DELIO PATRI

Once more Lake Como's storied isle

Reveals the Roman past!

Again a stone of classic style

The spade hath upward cast;

How can such relics thus endure

Two thousand years of sepulture?

More eagerly than those who toil

For nuggets of mere gold,

We seize and rescue from the soil

This monument of old,—

An altar-fragment, much defaced,

Yet on whose surface words are traced.

With reverent hands we cleanse from grime

The legend chiselled there,

Which now, triumphant over time,

Still proves the sculptor's care,

Engraved when on this wave-girt hill

The Pagan gods were potent still.

‘ As on their own peculiar page

The fingers of the blind

Decipher truths of every age,

As mind communes with mind,

So, one by one, these letters spell

A name the ancient world knew well.

For “Delio Patri” heads the lines

Inscribed upon this stone,

And instantly the mind divines

What, else, had been unknown,

Since that familiar name makes clear

Apollo once was worshipped here;

Perhaps because the spot suggests

That other tiny isle,

Upon whose shore forever rests

The Sun-God's tender smile,—

Fair Delos, where, one fabled morn,

Both he and Artemis were born.

Beneath, the donor's name is placed,

And lower still we read

In characters, now half effaced,

The motive for his deed;—

“Onesimus this altar reared

To One he gratefully revered.”

Faith, grateful reverence,— these are traits

Worth more than rank or fame,

And what this brief inscription states

Does honor to his name,

And makes us wish still more to know

Of him who built here long ago.

“And is this all?” the cynic sneers,

“The remnant of a shrine?”

Alas for him who never hears

Or heeds the world divine

And in this fragment fails to see

A stepping-stone to Deity!

The Sun-God's shrines in ruins lie,

But not the glorious sun!

A thousand transient faiths may die.

All prototypes of One,

Since under every form and name

Their essence still remains the same.