To the So-Called Venus of Milo

I

Thou armless Splendour, Victory's own breath;

Embraceless Beauty, Strength bereft of hands;

To whose high pedestal a hundred lands

Send rent of awe, and sons to stand beneath;

To whom Adonis never brought a wreath,

Nor Tannhäuser a song, but whose commands

Were blindly followed by immortal bands

Who wooed thee at Thermopylae in death:

No Venus thou; but nurse of legions steeled

By Freedom's self, where rang her highest note,

And never has thy bosom felt a kiss:

No Venus thou; but on the golden shield

Which once thy lost left held, thy lost right wrote:

" At Marathon and briny Salamis. "

II

Perhaps thy arms are lying where they hold

The roots of some old olive, which strikes deep

In Attic earth; or where the Greek girls reap,

With echoes of the harvest hymns of old;

Or haply in some seaweed-cushioned fold

Of warm Greek seas, which shadows of ships sweep,

While prying dolphins through the green ribs peep,

Of sunken galleys filled with Persian gold.

Or were they shattered, — pounded back to lime,

To make the mortar for some Turkish tower

Which overshadowed Freedom for a time?

Or strewn as dust, to make, with sun and shower,

The grain and vine and olive of their clime,

As was the hand which wrought them in an hour?