Gladdest heart that God gave ever milk and wine of thought to
quaff,
Clearest eye that lightened ever to the broad lip's lordliest
laugh,
Praise be thine as theirs whose tragic brows the loftier leaf
engirds
For the live and lyric lightning of thy honey-hearted words,
Soft like sunny dewy wings of clouds and bright as crying of birds;
Full of all sweet rays and notes that make of earth and air and sea
One great light and sound of laughter from one great God's heart,
to be
Sign and semblance of the gladness of man's life where men breathe
free.
With no Loxian sound obscure God uttered once, and all time heard,
All the soul of Athens, all the soul of England, in that word:
Rome arose the second child of freedom: northward rose the third.
Ere her Boreal dawn came kindling seas afoam and fields of snow,
Yet again, while Europe groaned and grovelled, shone like suns
aglow
Doria splendid over Genoa, Venice bright with Dandolo.
Dead was Hellas, but Ausonia by the light of dead men's deeds
Rose and walked awhile alive, though mocked as whom the fen-fire
leads
By the creed-wrought faith of faithless souls that mock their
doubts with creeds.
Dead are these, and man is risen again: and haply now the three
Yet coequal and triune may stand in story, marked as free
By the token of the washing of the waters of the sea.
Athens first of all earth's kindred many-tongued and many-kinned
Had the sea to friend and comfort, and for kinsman had the wind: