Homer forsakes the billowy round
Of sailors circling o’er the island-sea;
Pindar, from Theban fountains and the mound
Builded in love and woe by doomed Antigone,
Must pass beneath the ground;
Stout Æschylus that slew the deep-haired Mede
At Marathon, at Salamis, and freed
Athens from Persian thrall,
Then sung the battle call,—
Must yield to that one foe he could not quell;
In Gela’s flowery plain he slumbers well.[2]
Sicilian roses bloom
Above his nameless tomb;
And there the nightingale doth mourn in vain
For Bion, too, who sung the Dorian strain;
By Arethusa’s tide,
His brother swains might flute in Dorian mood,—
The bird of love in thickets of the wood
Sing for a thousand years his grave beside—
Yet Bion still was mute—the Dorian lay had died.
Footnote 2:
Athenian Æschylus Euphorion’s son,
Buried in Gela’s field these _words_ declare:
His _deeds_ are registered at Marathon,
Known to the deep-haired Mede who meet him there.
—_Greek Anthology._