Explore "The New Zealot to the Sun (Poems from Timoleon)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Persian, you rise / Aflame from climes of sacrifice / Where adulators sue, / And prostrate man, with brow abased, / Adheres to rites whose tenor traced / All worship hitherto.
Arch type of sway, / Meetly your over-ruling ray / You fling from Asia's plain, / Whence flashed the javelins abroad / Of many a wild incursive horde / Led by some shepherd Cain.
Mid terrors dinned / Gods too came conquerors from your Ind, / The book of Brahma throve; / They came like to the scythed car, / Westward they rolled their empire far, / Of night their purple wove.
Chemist, you breed / In orient climes each sorcerous weed / That energizes dream- / Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds, / Houris and hells, delirious screeds / And Calvin's last extreme.
What though your light / In time's first dawn compelled the flight / Of Chaos' startled clan, / Shall never all your darted spears / Disperse worse Anarchs, frauds and fears, / Sprung from these weeds to man?
But Science yet / An effluence ampler shall beget, / And power beyond your play- / Shall quell the shades you fail to rout, / Yea, searching every secret out / Elucidate your ray.