Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.
By George MeasonWhicher1454 Bacchylides
F
With brighter glory from thy long eclipse!
Poet, imprisoned in dead centuries!
Some god unlocks thy music now, and strips
The seal of envious silence from thy lips;
And we are fain to hear thy wakening melodies.
To sing once more the happy olden time,—
Victor and hero, youth and youth’s fair bloom,
The joy of life in manhood’s golden prime;
And I, of alien tongue and harsher clime,
Listen, and lose awhile life’s endless fret and fume.
Some shepherd, telling ’neath the ilex trees
The straying sheep that browsed on upland lawn,
Marked with wide eyes across the purple seas
Odysseus’ long-lost bark before the breeze
Glide ghost-like from the glooms of Ocean toward the dawn;
In marvel of the strange return from death,
While to the harbor-mouth he ran apace
To hear their tale with wistful, indrawn breath:
“And aye mine eyes are dimmed with dreams” (he saith)
“Of that far land where bide the dead heroic race.”