15.

High from his throne in heaven Simonides,
  Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears
That the everlasting sun of all time sees
  All golden, molten from the forge of years,
Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees
  Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners’ ears,
Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees
  And honied as their harvest, that endears
      The toil of flowery days;
      And smiling perfect praise
  Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers: 
      Whom we that hear not him
      For length of date grown dim
  Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears;
    And harshest heights of sorrowing hours,
Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers.

16.

Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,
  The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb: 
And multitudinous time for him was one,
  Who bade before his equal seat of doom
Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun
  The weavers of the world’s large-historied loom,
By their own works of light or darkness done
  Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom. 
      In speech of purer gold
      Than even they spake of old
  He bade the breath of Sidney’s lips relume
      The fire of thought and love
      That made his bright life move
  Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom
    To blameless music ever, strong
As death and sweet as death-annihilating song.

17.

Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,
  Love gave his thought strength equal to release
From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam
  Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease;
So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home
  The soul’s large pinions till her strife should cease: 
And through the trumpet of a child of Rome
  Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece. 
      As though some northern hand
      Reft from the Latin land
  A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece
      To clothe with golden sound
      Of old joy newly found
  And rapture as of penetrating peace
    The naked north-wind’s cloudiest clime,
And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time.

18.

He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy
  Fade, and the darkness at Oenone’s prayer
Close upon her that closed upon her boy,
  For all the curse of godhead that she bare;
And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy
  With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair;
And his love smitten in their dawn of joy
  Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear;
      And one in flowery coils
      Caught as in fiery toils
  Smite Calydon with mourning unaware;
      And where her low turf shrine
      Showed Modesty divine
  The fairest mother’s daughter far more fair
    Hide on her breast the heavenly shame
That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame.