Ode to Apollo

Tandem venias precamur     Nube candentes humeros amictus     Augur Apollo.     Lord of the golden lyre     Fraught with the Dorian fire,     Oh! fair-haired child of Leto, come again;     And if no longer smile     Delphi or Delos isle,     Come from the depth of thine Aetnean glen,     Where in the black ravine     Thunders the foaming green     Of waters writhing far from mortals ken;     Come oer the sparkling brine,     And bring thy train divine,     The sweet-voiced and immortal violet-crownd Nine.     For here are richer meads,     And here are goodlier steeds     Than ever graced the glorious land of Greece;     Here waves the yellow corn,     Here is the olive born,     The gray-green gracious harbinger of peace;     Here too hath taken root     A tree with golden fruit,     In purple clusters hangs the vines increase,     And all the earth doth wear     The dry clear Attic air     That lifts the soul to liberty, and frees the heart from care.     Or if thy wilder mood     Incline to solitude,     Eternal verdure girds the lonely hills,     Through the green gloom of ferns     Softly the sunset burns,     Cold from the granite flow the mountain rills;     And there are inner shrines     Made by the slumberous pines,     Where the rapt heart with contemplation fills,     And from wave-stricken shores     Deep wistful music pours     And floods the tempest-shaken forest corridors.     Oh, give the gift of gold     The human heart to hold     With liquid glamour of the Lesbian line;     With Pindars lava glow,     With Sophocles calm flow,     Or Aeschylean rapture airy fine;     Or with thy musics close     Thy last autumnal rose     Theocritus of Sicily, divine;     O Pythian Archer strong,     Time cannot do thee wrong,     With thee they live for ever, thy nightingales of song.     We too are island-born;     Oh, leave us not in scorn,     A songless people never yet was great.     We, suppliants at thy feet,     Await thy muses sweet     Amid the laurels at thy temple gate,     Crownless and voiceless yet,     But on our brows is set     The dim unwritten prophecy of fate,     To mould from out of mud     An empire with our blood,     To wage eternal warfare with the fire and flood.     Lord of the minstrel choir,     Oh, grant our hearts desire,     To sing of truth invincible in might,     Of love surpassing death     That fears no fiery breath,     Of ancient inborn reverence for right,     Of that sea-woven spell     That from Trafalgar fell     And keeps the star of duty in our sight:     Oh, give the sacred fire,     And our weak lips inspire     With laurels of thy song and lightnings of thy lyre.