There hide they; but the sea-kings keep their state, Telling of ancient dooms and deaths of old, Nor know they how beside the darkened strait And up the slopes of olive, vine and grain, The dryads wail a land left desolate. Wail thou, great Muse, the dear Sicilian land! Now greater grief is thine than when of old Young Adon in the Cyprian’s arms lay cold, And Daphnis’ years were told. Take thou the lyre from Time’s enfeebled hand; Hushed is the music of Empedocles, Of splendid Pindar, pure Simonides, Bion and Moschus and Theocritus, And those who unto us Nameless, yet live as human memories. Hushed is the last of all that laurelled band, Hushed, or on Charon’s strand Urging in vain petition dolorous, To pass where Pan, his boyish pipings done, Stands wistful, while the nymphs, by fear made bold, Cling with their long lithe arms about his knees. Wail thou, great Muse! or loose from Acheron Some worthy bearer of the singing bough Whose madness whirls me now On melting wings too near the southern sun. Yet why for aught on earth should grief be loud, Since all that is, is born to pass away? Hero and maiden to the urn are vowed, And beauty saves not when the debt falls due; Apollo with the darker gods has died, And Gæa at the last shall be as they. O Helen of the soul! O golden isle! By beauty doomed, by beauty sanctified, Thou too canst not abide, But like all else shalt last a little while-- A little longer than the falling spray-- Then pass as planet dust or gaseous cloud, To build new cosmos, gnawed by new decay. Earth’s senseless atoms ever clasp and whirl, Unclasp again to form in mazes new; And ever on the white cliff stands some girl With dead eyes gazing on the sailless blue. Earth’s roses die, but still the rose lives on, The song survives the swift Leucadian leap;-- A dream of immortality is ours. Where golden Daphnis in the morning shone, Fresh sprung from Helicon, New shepherds singing lead their careless sheep Above the graves of Athens, Carthage, Rome, Vandals and Moslems, and strange Northern Powers That filled their destined hours, And fed in turn the rich Sicilian loam, Building, like coral insects from the deep, Enchanted islands that till earth is gone, Swept back to chaos in the atom swirl, Shall be the seeker’s light, the spirit’s home. Though Ætna crumble and the dark seas rise Sowing the uplands with their sterile brine, Still shall the soul descry with wistful eyes Sicilian headlands bright with flower and fruit; Still shall she hear, though all earth’s lips be mute, Sicilian music in the morning skies. Yea, deep within the heart of man it lies, This visioned island bright with old romance, A race inheritance Of rest and joy and faith in things divine, That shall endure awhile through change and chance, And have the meaning of a childhood shrine, Remembered when the faith of childhood dies.