Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=393398" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Gods Of Greece</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye in the age gone by,<br>Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--<br>And guided still the steps of happy men<br> In the light leading-strings of careless joy!<br>Ah, flourished then your service of delight!<br> How different, oh, how different, in the day<br>When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,<br> O Venus Amathusia!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, through a veil of dreams<br> Woven by song, truth's youthful beauty glowed,<br>And life's redundant and rejoicing streams<br> Gave to the soulless, soul--where'r they flowed<br>Man gifted nature with divinity<br> To lift and link her to the breast of love;<br>All things betrayed to the initiate eye<br> The track of gods above!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where lifeless--fixed afar,<br> A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,<br>Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,<br> In silent glory swept the fields of heaven!<br>On yonder hill the Oread was adored,<br> In yonder tree the Dryad held her home;<br>And from her urn the gentle Naiad poured<br> The wavelet's silver foam.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yon bay, chaste Daphne wreathed,<br> Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell,<br>Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed,<br> And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel,<br>The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill--<br> Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne;<br>And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill<br> Heard Cytherea mourn!--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Heaven's shapes were charmed unto<br> The mortal race of old Deucalion;<br>Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo,<br> Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son<br>Between men, heroes, gods, harmonious then<br> Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine;<br>Blest Amathusia, heroes, gods, and men,<br> Equals before thy shrine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not to that culture gay,<br> Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan!<br>Well might each heart be happy in that day--<br> For gods, the happy ones, were kin to man!<br>The beautiful alone the holy there!<br> No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race;<br>So that the chaste Camoenae favoring were,<br> And the subduing grace!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A palace every shrine;<br> Your sports heroic;--yours the crown<br>Of contests hallowed to a power divine,<br> As rushed the chariots thundering to renown.<br>Fair round the altar where the incense breathed,<br> Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair<br>Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed<br> Sweet leaves round odorous hair!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The lively Thyrsus-swinger,<br> And the wild car the exulting panthers bore,<br>Announced the presence of the rapture-bringer--<br> Bounded the Satyr and blithe Faun before;<br>And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul,<br> Hymned in their maddening dance, the glorious wine--<br>As ever beckoned to the lusty bowl<br> The ruddy host divine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before the bed of death<br> No ghastly spectre stood--but from the porch<br>Of life, the lip--one kiss inhaled the breath,<br> And the mute graceful genius lowered a torch.<br>The judgment-balance of the realms below,<br> A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held;<br>The very furies at the Thracian's woe,<br> Were moved and music-spelled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the Elysian grove<br> The shades renewed the pleasures life held dear:<br>The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love,<br> And rushed along the meads the charioteer;<br>There Linus poured the old accustomed strain;<br> Admetus there Alcestis still could greet; his<br>Friend there once more Orestes could regain,<br> His arrows--Philoctetes!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">More glorious than the meeds<br> That in their strife with labor nerved the brave,<br>To the great doer of renowned deeds<br> The Hebe and the heaven the Thunderer gave.<br>Before the rescued rescuer [10] of the dead,<br> Bowed down the silent and immortal host;<br>And the twain stars [11] their guiding lustre shed,<br> On the bark tempest-tossed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Art thou, fair world, no more?<br> Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face;<br>Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore,<br> Can we the footstep of sweet fable trace!<br>The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;<br> Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;<br>Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,<br> Shadows alone are left!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Cold, from the north, has gone<br> Over the flowers the blast that killed their May;<br>And, to enrich the worship of the one,<br> A universe of gods must pass away!<br>Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,<br> But thee no more, Selene, there I see!<br>And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps,<br> And--Echo answers me!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Deaf to the joys she gives--<br> Blind to the pomp of which she is possessed--<br>Unconscious of the spiritual power that lives<br> Around, and rules her--by our bliss unblessed--<br>Dull to the art that colors or creates,<br> Like the dead timepiece, godless nature creeps<br>Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights,<br> The slavish motion keeps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To-morrow to receive<br> New life, she digs her proper grave to-day;<br>And icy moons with weary sameness weave<br> From their own light their fulness and decay.<br>Home to the poet's land the gods are flown,<br> Light use in them that later world discerns,<br>Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown,<br> On its own axle turns.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Home! and with them are gone<br> The hues they gazed on and the tones they heard;<br>Life's beauty and life's melody:--alone<br> Broods o'er the desolate void, the lifeless word;<br>Yet rescued from time's deluge, still they throng<br> Unseen the Pindus they were wont to cherish:<br>All, that which gains immortal life in song,<br> To mortal life must perish!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Friedrich+Schiller">Friedrich Schiller</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=393398" data-title="The Gods Of Greece de Friedrich Schiller" data-description="Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
 In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
 How different, oh, how different, in the da..."></div>
</div>
</div>