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Greek wayfarers, and other poems cover

Greek wayfarers, and other poems

Chapter 49: SONG
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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.

SONG

Toil on, fishermen!
Pan sits on the cliff,
Smiles and watches the fare,
Wreaths him with flowers there,
Bites at a lettuce leaf,
Binds him a poppy sheaf,
Drinks from a painted jug,
Watching the full nets tug;
Toil on, fishermen!
Work on, harvesters!
Demeter rests on the hill,
Near to the threshing-floor;
Near to the cottage door,
Girds her with fruited vines,
Blows foam from the wines,
Drinks from a golden bowl,
While corn-filled wagons roll;
Work on, harvesters!
Rest well, goat-herds!
Hermes cares for the sheep,
Flashes across the sun,
Burnishes helmet wings,
The wreathed caduceus brings,
To swift talaria-flight,
Through the sheep-scattered night;
Rest well, goat-herds!