How many years, how many generations, Have heard that sigh in the dawn, When the dark earth yearns to the unforgotten nations And the old loves withdrawn, Old loves, old lovers, wonderful and unnumbered As waves on the wine-dark sea, 'Neath the tall white towers of Troy and the temples that slumbered In Thessaly?
From the beautiful palaces, from the miraculous portals, The swift white feet are flown! They were taintless of dust, the proud, the peerless Immortals As they sped to their loftier throne! Perchance they are there, earth dreams, on the shores of Hesper, Her rosy-bosomed Hours, Listening the wild fresh forest's enchanted whisper, Crowned with its new strange flowers; Listening the great new ocean's triumphant thunder On the stainless unknown shore, While that perilous queen of the world's delight and wonder Comes white from the foam once more.
When the mists divide with the dawn o'er those glittering waters, Do they gaze over unoared seas-- Naiad and nymph and the woodland's rose-crowned daughters And the Oceanides? Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour, That world of dawn and dew, With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender The sweet old songs they knew, The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do they falter As the earth like a small star pales? When the heroes launch their ship by the smoking altar Does a memory lure their sails? Far, far away, do their hearts resume the story That never on earth was told, When all those urgent oars on the waste of glory Cast up its gold?
_Are not the forest fringes wet With tears? Is not the voice of all regret Breaking out of the dark earth's heart? She too, she too, has loved and lost; and though She turned last night in disdain Away from the sunset-embers, From her soul she can never depart; She can never depart from her pain. Vainly she strives to forget; Beautiful in her woe, She awakes in the dawn and remembers._
Between the clover and the trembling sea They stand upon the golden-shadowed shore In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three, Hearing the breakers' deep Olympic roar; Three young athletes poised on a forward limb, Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand, Three statues moulded by Praxiteles: The blue horizon rim Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land, And England melts into the skies of Greece.