Echoes of Hellas
O choir of Tempe mute these many years,
O fountain lutes of lyric Hippocrene,
On whose polluted brink no Muse is seen.
No more between the gleaming vales one hears
Apollo's footfall or the sobbing tears
Of Daphne, budding finger-tips of green.
No nymphs are bathing with their huntress Queen
In the warm shallows of the mountain meres.
Great Pan is dead: he perished long ago:
His reedy pipes these uplands never heard.
What trembling sounds from yonder coppice come?
Some ravished queen, who tells the dale her woe?
Nay, since the maids Pierian here are dumb,
The nightingale is nothing but a bird.
O choir of Tempe mute these many years,
O fountain lutes of lyric Hippocrene,
On whose polluted brink no Muse is seen.
No more between the gleaming vales one hears
Apollo's footfall or the sobbing tears
Of Daphne, budding finger-tips of green.
No nymphs are bathing with their huntress Queen
In the warm shallows of the mountain meres.
Great Pan is dead: he perished long ago:
His reedy pipes these uplands never heard.
What trembling sounds from yonder coppice come?
Some ravished queen, who tells the dale her woe?
Nay, since the maids Pierian here are dumb,
The nightingale is nothing but a bird.