| |
| PLEASANTER than the hills of Thessaly, | |
| Nearer and dearer to the poet’s heart | |
| Than the blue ripple belting Salamis, | |
| Or long grass waving over Marathon, | |
| Fair Academe, most holy Academe, | 5 |
| Thou art, and hast been, and shalt ever be. | |
| I would be numbered now with things that were, | |
| Changing the wasting fever of to-day | |
| For the dear quietness of yesterday: | |
| I would be ashes, underneath the grass, | 10 |
| So I had wandered in thy platane walks | |
| One happy summer twilight,—even one: | |
| Was it not grand and beautiful and rare, | |
| The music and the wisdom and the shade, | |
| The music of the pebble-paven rills, | 15 |
| And olive boughs, and bowered nightingales, | |
| Chorussing joyously the joyous things | |
| Told by the gray Silenus of the grove, | |
| Low-fronted and large-hearted Socrates! | |
| O, to have seen under the olive blossoms | 20 |
| But once,—once only in a mortal life, | |
| The marble majesties of ancient gods! | |
| And to have watched the ring of listeners, | |
| The Grecian boys gone mad for love of truth, | |
| The Grecian girls gone pale for love of him | 25 |
| Who taught the truth, who battled for the truth; | |
| And girls and boys, women and bearded men, | |
| Crowding to hear and treasure in their hearts | |
| Matter to make their lives a happiness, | |
| And death a happy ending. * * * * * | 30 |
| |
