Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Greece and Turkey in Europe: Vol. XIX. 1876–79. | | | | Greece: Athens | | Athens | | Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) |
| | (From Erechtheus)
LO, I stand | |
| Here on this brow’s crown of the city’s head | |
| That crowns its lovely body, till death’s hour | |
| Waste it; but now the dew of dawn and birth | |
| Is fresh upon it from thy womb, and we | 5 |
| Behold it born how beauteous; one day more | |
| I see the world’s wheel of the circling sun | |
| Roll up rejoicing to regard on earth | |
| This one thing goodliest, fair as heaven or he, | |
| Worth a god’s gaze or strife of gods; but now | 10 |
| Would this day’s ebb of their spent wave of strife | |
| Sweep it to sea, wash it on wreck, and leave | |
| A costless thing contemned; and in our stead, | |
| Where these walls were and sounding streets of men, | |
| Make wide a waste for tongueless water-herds | 15 |
| And spoil of ravening fishes; that no more | |
| Should men say, Here was Athens. | | | | |
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