Ionia

Ye lands and immemorial isles, that bear The name of Ion, who with besom made Of laurel-boughs the Sun-god’s temple swept— Ye golden climes, to poesy and love Most dear, oases mid the wastes of Eld, Where, in her lonely retrospective flight, Bright-haired Mnemosyne delights to pause, By matchless shapes of loveliness beguiled! Within your bounds the plastic hand of art First made the mountain’s marble entrails teem With images of beauty, lining all Your sea-washed strand with fair columnar cities, Built high of glossiest sun-enamelled stone. Forever o’er your myrtle-shaded vales, Reclined on summer clouds, did Aphrodite And golden Eros lean, kindling the air With passion’s rosy glow. In all the earth Beside, did visible nature never wear Robes so resplendent. Through the luminous folds Of your transparent atmosphere appeared Unequalled prospects to enchant the eye; Marmorean cities rising o’er the verge Of halcyon seas, and promontories crowned With tombs heroical, or glistening shrines; And breezy mountains swathed with silver clouds, The watchtowers blue of broad-eyed Jove; whence he The limitless low-lying earth surveyed, The towns of mortal men, their fights and toils. Oft from your shore the fisherman descried The smoke of conflagration climbing slow, In graceful spires, far up the summer air, From some beleaguered city of the isles; And white-robed argosies from wealthy Tyre, Rising and falling on the sparkling waves, Voyaging with orient merchandise to towns, Whose turrets glittered in the western beam. Within your cities, villages, and fields, Abode a graceful populace, with rites And manners beautiful as e’er adorned The imagined landscape of a poet’s dream; The captive maid, descending with her urn To shady spring, or cistern scooped from stone, And flowing with cool water to the brim; The royal virgin, seated far within Some gorgeous recess of the kingly dome, Plying with busy hand her dædal loom; The wandering minstrel, slumbering fast at noon By fountain-side or stream, or harping loud In palace hall, and crowded market-place; The frequent song of Hymen, saffron-robed, Resounding through the torchlit street, what time The star of love, thrice welcome Hesper, rose Above some immemorial mountain’s brow; The youthful vintagers, by moonlight pale Bearing the grapes in osier talarisks, While on his lute some beardless minstrel played The Lay of Linus, regal boy, of all The sons of men most musical, whose bloom Was scorched and withered by the solar beam; The rustic temple, hidden deep in groves And pleasant solitudes, beneath whose dome The village youth their glowing pæans sang; And over all the dark blue heavens sublime, Where from their sky-pavilions brightest shone The ancient stars and constellations, hymned By eldest bards—the sworded Titan named Orion, with the starry sisterhoods, Hyads and Pleïades in clusters bright. Cradled amid your kindly influences, The soft Ionian fancy wantoned wild In warm voluptuous dreams of loveliness, Pouring its inspirations in a tongue Inimitable—a honeyed dialect— Protean, flexible, all various, Whose vowelled cadences could flow as smooth As amber streams, or raise and modulate Their intonations to the ocean’s deep Sonorous surges chafing with the strand. Indelible and burning Rune, its words Upon the scroll of blind Meonides Survive, and with their fluent numbers shame The harsher languages of later days. Nor in the Carian’s golden chronicle, Though not arranged in metrical array, Sound they less sweet. Alas! the glorious tribes, Over whose chiselled lips they wont to roll In honeyed song and fiery eloquence, Have vanished. Hushed the lyres of Ibycus, Bacchylides, and Sappho starry-eyed, And that delicious lute the Teian played Within the halls of King Polycrates, While round him, bound with leafed and roseal wreaths, Mid fountain spray and snowy columns, danced Ionia’s raven-tressed voluptuous girls. Minstrel of beauty, love, and vinous joy, Thy festal spirit yet survives on earth, Clad in a garment of enduring verse, The asbestine robe of all-immortal song!