e is ready to depart!
O Palm, make answer; lo, before thou speakest
Thy word sublime, a hand lays wait to smite!

* * * * *

O Palm, a hand did spread to sow us here;
That hand will spread again to root us out,
And we shall die! The billow and the wind
And the still waters will sweep us away
Mercilessly! The flowery spring will not
Lament us! The wide world will never know
We perished! And beneath thy shadow's charms,
Another fragrant race will rise to life.

* * * * *

Nor will there be a monument for us
That might retain the phantom of our passing!
Only about thee will a robe of light
Adorn thee with a new and deathless gleam:
And it shall be our thought, and word, and rime!
And in the eyes of an astonished world,
Thou wilt appear like a gold-green new star;
Yet neither thou nor others will know of us!

FOOTNOTES

[1] This essay is republished, with a few changes, from _Poet Lore_,
vol. xxviii, no. 1, pp. 78-104.

[2] My translation of it originally appeared in the _Stratford
Journal_, from which I quote it in its entirety.

[3] Tigrane Yergate, _op. cit._, p. 710.

[4] Jean Moreas, _Voyage de Grece_, 1898.

[5] On Patras, the birth-place of the poet. See Introduction, p. 13.

[6] On Missolonghi, the place of the poet's childhood. See
Introduction, p. 15.

[7] On the Island of Corfu, one of the most important centers of the
literary renaissance of modern Greece.

[8] Iacobos Polylas, 1826-98, translator of the _Odyssey_ and of parts
of the _Iliad_, and an important figure in the struggle for the
vernacular. He has also translated some of Shakespeare's plays.

[9] Dionysios Solomos, born in Zante, 1748, died in Corfu, 1857. He is
the first great poet of modern Greece. He has written lyrics in
Italian and in Greek. Several of his songs have spread as folk
songs throughout the Greek world. He is mainly known as the poet of
the modern Greek national hymn to Liberty.

[10] Gerasimos Markoras, born in Cephalonia, 1826, died in Corfu, 1911,
a lyric and epic poet. His poem "Oath" was inspired by the Cretan
struggle for freedom.

[11] On Egypt, whence the first lights of civilization dawned on Greece.

[12] On Mt. Athos, the Holy Mountain of the modern Greeks, inhabited by
about ten thousand monks. Although called by its hermits "the
virgin's garden" no