Ye that bear the name about you of her glory, [_Ant. 1._ Men that wear the sign of Greeks upon you sealed, Yours is yet the choice to write yourselves in story Sons of them that fought the Marathonian field. Slaves of no man were ye, said your warrior poet, Neither subject unto man as underlings: Yours is now the season here wherein to show it, If the seed ye be of them that knew not kings. If ye be not, swords nor words alike found brittle From the dust of death to raise you shall prevail: Subject swords and dead men's words may stead you little, If their old king-hating heart within you fail. If your spirit of old, and not your bonds, be broken, If the kingless heart be molten in your breasts, By what signs and wonders, by what word or token, Shall ye drive the vultures from your eagles' nests? All the gains of tyrants Freedom counts for losses; Nought of all the work done holds she worth the work, When the slaves whose faith is set on crowns and crosses Drive the Cossack bear against the tiger Turk. Neither cross nor crown nor crescent shall ye bow to, Nought of Araby nor Jewry, priest nor king: As your watchword was of old, so be it now too: As from lips long stilled, from yours let healing spring. Through the fights of old, your battle-cry was healing, And the Saviour that ye called on was the Sun: Dawn by dawn behold in heaven your God, revealing Light from darkness as when Marathon was won. Gods were yours yet strange to Turk or Galilean, Light and Wisdom only then as gods adored: Pallas was your shield, your comforter was Pæan, From your bright world's navel spake the Sun your Lord.
Though the names be lost, and changed the signs of Light and Wisdom be, [_Ep. 1._ By these only shall men conquer, by these only be set free: When the whole world's eye was Athens, these were yours, and theirs were ye. Light was given you of your wisdom, light ye gave the world again: As the sun whose godhead lightened on her soul was Hellas then: Yea, the least of all her children as the chosen of other men. Change your hearts not with your garments, nor your faith with creeds that change: Truth was yours, the truth which time and chance transform not nor estrange: Purer truth nor higher abides not in the reach of time's whole range. Gods are they in all men's memories and for all time's periods, They that hurled the host back seaward which had scourged the sea with rods: Gods for us are all your fathers, even the least of these as gods. In the dark of days the thought of them is with us, strong to save, They that had no lord, and made the Great King lesser than a slave; They that rolled all Asia back on Asia, broken like a wave. No man's men were they, no master's and no God's but these their own: Gods not loved in vain nor served amiss, nor all yet overthrown: Love of country, Freedom, Wisdom, Light, and none save these alone. King by king came up against them, sire and son, and turned to flee: Host on host roared westward, mightier each than each, if more might be: Field to field made answer, clamorous like as wave to wave at sea. Strife to strife responded, loud as rocks to clangorous rocks respond Where the deep rings wreck to seamen held in tempest's thrall and bond, Till when war's bright work was perfect peace as radiant rose beyond: Peace made bright with fruit of battle, stronger made for storm gone down, With the flower of song held heavenward for the violet of her crown Woven about the fragrant forehead of the fostress maiden's town. Gods arose alive on earth from under stroke of human hands: As the hands that wrought them, these are dead, and mixed with time's dead sands: But the godhead of supernal song, though these now stand not, stands. Pallas is not, Phoebus breathes no more in breathing brass or gold: Clytæmnestra towers, Cassandra wails, for ever: Time is bold, But nor heart nor hand hath he to unwrite the scriptures writ of old. Dead the great chryselephantine God, as dew last evening shed: Dust of earth or foam of ocean is the symbol of his head: Earth and ocean shall be shadows when Prometheus shall be dead.