Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS, AT ATHENS, by THOMAS KIBBLE HERVEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS, AT ATHENS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thou art not silent! - oracles are thine
Last Line: And a new iphitus has waked, beneath its string!
Subject(s): Greece; Greeks


THOU art not silent! -- oracles are thine
Which the wind utters, and the spirit hears,
Lingering, mid ruin'd fane and broken shrine,
O'er many a tale and trace of other years!
Bright as an ark, o'er all the flood of tears
That wraps thy cradle-land -- thine earthly love,
Where hours of hope, mid centuries of fears,
Have gleam'd, like lightnings through the gloom above,
Stands, roofless to the sky, thy home, Olympian Jove!

Thy column'd aisles with whispers of the past
Are vocal, -- and, along thine ivied walls,
While Elian echoes murmur on the blast,
And wild-flowers hang, like victor-coronals,
In vain the turban'd tyrant rears his halls,
And plants the symbol of his faith and slaughters;
Now, even now, the beam of promise falls
Bright upon Hellas, as her own bright daughters,
And a Greek Ararat is rising o'er the waters!

Thou art not silent! When the southern fair --
Ionia's moon -- looks down upon thy breast,
Smiling, as pity smiles above despair,
Soft as young beauty soothing age to rest, --
Sings the night-spirit in thy weedy crest,
And she, the minstrel of the moonlight hours
Breathes -- like some lone one, sighing to be blest --
Her lay, half hope, half sorrow, from the flowers,
And hoots the prophet owl, amid his tangled bowers!

And, round thine altar's mouldering stones are born
Mysterious harpings, -- wild as ever crept
From him who waked Aurora, every morn,
And sad as those he sung her, till she slept!
A thousand and a thousand years have swept
O'er thee, who wert a moral from thy spring,
A wreck in youth! nor vainly hast thou kept
Thy lyre: Olympia's soul is on the wing,
And a new Iphitus has waked, beneath its string!





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