WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Greek wayfarers, and other poems cover

Greek wayfarers, and other poems

Chapter 2: TO THE AMAZONS AT EPÍDAUROS
By Edwina Stanton Babcock
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Mythology, Legends & FolklorePoetry

About This Book

A lyrical collection evokes ancient and modern Greece through mythic retellings, ritual scenes, and landscape vignettes. Poems range from dramatic addresses to figures of legend to intimate portraits of contemporary Easter processions, seafaring rites, funerary stelæ, and rural labor, using vivid sensory detail of temples, hills, and the sea. Themes of memory, reverence, loss, and cultural continuity recur as the poet moves between narrative lyric, ekphrastic responses to antiquities, and pastoral sketches. The result is a varied formal palette that intertwines classical allusion with observations of everyday life and seasonal celebration.

GREEK WAYFARERS

TO THE AMAZONS AT EPÍDAUROS

Ride, Amazons, ride!
Militant women, careless of tunic and limb;
Sinuous torsos, naked legs boy-like and pressed
Close to the warm horse’s flank, while the wild battle-hymn
Fixes the eyes with the far-reaching look of the quest;
Caring no more for the places of mother and bride;
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Arrow-swift warriors galloping over the plain,
Feverish, urged ever onward with furious rage;
War-fretted golden-hair tangled with wind-fretted mane;
One-breasted heroines, vigorous, quick to engage,
Hot with the vigor of pulsating, vehement pride—
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Penthesilèa falls by Achilles’ drawn bow.
Fell she, the Queen, by the white tents of bold Priam’s side?
Leaderless women, on to the battle ye go—
Plunging on, speeding on; galloping Vengeance, astride
Horses that feel ye victorious, with gods allied—
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Ride, Amazons, ride!
Fearless stone-women, ardent and flushed with the race,
Gleaming like swords, ruthless of body and breast;
Nothing shall utterly quell ye, nor wholly deface,
Ye shall ride onward forever, on ultimate quest.
Spirited! Splendid! Time shall not turn ye aside.
Ride, Amazons, ride!