Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Greece and Turkey in Europe: Vol. XIX. 1876–79.

Greece: Lepanto

On a Grotto and Warm Spring

By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885)

At the Head of the Gulf of Lepanto

WITHIN this grot did Amphitrite,

Willing a beauteous shore to bless,

Expose the full unshaded light

Of all her ocean-queenliness.

Into the rock the vital glow

Past out from her translucid form,

And thus the springs that hither flow

Are made forever summer-warm.

Alas! the name of her who wrought

This work, and all her glorious train,

Have faded far from common thought,

And never will be there again.

But thou,—who in these tempered waves

Delightest thy dust-fevered brow,—

For thee the past has no such graves,

Where poets worshipped, worship thou.