20
HELENA'S BEACONS.
A flame, a flame on David's tower!
A flame on Ramah's height!
Samaria's hill has caught the gleam;
Lone Tabor's oaks are bright!
On Hermon, crown of Lebanon,
Blaze the sweet cedar boughs;
Berytus reddens grove and bay
The northern strand to rouse;
And the cliffs of queenly Antioch
Send rosier light to heaven
Than lit her stately colonnades
Or blushed in Daphne's myrtle shades
When feast and song and dance of maids
To her loved god were given!
And now it leaps the Issus gulf;
Cilicia's plain it thrills;
Cold Cydnus glows, and Tarsus throws
The splendor to the hills;
And the peaks of cloudy Taurus lean
Through purple-tinted air,
And catch the fire on wall and spire
And snow-fields dazzling fair,
Till far northwest, by gorge and steep,
The joyful beacons flare.
For the winds are out, and the cressets stream
To the stars and the young moon's tender beam
From heights where the eagle springs,—
Past many a city gray and old,
Past fount and fane and the sculptured hold
Where sleep the Phrygian kings!
A flame on Ramah's height!
Samaria's hill has caught the gleam;
Lone Tabor's oaks are bright!
On Hermon, crown of Lebanon,
Blaze the sweet cedar boughs;
Berytus reddens grove and bay
The northern strand to rouse;
And the cliffs of queenly Antioch
Send rosier light to heaven
Than lit her stately colonnades
Or blushed in Daphne's myrtle shades
When feast and song and dance of maids
To her loved god were given!
And now it leaps the Issus gulf;
Cilicia's plain it thrills;
Cold Cydnus glows, and Tarsus throws
The splendor to the hills;
And the peaks of cloudy Taurus lean
Through purple-tinted air,
And catch the fire on wall and spire
And snow-fields dazzling fair,
Till far northwest, by gorge and steep,
The joyful beacons flare.
For the winds are out, and the cressets stream
To the stars and the young moon's tender beam
From heights where the eagle springs,—
Past many a city gray and old,
Past fount and fane and the sculptured hold
Where sleep the Phrygian kings!
