e of dreams. But thou

Enviest not the path of dreams,
Nor sharest in our drunken revel;
For with our fathers' spacious cup,

The strong and simple, thou hast brought
Immortal water from the spring
Of Homer, thou O traveller!

_1903._

HAIL TO THE RIME

Cyprus's shores have not beheld thee born of foam;
A foreign Vulcan forged thee on a diamond anvil
With a gold hammer; and the bard who touches thee,
Bound with thy magic beauty's charms, remains thy thrall.

The yearning prayers of a lover fondly loved
Cannot accomplish what thou canst, strange nightingale!
Thy song wafts me upon the tranquil fields of calm
When jackals born of woeful cares within me howl.

Thy might gives even sin a garment beautiful;
And thought divine before thee bows in reverence.
Imagination's ship sails with thy help straight on

Where Solomon and Croesus have their treasuries.
To thee I pray! Answer my greeting lovingly,
Thou new tenth Muse among the nine of old, O Rime!

_1896._

THE RETURN
1897

(1897 is the year of the Greco-Turkish war which ended disastrously
for Greece. See Introduction, page 58.)

_DEDICATION_

_Mother thrice reverend, O widowed saint,
Upon thy shattered throne I come to place
The crowns of Art, dream-made and dream-engraved.
With war storms desolate, my native land,
Trod by the Turk and by strangers scorned thou wert;
Even thy child beholding thee in ruins,
As if the waters of Oblivion
In dark Oblivion's Dale had touched his lips,
Left thee; and thou didst writhe like a whole world
Engulfed in sounds of woe: Hair-tearings and
Breast-beatings, groans of sad despair, night-bats
Wandering restlessly, unheeded prayers
Of souls condemned, loud thunder peals, fierce glares
Of lightnings, and the laughter of the fiends!

But lo, unknown and humble I, with calm
Upon my countenance and storm in mind,
Far from the panic-stricken market place,
Beneath the plane trees' shade, and far away
By the blood-tinctured settings of the suns,
Unruffled, in another land I travelled,
And deep I dug in distant treasure mines.
And with my hand, that knows no rifle's touch,
Slowly I hammered on the crowns of art;
And if thou findest nowhere on their gleam
Thine image painted, or thy blessed name
Written, thou knowest still, O motherland,
Though in thy woe's abyss they seem unlike,
And though a strange and careless glimmer shines
On them, they were created out of thee;
For thee