Bellow great green seas
Over the grey trees
And ghostly meadows of that far day,
When in Atlantis
Night met the day's kiss,
And earth gleamed ruddy with sun's last ray.
Waves of Atlantic,
Restless, gigantic,
Tumble and toss them in sport or scorn,
And wild winds eddy,
And tides set steady,
Over the land where the gods were born.
But under sea beat,
Safe from the sea sleet,
Or snow, or storm or a wind unkind,
That land lies sleeping
In ocean's keeping
Till time the tangle of fate unwind.
There all the gods hied
When the old faith died
And power passed from them, and they were forgot:
There rest the old gods,
There still great Jove nods,
Nods in his sleeping, and knows it not.
Rest in the argent,
Sapphire floored, star-sprent
Opaline palaces under the main,
Lit by the glimmer
Of gems soft shimmer
That trembles on walls of pale hydrophane.
In God-like seeming,
They lie there dreaming,
The sheen of their beauty illuming the deep;
But all the splendour
That they engender
Is less than a dream to the gods who sleep.
Supine they lie there,
And though in mid-air
Loud winds blow battle and thunder's roar
Nothing but stillness
Seemeth to fill this
Listless, unconscious, sub-aqueous shore.
There doth no foot fall,
There may no voice call,
No sound, no shadow disturb the calm;
Dare never stalactite
Drip from the roof's height
Singeth no shell of the sea and its charm.
Only at times when
This world of madmen
Is reft and riven with wrong or war
Some sleeper smiles, or
Lifts his great arm for
Death-dealing blow, and his heaven of yore,
While one will murmur,
Are their thrones firmer
These new gods' thrones than ours were of old?
And some slight thrill will
Shiver them all till
Sleep on the sadness tightens his hold.
And then again the
Weight of that dreary
Desolate stillness falls on the land;
And but a dream is
The dead Atlantis,
Its gem-lit grottoes and glittering strand.
