Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
IV. To B. T.Edmund Clarence Stedman (18331908)
(With a copy of the Iliad)
B
While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze
Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas
O’er which Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song!
Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong,
And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease;
But later, when these high ancestral trees
Are sear, and such Odyssean languors wrong
The reddening strength of the autumnal year,
Yield to heroic words thine ear and eye:
Intent on these broad pages thou shall hear
The trumpet’s blare, the Argive battle-cry,
And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear,
And mark the Trojan arrows make reply.