Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: THE GRAVE OF COLUNUS, by SOPHOCLES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: THE GRAVE OF COLUNUS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Stranger, where thy feet now rest
Last Line: Leaps to the foam of a hundred feet.
Subject(s): Graves; Tombs; Tombstones


STRANGER, where thy feet now rest
In this land of horse and rider,
Here is earth all earth excelling,
White Colonus here doth shine!
Oftenest here and homing best
Where the close green coverts hide her,
Warbling her sweet mournful tale
Sings the melodious nightingale,
Myriad-berried woods her dwelling,
And the wine-hued ivy, where
Through the sacred leafage lonely
No sun pierces, or rude air
Stirs from outer storm, and only
Those divine feet walk the region --
Thine, O Reveller, thine,
Bacchus, following still that legion
Dear, thy nursing Nymphs divine.

Fresh with heavenly dews, and crowned
With earliest white in shining cluster,
Each new morn the young narcissus
Blooms, that antique use of old
Bids the Great Queens bind around
Their twain brows; in golden lustre
Here the crocus beams; and here
Spring, nor minish all the year,
Cool deep wells that feed Cephissus:
Rich with balm of speedy birth
Day by day the sleepless river
Issuing o'er the breasted Earth
Wandereth in pure streams to give her
Ease and life. Nor frown the Muses
Or their quires withhold;
Nay, nor sweet Love's Queen refuses
Her bright chariot-reins of gold.

And a marvellous herb of the soil grows here,
Whose match I never have heard it sung
In the Dorian isle of Pelops near
Or in Asia far hath sprung.
'Tis a plant that flourishes unsubdued,
Self-engendering, self-renewed,
To her armed foes' dismay:
That never so fair but in this land bloomed, --
With the grey-blue silvery leaf soft-plumed,
Her nurturing Olive-spray.
No force, no ravaging hand shall raze it,
In youth so rash, or in age so wise,
For the orb of Zeus in heaven surveys it,
And blue-grey light of Athena's eyes.

Yet again my song shall arise and tell
Of the proudest jewel the region wears;
To her Mother's portion of old it fell,
And the Child her birth-right shares: --
Blest in gift of the horse is she,
Gift of the young horse, gift of the sea,
Twice-blest in a two-fold dower:
Thy gift, O Lord of the waves, her throne,
For in her streets first upon earth was shown
Thy chastening bridle's power;
And here most wonderful over the waters
Slender and shapely the trimmed oar fleet
In the sea-dance following Nereus' daughters
Leaps to the foam of a hundred feet.





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