,
If not remote in grief,
If not preoccupied
By thine absorbing ever-pressing lack,
Lest all indeed should die as some have died!
Haply the Gods may hear, for Crete is shrill,
Being wounded; they may pity, for Crete is fair
For all her peakt complaining, as a maid
Stolen for some lord's pleasure waxeth frail,
And in her frailty more desirable
But an they choose not, I as one grown old,
Hardened to storm and cold,
Will set my face as yours to fires and chills,
O immemorial Hills!