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Final chorus
from Hellas
The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake
renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and
faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving
dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his
fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer
Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier
deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught
with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves
once more
Calypso for his native shore.
Oh,
write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's
scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free:
Altho' a subtler Sphinx
renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendor of
its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and
Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and
good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than
many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar
dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must
men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the
urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the
past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
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