Small flowers bloom in the waving grass
And birds are singing in the pine
Where once between tall columns rose
The Zeus whom Phidias made divine.
The thunderbolt was in his hand,
Men dared not look upon his face,
The fluted earth was but his throne,
The bright sky was his dwelling-place.
Now his proud temple strews the ground,
His altars are but broken stones,
His gold-and-ivory flesh is dust
Mixed with his violators’ bones.
Brief is the hour of gods and men–
Their carved fame falls that was so fair,
While wilful beauty blooms in flowers
And floats in song upon the air.
Olympia, Harriet Monroe, (Poetry, Number 1)
The Attic on Monroe and Poetry.
