Or speak and die not. Ere thy limbs were made

Or thine eyes lightened, strife, thou knowest, my child,

'Twixt God and God had risen, which heavenlier name

Should here stand hallowed, whose more liberal grace

Should win this city's worship, and our land

To which of these do reverence; first the lord

Whose wheels make lightnings of the foam-flowered sea

Here on this rock, whose height brow-bound with dawn

450

Is head and heart of Athens, one sheer blow

Struck, and beneath the triple wound that shook

The stony sinews and stark roots of the earth

Sprang toward the sun a sharp salt fount, and sank

Where lying it lights the heart up of the hill,

A well of bright strange brine; but she that reared

Thy father with her same chaste fostering hand

[Pg 27]

Set for a sign against it in our guard

The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar leaf

High in the shadowy shrine of Pandrosus

 Prev. P 31/116 next