This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...the green Ionian town Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs; And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun Laughed out--broad day--and flushed the garden gods Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus. Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke And took our hands and asked to feel the sun; And where the ilex ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...the green Ionian town Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs; And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun Laughed out--broad day--and flushed the garden gods Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus. Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke And took our hands and asked to feel the sun; And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard The charm of birds, the social whisper of vines, The ripple of the blue Propontic sea. The Death of Anaxagoras 113 Placid and pleased he lay;--but we were sad To see the snowy hair and silver beard Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, And feel that he, whose vast philosophy Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen And never more should know the spring! Confess, You too had grieved to see it, Pericles! But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong; And when we called the plagues of all your gods On your ungrateful city, he but smiled: "Be patient, children! Where would be the gain Of wisdom and divine astronomy, Could we not school our fretful minds to bear The ills all life inherits? / can smile To think of Athens! Were they much to blame? Had I not slain Apollo? Plucked the beard Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet Outgrown so little the green grasshoppers From whom they boast descent, --are they to blame? How could they dream, --how credit even when taught--The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk Not less than Peloponnesus? How believe The moon, no silver goddess girt for chace, But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales? H Poor grasshoppers! who deem the gods absorbed In all their babble, shrilling in the grass, What wonder if they rage, should one but hint That thunder and lightning, born of clashing cl...
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