EPODE

O sombre heart of earth and swoln with grief,

That in thy time wast as a bird for mirth,

Dim womb of life and many a seed and sheaf,

And full of changes, ancient heart of earth,

From grain and flower, from grass and every leaf,

Thy mysteries and thy multitudes of birth,

From hollow and hill, from vales and all thy springs,

From all shapes born and breath of all lips made,

From thunders, and the sound of winds and wings,

From light, and from the solemn sleep of shade,

From the full fountains of all living things,

Speak, that this plague be stayed.

Bear witness all the ways of death and life

If thou be with us in the world's old strife,

If thou be mother indeed,

And from these wounds that bleed

Gather in thy great breast the dews that fall,

And on thy sacred knees

Lull with mute melodies,

Mother, thy sleeping sons in death's dim hall.

For these thy sons, behold,

Sons of thy sons of old,

Bear witness if these be not as they were;

If that high name of Greece

Depart, dissolve, decease

From mouths of men and memories like as air.

By the last milk that drips

Dead on the child's dead lips,

By old men's white unviolated hair,

By sweet unburied faces

That fill those red high places

Where death and freedom found one lion's lair,

By all the bloodred tears

That fill the chaliced years,

The vessels of the sacrament of time,

Wherewith, O thou most holy,

O Freedom, sure and slowly

Thy ministrant white hands cleanse earth of crime;

Though we stand off afar

Where slaves and slaveries are,

Among the chains and crowns of poisonous peace;

Though not the beams that shone

From rent Arcadion

Can melt her mists and bid her snows decrease;

Do thou with sudden wings

Darken the face of kings,

But turn again the beauty of thy brows on Greece;

Thy white and woundless brows,

Whereto her great heart bows;

Give her the glories of thine eyes to see;

Turn thee, O holiest head,

Toward all thy quick and dead,

For love's sake of the souls that cry for thee;

O love, O light, O flame,

By thine own Grecian name,

We call thee and we charge thee that all these be free.

Jan. .