Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
-Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
That eternally sad note found rest
Not only in the lonely playwright's ear
But also
in the ear of a tyrant of
no jest--
Pisistratus, brought home by the
grey-eyed lady,
Who preferred a
harsher music
Of pulleys and bone and sinew
Pushing giant blocks about
To build shrines
free of doubt--
Houses of
absolute faith
In the
precious Olympian few:
Apollo,
Athena,
Dionysus, and
Zeus.
Scholars nowadays
hotly debate
The timing of a
half-seen ghostly apparition;
"Who is
the one who thought to change the definition?
When did '
oppressive' start to
fit in?"
One poet maintains he knows the cause of the fruition
But has
no idea of the exact date:
The
people's champion laid his heart to his bed
And heard
through the window the Aegean note in his head--
Sharper than his
teeth gnashing together,
That
tragedian's whisper
Coming from his own
majestic mouth:
"
Tyrannos."