The Islands

H.D.

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  • I.
  • II.
  • III.
  • IV.
  • V.
  • VI.
  • VII.


  • I.





    What are the islands to me,
    what is Greece,
    what is Rhodes, Samos, Chios,
    what is Paros facing west,
    what is Crete?


    What is Samothrace,
    rising like a ship,
    what is Imbros rending the storm-waves
    with its breast?


    What is Naxos, Paros, Milos,
    what the circle about Lycia,
    what, the Cyclades'
    white necklace?


    What is Greece —
    Sparta, rising like a rock,
    Thebes, Athens,
    what is Corinth?


    What is Euboia with its island violets,
    what is Euboia, spread with grass,
    set with swift shoals,
    what is Crete?


    What are the islands to me,
    what is Greece?

    II.





    What can love of land give to me
    that you have not —
    what do the tall Spartans know,
    and gentler Attic folk?


    What has Sparta and her women
    more than this?


    What are the islands to me
    if you are lost —


    What is Naxos, Tinos, Andros,
    and Delos, the clasp of the white necklace?


    III.





    What can love of land give to me
    that you have not,
    what can love of strife break in me
    that you have not?


    Though Sparta enter Athens,
    salt, rising to wreak terror
    Thebes wrack Sparta,
    each changes as water,
    and fall back.

    IV.





    "What has love of land given to you
    that I have not?"


    I have questioned Tyrians
    where they sat
    on the black ships,
    weighted with rich stuffs,
    I have asked the Greeks
    from the white ships,
    and Greeks from ships whose hulks
    lay on the wet sand, scarlet
    with great beaks.


    I have asked bright Tyrians
    and tall Greeks —
    "what has love of land given you?"


    And they answered — "peace."

    V.





    But beauty is set apart,
    beauty is cast by the sea,
    a barren rock,
    beauty is set about
    with wrecks of ships,
    upon our coast, death keeps
    the shallows — death waits
    clutching toward us
    from the deeps.


    Beauty is set apart;
    the winds that slash its beach,
    swirl the coarse sand
    upward toward the rocks.


    Beauty is set apart
    from the islands
    and from Greece.


    VI.





    In my garden,
    the winds have beaten
    the ripe lilies;
    in my garden, the salt
    has wilted the first flakes
    of young narcissus,
    and the lesser hyacinth
    and the salt has crept
    under the leaves of the white hyacinth.


    In my garden
    even the wind-flowers lie flat,
    broken by the wind at last.


    VII.





    What are the islands to me
    if you are lost,
    what is Paros to me
    if your eyes draw back,
    what is Milos
    if you take fright of beauty,
    terrible, torturous, isolated,
    a barren rock?


    What is Rhodes, Crete,
    what is Paros facing west,
    what, white Imbros?


    What are the islands to me
    if you hesitate,
    what is Greece if you draw back
    from the terror
    and cold splendor of song
    and its bleak sacrifice?