Edmund William Gosse (Эдмунд Госс)
Greece and England
Would this sunshine be completer,
Or these violets smell sweeter,
Or the birds sing more in metre,
If it all were years ago,
When the melted mountain-snow
Heard in Enna all the woe
Of the poor forlorn Demeter?
Would a stronger life pulse o'er us
If a panther-chariot bore us,
If we saw, enthroned before us,
Ride the leopard-footed god,
With a fir-cone tip the rod,
Whirl the thyrsus round, and nod
To a drunken Maenad-chorus?
Bloomed there richer, redder roses
Where the Lesbian earth incloses
All of Sappho? where reposes
Meleager, laid to sleep
By the olive-girdled deep;
Where the Syrian maidens weep,
Bringing serpolet in posies?
Ah! it may be! Greece had leisure
For a world of faded pleasure;
We must tread a tamer measure,
To a milder, homelier lyre;
We must tend a paler fire,
Lay less perfume on the pyre,
Be content with poorer treasure!
Were the brown-limbed lovers bolder?
Venus younger, Cupid older?
Down the wood-nymph's warm white shoulder
Trailed a purpler, madder vine?
Were the poets more divine?
Brew we no such golden wine
Here, where summer suns are colder?
Yet for us too life has flowers,
Time a glass of joyous hours,
Interchange of sun and showers,
And a wealth of leafy glades,
Meant for loving men and maids,
Full of warm green lights and shades,
Trellis-work of wild-wood bowers.
So while English suns are keeping
Count of sowing-time and reaping,
We've no need to waste our weeping,
Though the glad Greeks lounged at ease
Underneath their olive-trees,
And the Sophoclean bees
Swarmed on lips of poets sleeping!
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