GREEK FARMERS

In green Laconia, where the hedges are Spring-starred with flowers, and the little brooks Wake all the mountains from their solemn dreams Of the old days, when gods moved strong and white On hill and sea, or slept within the clouds; There are great slopes, broken with tillage, rough With clumsy ploughing, thick with olive-trees. And here they stand, the tall, black-bearded men, Whose eyes, unblinking, look into the sun. Men, plainly bred from tribal wanderings, Whose blood is fevered fire, men whose lands Are bare with waste and bloodshed; men who stand Gazing at strangers with shy interest; Who, when you question their fresh peasant-eyes Straighten up from their field-tasks and reply: “These are our flocks and pastures—we are Greeks!” Black-bearded men who sow, What is the Seed? For Greece has lain beneath the Turkish plough, And all her hills and mountains smoke again With treachery, rape, and murder. On the seas The nations wait to grasp; the kings and crews Who play the Blood-game snap at little lands Like dogs at flies. Yea, that fair seed ye sow, Is it Greek seed? though sown by mongrel hands? Seed of a greatness far exceeding theirs, The lands that would despoil Greece? Will it grow That seed, Deucalion’s hope, Athena’s pride, Is it once more the sacred seed that fell Out of Demeter’s hand on holy ground? Or, is it Cadmus-sown, for crops of Hell? Truthfully, farmers, can ye stand and say: “These are our fields and pastures, we are Greeks”? They make no answer—strong, black-bearded men, Grimly at work on the Phigalian Hill Where the grey Bassæ Temple guards the corn. They make no answer in the mountain towns Arcadian, where pink-roofed houses splotch The hillsides and where hidden teamsters climb Thicketed bridle-paths beside the streams. They cannot tell us, if they know, what seed The sculptors, patriots, and statesmen sowed; Nor even if these furrows that they plow Will bring a season’s harvest to their doors. But, as we pass them, under upland oaks, Under the fig-trees in the rocky gorge, They walk with strange, fleet steps, so tireless, So strong, with eyes set on some distant goal, Till we, too, puzzled, murmur: “They are Greeks.” Oh, fateful World! insatiate modern life— Driven by urgencies too great to tell, Destroying, recreating, balancing— What of this Old World, dreaming modern dreams, Yet with the old dream dwelling in the land To teach it Pride? Shall we dare face a Greek— With all his shining temples at his back, With the eternal Thought behind his name,— As he were German, Russian, Turk, Chinese? If these black-bearded mongrels share the pride Of Argonauts and claim a classic birth And till the wild land, dropping in the seed, Forever saying softly, “We are Greeks,” Why should they garner any other crop, Why should they bend and toil for better gain Than seeing New Greece realize her dream?