Written by
William Butler Yeats |
(From Oedipus at Colonus)
Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
The nightingale that deafens daylight there,
If daylight ever visit where,
Unvisited by tempest or by sun,
Immortal ladies tread the ground
Dizzy with harmonious sound,
Semele's lad a gay companion.
And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives
The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives
Athenian intellect its mastery,
Even the grey-leaved olive-tree
Miracle-bred out of the living stone;
Nor accident of peace nor war
Shall wither that old marvel, for
The great grey-eyed Athene stares thereon.
Who comes into this country, and has come
Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom,
Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter
And beauty-drunken by the water
Glittering among grey-leaved olive-trees,
Has plucked a flower and sung her loss;
Who finds abounding Cephisus
Has found the loveliest spectacle there is.
because this country has a pious mind
And so remembers that when all mankind
But trod the road, or splashed about the shore,
Poseidon gave it bit and oar,
Every Colonus lad or lass discourses
Of that oar and of that bit;
Summer and winter, day and night,
Of horses and horses of the sea, white horses.
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Written by
Victor Hugo |
("Si je pouvais voir, O patrie!")
{Bk. III. xxxvii.}
Would I could see you, native land,
Where lilacs and the almond stand
Behind fields flowering to the strand—
But no!
Can I—oh, father, mother, crave
Another final blessing save
To rest my head upon your grave?—
But no!
In the one pit where ye repose,
Would I could tell of France's woes,
My brethren, who fell facing foes—
But no!
Would I had—oh, my dove of light,
After whose flight came ceaseless night,
One plume to clasp so purely white.—
But no!
Far from ye all—oh, dead, bewailed!
The fog-bell deafens me empaled
Upon this rock—I feel enjailed—
Though free.
Like one who watches at the gate
Lest some shall 'scape the doomèd strait.
I watch! the tyrant, howe'er late,
Must fall!
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