The First Columbus
His heart was iron, it of old was said,
Who first, Poseidon, thy wild horses rode
Into the darkness and the vastness, the abode
Perchance of gods and demons and the dead
To whom the earth denied sepulchral rite:—
How fared it on that desert without road
When the last mountain-top sank out of sight?
Did the storm waver and the vanished earth
With native lance and wife and children seem
The shadows of a half-remembered dream?
But oh, what joy by Greek or Phrygian hearth,
What civic glory, when from ocean's girth
Came the first Colon and of Etna told,
Stromboli and Hesperian lands of gold.
Who first, Poseidon, thy wild horses rode
Into the darkness and the vastness, the abode
Perchance of gods and demons and the dead
To whom the earth denied sepulchral rite:—
How fared it on that desert without road
When the last mountain-top sank out of sight?
Did the storm waver and the vanished earth
With native lance and wife and children seem
The shadows of a half-remembered dream?
But oh, what joy by Greek or Phrygian hearth,
What civic glory, when from ocean's girth
Came the first Colon and of Etna told,
Stromboli and Hesperian lands of gold.
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