THE SUPPLIANT MAIDENSDEDICATIONTake thou this gift from out the grave of Time.The urns of Greece lie shattered, and the cupThat for Athenian lips the Muses filled,And flowery crowns that on Athenian hairHid the cicala, freedom’s golden sign,Dust in the dust have fallen. Calmly sad,The marble dead upon Athenian tombsSpeak from their eyes “Farewell”: and well have faredThey and the saddened friends, whose clasping handsWin from the solemn stone eternity.Yea, well they fared unto the evening god,Passing beyond the limit of the world,Where face to face the son his mother saw,A living man a shadow, while she spakeWords that Odysseus and that Homer heard,—I too, O child, I reached the common doom,The grave, the goal of fate, and passed away.—Such, Anticleia, as thy voice to him,Across the dim gray gulf of death and timeIs that of Greece, a mother’s to a child,—Mother of each whose dreams are grave and fair—Who sees the Naiad where the streams are brightAnd in the sunny ripple of the seaCymodoce with floating golden hair:And in the whisper of the waving oakHears still the Dryad’s plaint, and, in the windThat sighs through moonlit woodlands, knows the hornOf Artemis, and silver shafts and bow.Therefore if still around this broken vase,Borne by rough hands, unworthy of their load,Far from Cephisus and the wandering rills,There cling a fragrance as of things once sweet,Of honey from Hymettus’ desert hill,Take thou the gift and hold it close and dear;For gifts that die have living memories—Voices of unreturning days, that breatheThe spirit of a day that never dies.
Take thou this gift from out the grave of Time.The urns of Greece lie shattered, and the cupThat for Athenian lips the Muses filled,And flowery crowns that on Athenian hairHid the cicala, freedom’s golden sign,Dust in the dust have fallen. Calmly sad,The marble dead upon Athenian tombsSpeak from their eyes “Farewell”: and well have faredThey and the saddened friends, whose clasping handsWin from the solemn stone eternity.Yea, well they fared unto the evening god,Passing beyond the limit of the world,Where face to face the son his mother saw,A living man a shadow, while she spakeWords that Odysseus and that Homer heard,—I too, O child, I reached the common doom,The grave, the goal of fate, and passed away.—Such, Anticleia, as thy voice to him,Across the dim gray gulf of death and timeIs that of Greece, a mother’s to a child,—Mother of each whose dreams are grave and fair—Who sees the Naiad where the streams are brightAnd in the sunny ripple of the seaCymodoce with floating golden hair:And in the whisper of the waving oakHears still the Dryad’s plaint, and, in the windThat sighs through moonlit woodlands, knows the hornOf Artemis, and silver shafts and bow.Therefore if still around this broken vase,Borne by rough hands, unworthy of their load,Far from Cephisus and the wandering rills,There cling a fragrance as of things once sweet,Of honey from Hymettus’ desert hill,Take thou the gift and hold it close and dear;For gifts that die have living memories—Voices of unreturning days, that breatheThe spirit of a day that never dies.