Archibald Lampman

Here you will find theLong PoemAn Athenian Reverieof poet Archibald Lampman

An Athenian Reverie

如何返回的日子里,一个后一个,是我吗n their rhythmic round, unchanged, Yet from each looped robe for every man Some new thing falls. Happy is he Who fronts them without fear, and like the gods Looks out unanxiously on each day's gift With calmly curious eye. How many things Even in a little space, both good and ill, Have fallen on me, and yet in all of them The keen experience or the smooth remembrance Hath found some sweet. It scarcely seems a month Since we saw Crete; so swiftly sped the days, Borne onward with how many changing scenes, Filled with how many crowding memories. Not soon shall I forget them, the stout ship, All the tense labour with the windy sea, The cloud-wrapped heights of Crete, beheld far off, And white Cytaeon with its stormy pier, The fruitful valleys, the wild mountain road, And those long days of ever-vigilant toil, Scarcely with sleepless craft and unmoved front Escaping robbers, that quiet restful eve At rich Gortyna, where we lay and watched The dripping foliage, and the darkening fields, And over all huge-browed above the night Ida's great summit with its fiery crown; And then once more the stormy treacherous sea, The noisy ship, the seamen's vehement cries, That battled with the whistling wind, the feet Reeling upon the swaying deck, and eyes Strained anxiously toward land; ah, with what joy At last the busy pier at Nauplia, Rest and firm shelter for our racking brains: Most sweet of all, most dear to memory That journey with Euktemon through the hills By fair Cleonae and the lofty pass; Then Corinth with its riotous jollity, Remembered like a reeling dream; and here Good Theron's wedding, and this festal day; And I, chief helper in its various rites, Not least, commissioned through these wakeful hours To dream before the quiet thalamos, Unsleeping, like some full-grown bearded Eros, The guardian of love's sweetest mysteries. To-morrow I shall hear again the din Of the loosed cables, and the rowers' chaunt, The rattled cordage and the plunging oars. Once more the bending sail shall bear us on Across the level of the laughing sea. Ere mid-day we shall see far off behind us, Faint as the summit of a sultry cloud, The white Acropolis. Past Sunium With rushing keel, the long Euboean strand, Hymettus and the pine-dark hills shall fade Into the dusk: at Andros we shall water, And ere another starlight hush the shores From seaward valleys catch upon the wind The fragrance of old Chian vintages. At Chios many things shall fall but none Can trace the future; rather let me dream Of what is now, and what hath been, for both Are fraught with life. Here the unbroken silence Awakens thought and makes remembrance sweet. How solidly the brilliant moonlight shines Into the courts; beneath the colonnades How dense the shadows. I can scarcely see Yon painted Dian on the darkened wall; Yet how the gloom hath made her real. What sound, Piercing the leafy covert of her couch, Hath startled her. Perchance some prowling wolf, Or luckless footsteps of the stealthy Pan, Creeping at night among noiseless steeps And hollows of the Erymanthian woods, Roused her from sleep. With listening head, Snatched bow, and quiver lightly slung, she stands, And peers across that dim and motionless glade, Beckoning about her heels the wakeful dogs; Yet Dian, thus alert, is but a dream, Making more real this brooding quietness. How strong and wonderful is night! Mankind Has yielded all to one sweet helplessness: Thought, labour, strife and all activities Have ebbed like fever. The smooth tide of sleep, Rolling across the fields of Attica, Hath covered all the labouring villages. Even great Athens with her busy hands And busier tongues lies quiet beneath its waves. Only a steady murmur seems to come Up from her silentness, as if the land Were breathing heavily in dreams. Abroad No creature stirs, not even the reveller, Staggering, unlanterned, from the cool Piraeus, With drunken shout. The remnants of the feast, The crumpled cushions and the broken wreathes, Lie scattered in yon shadowy court, whose stones Through the warm hours drink up the staining wine. The bridal oxen in their well-filled stalls Sleep, mindless of the happy weight they drew. The torch is charred; the garlands at the door, So gay at morning with their bright festoons, Hang limp and withered; and the joyous flutes Are empty of all sound. Only my brain Holds now in its remote unsleeping depths The echo of the tender hymenaeos And memory of the modest lips that sang it. Within the silent thalamos the queen, The sea-sprung radiant Cytherean reigns, And with her smiling lips and fathomless eyes Regards the lovers, kno