Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/Ode to Professor Dimitry
ODE TO PROFESSOR DIMITRY
Suggested by his admirable lecture on the “Temples and Monuments of Greece”
Written at Georgetown University at the Age of Eighteen
Behold the man! What matchless lines of grace
Are blazoned round his great, expressive face!
The voice so full, so tremulously grand
Speaks from his heart the woes of that far land,
Which fallen now, once reigned the titled Queen
Of Mind, of Soul—all-seeing and all-seen—
Nurse of the Gods! bright Liberty’s abode!
The Poet’s pride! whence Homer’s song has flowed,
Rolling with ocean-flow from age to age—
The first—the last—the best on History’s page!
Foremost in Art, in Science, and in Strife,
In columned grandeur and in marble life—
Bend, bend before Hellenic tow’ring might
Ye gifted children of the Pure and Bright!
All this and more thrills forth—how silent all!
The burning echo riots round the hall,
In every breast responsive echoes breathe,
The ravished senses twine a deathless wreath
For those who fought for Freedom, scorning shame,
Then bartered life for an eternal fame!
Thus, not in vain, he courts the willing ear—
Calls on the dead, and living forms appear;
Both gods and men in awful grandeur move—
The “Blind old Bard”—the “Cloud-compelling Jove!”
He bids them tell of days when Greece was free,
When Athens rode triumphant o’er the sea,
Athens the peerless—prescient—the blind—
Athens the mutable—the undefined!
The fount of Eloquence! whose spring inspired
Her godlike son, and with his breath expired;
Which in one warning yet majestic cry
Made Philip quail and cowards gladly die!
When Sparta stalked the Lioness of the shore
With iron nerves—brute heart—what, nothing more?
Ay! ay! a single boon kind Nature gave,
Alone to drag her from Oblivion’s grave;
One hoary rock, the Keystone of the plain—
A shivered altar but a hallowed fane,
For patriot’s blood has trickled round the stone—
Dread august sacrifice! this—this alone
Redeems the land with a renewing birth,
Its faults forgotten in thy faultless worth!
Manes of the brave! your gore’s not vainly shed—
O stern baptism on a nation’s head!
Yet did that blood quench Persia’s fiery pride
And seal the spot where heroes fell—not died,
Leaving thy name a watchword to the free—
Unmouldering Record! lone Thermopylae!
Turn from this scene. Exulting to the skies
A temple flits before the captive eyes,
Unrivalled, chaste e’en as the new-born day,
In perfect form it looms along the way—
Unrivalled whole—unrivalled in decay!
Behold the Parthenon—the miracle—the fair!
Look once again. What ruin breedeth there!
A pilfered wreck, a desecrated shrine,
Sport of the blast, polluted yet divine—
The mind untouched from a dismembered whole—
How glorious yet, thou Mecca of the Soul!