Classic Poem

I

Thou armless Splendour, Victory's own breath;
Embraceless Beauty, Strength bereft of hands;
To whose high pedestal a hundred lands
Send rent of awe, and sons to stand beneath;

To whom Adonis never brought a wreath,
Nor Tannhäuser a song, but whose commands
Were blindly followed by immortal bands
Who wooed thee at Thermopylae in death:

No Venus thou; but nurse of legions steeled
By Freedom's self, where rang her highest note,
And never has thy bosom felt a kiss:

No Venus thou; but on the golden shield
Which once thy lost left held, thy lost right wrote:
" At Marathon and briny Salamis. "

II

Perhaps thy arms are lying where they hold
The roots of some old olive, which strikes deep
In Attic earth; or where the Greek girls reap,
With echoes of the harvest hymns of old;

Or haply in some seaweed-cushioned fold
Of warm Greek seas, which shadows of ships sweep,
While prying dolphins through the green ribs peep,
Of sunken galleys filled with Persian gold.

Or were they shattered, — pounded back to lime,
To make the mortar for some Turkish tower
Which overshadowed Freedom for a time?
Or strewn as dust, to make, with sun and shower,
The grain and vine and olive of their clime,
As was the hand which wrought them in an hour?