Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchanceHow the Greek Beauty from the Scæan GateGazed on old friends unanimous in hate,Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance.Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate!Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:A transitory shame of long ago,It dies into the sand from which it sprang;But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:God's self laid stable earth's foundation so,When all the morning-stars together sang.
Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchanceHow the Greek Beauty from the Scæan GateGazed on old friends unanimous in hate,Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance.Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate!Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:A transitory shame of long ago,It dies into the sand from which it sprang;But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:God's self laid stable earth's foundation so,When all the morning-stars together sang.
Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchanceHow the Greek Beauty from the Scæan GateGazed on old friends unanimous in hate,Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance.
Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchance
How the Greek Beauty from the Scæan Gate
Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate,
Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance.
Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate!Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,
Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate!
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.
The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:A transitory shame of long ago,It dies into the sand from which it sprang;But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:God's self laid stable earth's foundation so,When all the morning-stars together sang.
The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:
A transitory shame of long ago,
It dies into the sand from which it sprang;
But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:
God's self laid stable earth's foundation so,
When all the morning-stars together sang.
April 26, 1870.
INCLUDING
A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES
"Our Euripides, the Human,With his droppings of warm tears,And his touches of things commonTill they rose to touch the spheres."
"Our Euripides, the Human,With his droppings of warm tears,And his touches of things commonTill they rose to touch the spheres."
"Our Euripides, the Human,With his droppings of warm tears,And his touches of things commonTill they rose to touch the spheres."
"Our Euripides, the Human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres."
TO THE COUNTESS COWPER
If I mention the simple truth, that this poem absolutely owes its existence to you,—who not only suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the most delightful of May-month amusements,—I shall seem honest, indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought such a poem to be!
Euripides might fear little; but I, also, have an interest in the performance; and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your feet?
R. B.
London,July 23, 1871.
After the publication of the fourth volume ofThe Ring and the Bookin February, 1869, Browning published nothing until March, 1871, when he printedHervé Rielin theCornhill Magazine, afterward including it in his first new volume of collected poems. In August of the same year appeared the first of his larger ventures in the field of Greek life. This poem was followed four years later byAristophanes' Apology, and it is so intimately connected withBalaustion's Adventurethat in this edition it is made to follow it, though the chronological sequence was broken, as will be seen, by the composition and publication of other considerable works. The motto at the head of the poem is from Mrs. Browning, and in the last lines of the poem Browning couples her with his friend Sir Frederick Leighton.