The Tower (Yeats)/Colonus' Praise

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COLONUS' PRAISE
(From 'Oedipus at Colonus')

ChorusCome praise Colonus' horses and come praiseThe wine dark of the wood's intricacies,The nightingale that deafens daylight there,If daylight ever visit where,Unvisited by tempest or by sun,Immortal ladies tread the groundDizzy with harmonious sound,Semele's lad a gay companion.
And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives ​The self-sown, self-begotten shape that givesAthenian intellect its mastery,Even the grey-leaved olive treeMiracle-bred out of the living stone;Nor accident of peace nor warShall wither that old marvel, forThe great grey-eyed Athene stares thereon.
Who comes into this country, and has comeWhere golden crocus and narcissus bloom,Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughterAnd beauty-drunken by the waterGlittering among grey-leaved olive trees,Has plucked a flower and sung her loss;Who finds abounding CephisusHas found the loveliest spectacle there is.
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Because this country has a pious mindAnd so remembers that when all mankindBut trod the road, or paddled by the shore,Poseidon gave it bit and oar,Every Colonus lad or lass discoursesOf that oar and of that bit;Summer and winter, day and night,Of horses and horses of the sea, white horses.

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