Pheidippides

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!Gods of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honor to all!Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, coequal in praise--Aye, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis and spear!Also ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your peer,Now, henceforth and forever--O latest to whom I upraiseHand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock!Present to help, potent to save, Pan--patron I call!

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that speaks!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,Ran and raced; like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,Was the space between city and city. Two days, two nights didI burnOver 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;Razed to the ground is Eretria--but Athens, shall Athens sink,Drop into dust and die--the flower of Hellas utterly die,Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, thestander-by?Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch o'erdestruction'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 stoodQuivering--the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch from drywood--"Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they debate?Thunder, thou Zeus! Athene, are Spartans a quarry beyondSwing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang them 'Ye must'!"No bolt launched from Olumpos! Lo, their answer at last!

"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 through respect to the gods!Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the oddsIn your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to takeFull circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast:Athens must wait, patient as we--who judgment suspend."

Athens--except for that sparkle--thy name, I had moldered to ash!That sent a blaze through 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 honors we paid you erewhile?Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rashLove in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack!

"Oak and olive and bay--I bid you cease to enwreatheBrows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian's foot,You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave!Rather I hail thee, Parnes--trust to thy wild waste tract!Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slackedMy speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to caveNo 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 barJutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way.Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across:"Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse?Athens to aid? Though the dive were through Erebos, thus I obey--Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridgeBetter!"--when--ha! 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 curlCarved 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."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?Aye, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, trust me!Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faithIn 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 andthe bold!'

"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, butflew.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,Whose limbs did duty indeed--what gift is promised thyself?Tell it us straightway--Athens the mother demands of her son!"Rosily blushed the youth; he paused; but, lifting at lengthHis eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of hisstrengthInto the utterance--"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast doneCount on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee releaseFrom 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--Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave--Hie to my house and home; and, when my children shall creepClose 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!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-fieldAnd Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of saluteIs still "Rejoice!"--his word which brought rejoicing indeed.So is Pheidippides happy forever--the noble strong manWho could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god lovedso well;He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tellSuch 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 hismeed.