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LXXIX.

And whose more rife with merriment than thine,
Oh Stamboul! once the empress of their reign?
Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine,
And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:
(Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)
Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,
All felt the common joy they now must feign,
Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song,
As woo'd the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.

LXXX.

Loud was the lightsome tumult of the shore,
Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone,
And timely echoed back the measured oar,
And rippling waters made a pleasant moan:

The Queen of tides on high consenting shone,
And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave,
'Twas, as if darting from her heavenly throne,

A brighter glance her form reflected gave,

Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave.

LXXXI.

Glanced many a light caique along the foam,
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
No thought had man or maid of rest or home,
While many a languid eye and thrilling hand

Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
Or gently prest, returned the pressure still:
Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,

These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill!

LXXXII.

But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,
Even through the closest searment half betrayed?

To such the gentle murmurs of the main
Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;
To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd
Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain :
How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,

And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!

LXXXIII.

This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece;
If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast :
Not such as prate of war, but skulk in peace,
The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,
Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost,

And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:

Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most; Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record Of hero sires, who shame, thy now degenerate horde!

LXXXIV.

When riseth Lacedemon's hardihood,

When Thebes, Epaminondas, rears again, When Athens' children, are with hearts endued, When Grecian mothers, shall give birth to men, Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then. A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust and when Can man its shattered splendour renovate, Recal its virtues back and vanquish Time and Fate?

LXXXV.

:

And yet how lovely in thine

of
age woe,

Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou!
Thy vales of ever-green, thy hills of snow 37
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough;
So perish monuments of mortal birth,

So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth;

LXXXVI.

Save where some solitary column mourns

Above its prostate brethren of the

cave; 38

Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns

Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;

Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the grey stones and unmolested grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,

While strangers only not regardless pass,

Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh «Alas! »

LXXXVII.

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,

And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair,

LXXXVIII..

Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,

But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon.

LXXXIX.

The sun, the soil, but not the slave,

the same;

Unchanged in all except its foreign lord-
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame
The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

When Marathon became a magic word; 39
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear

The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career,

XC.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;

Mountains above, Earth's Ocean's plain below;

Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!

Such was the scene

-what now remaineth here?

What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?

The rifled urn, the violated mound,

The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger? spurns around.

XCI.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past

Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;

!

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