[Greek: Chairete, nikômen]°
First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and
rock!
Gods of my birthplace, dæmons and heroes, honour to
all!
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal
in praise
—Ay, with Zeus° the Defender, with Her°
of the ægis and spear! °4
Also, ye of the bow and the buskin,° praised be your
peer, °5
Now, henceforth, and forever,—O latest
to whom I upraise
Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture
and flock!
Present to help, potent to save, Pan°—patron
I call! °8
Archons° of Athens, topped by the tettix,° see, I
return! °9
See, ’tis myself here standing alive, no spectre
that speaks! 10
Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens
and you,
“Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta
for aid!
Persia has come,° we are here, where is She?”
Your command I obeyed, °13
Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which
a fire runs through,
Was the space between city and city: two days,
two nights did I burn
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up
peaks.
Into their midst I broke: breath served but for
“Persia has come!
Persia bids Athens proffer slaves’-tribute,
water and earth°; °18
Razed to the ground is Eretria.°—but Athens,
shall Athens sink, °19
Drop into dust and die—the flower of Hellas°
utterly die, °20
Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid,
the stander-by°? °21
Answer me quick,—what help, what hand do
you stretch o’er destruction’s brink?
How,—when? No care for my limbs!—there’s
lightning in all and some—
Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give
it birth!”
O my Athens—Sparta love thee? did Sparta
respond?
Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust,
Malice,—each eye of her gave me its glitter
of gratified hate!
Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses.
I stood
Quivering,—the limbs of me fretting as
fire frets, an inch from dry wood:
“Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still
they debate? 30
Thunder, thou Zeus! Athene, are Spartans a quarry
beyond
Swing of thy spear? Phoibos° and Artemis,° clang
them ’Ye must’!” °32
No bolt launched from Olumpos°! Lo, their answer
at last! °33
“Has Persia come,—does Athens ask
aid,—may Sparta befriend?
Nowise precipitate judgment—too weighty
the issue at stake!
Count we no time lost time which lags thro’
respect to the Gods!
Ponder that precept of old, ’No warfare, whatever
the odds
In your favour, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is
unable to take
Full-circle her state in the sky!’ Already she
rounds to it fast:
Athens must wait, patient as we—who judgment
suspend.” 40
Athens,—except for that sparkle,—thy
name, I had mouldered to ash!
That sent a blaze thro’ my blood; off, off and
away was I back,
—Not one word to waste, one look to lose
on the false and the vile!
Yet “O Gods of my land!” I cried, as each
hillock and plain,
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them
again,
“Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honours
we paid you erewhile?
Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation!
Too rash
Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so
slack!
“Oak and olive and bay,—I bid you
cease to en-wreathe
Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian’s
foot, 50
You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn
a slave!
Rather I hail thee, Parnes,°—trust to thy
wild waste tract! °52
Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter
if slacked
My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to
cave
No deity deigns to drape with verdure?—at
least I can breathe,
Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from
the mute!”
Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes’ ridge;
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden,
a bar
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the
way.
Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure
across: 60
“Where I could enter, there I depart by!
Night in the fosse?
Athens to aid? Tho’ the dive were thro’
Erebos,° thus I obey— °62
Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise!
No bridge
Better
what
was it I came on, of wonders that are?
There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he—majestical
Pan!
Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned
his hoof;
All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly—the
curl
Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal’s
awe
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I
saw.
“Halt, Pheidippides!”—halt
I did, my brain of a whirl:
70
“Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?”!
he gracious began:
“How is it,—Athens, only in Hellas,
holds me aloof?
“Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me
no feast!
Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more
helpful of old?
Ay, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan,
trust me!
Go bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have
faith
In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens,
’The Goat-God saith:
When Persia—so much as strews not the soil—Is
cast in the sea,
Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your
most and least,
Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the
free and the bold!’ 80
“Say Pan saith: ‘Let this, foreshowing
the place, be the pledge!’”
(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear
—Fennel,—I grasped it a-tremble
with dew—whatever it bode),
“While, as for thee…” But enough!
He was gone. If I ran hitherto—
Be sure that the rest of my journey, I ran no longer,
but flew.
Parnes to Athens—earth no more, the air
was my road;
Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more
on the razor’s edge!
Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon
rare!
* * * *
Then spoke Miltiades.° “And thee, best runner
of Greece, °89
Whose limbs did duty indeed,—what gift
is promised thyself? 90
Tell it us straightway,—Athens the mother
demands of her son!”
Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but,
lifting at length
His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered
the rest of his strength
Into the utterance—“Pan spoke thus:
’For what thou hast done
Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed
thee release
From the racer’s toil, no vulgar reward in praise
or in pelf!’
“I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the
most to my mind!
Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel
may grow,—
Pound—Pan helping us—Persia
to dust, and, under the deep,
Whelm her away forever; and then,—no Athens
to save,— 100
Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave,—
Hie to my house and home: and, when my children
shall creep
Close to my knees,—recount how the God
was awful yet kind,
Promised their sire reward to the full—rewarding
him—so!”
* * *
Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon
day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried “To Akropolis°!
°106
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy
due!
‘Athens is saved, thank Pan,’ go shout!”
He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more: and the space ’twixt
the Fennel-field° °109
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire
runs through, 110
Till in he broke: “Rejoice, we conquer!”
Like wine thro’ clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died—the
bliss!
So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word
of salute
Is still “Rejoice!”—his word
which brought rejoicing indeed.
So is Pheidippides happy forever,—the noble
strong man
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god,
whom a god loved so well,
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was
suffered to tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as
he began,
So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter
be mute:
“Athens is saved!”—Pheidippides
dies in the shout for his meed. 120
* * *
*
