THE HELLESPONT AND TROY

THE

From The Bride of Abydos'

HE winds are high on Helle's wave;
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,

The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret torch was blazing high,
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,

With signs and sounds, forbade to go:
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the light of love,
The only star it hailed above;

His ear but rang with Hero's song,
"Ye waves, divide not lovers long!".
That tale is old, but love anew

May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle's tide

Rolls darkly heaving to the main;

And Night's descending shadows hide

That field with blood bedewed in vain,

The desert of old Priam's pride,

The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!

Oh! yet for there my steps have been;

These feet have pressed the sacred shore; These limbs that buoyant wave hath borneMinstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,

To trace again those fields of yore, Believing every hillock green

Contains no fabled hero's ashes,

And that around the undoubted scene

Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes,

Be long my lot! and cold were he

Who there could gaze denying thee!

GREECE AND HER HEROES

From The Siege of Corinth ›

HEY fell devoted, but undying;

TH

The very gale their names seemed sighing:
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain:
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still, and theirs!
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.

* Homer.

THE

THE ISLES OF GREECE

From 'Don Juan'

HE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all except their sun is set.

The Scian and the Teian † muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,

Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute

To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon -
And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;

+ Anacreon.

For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below,

And men in nations;—all were his! He counted them at break of dayAnd when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now

The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face: For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?

Must we but blush ?-Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylæ!

What, silent still? and silent all?

Ah, no; - the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one, arise- we come, we come!» 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain-in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?

Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gaveThink ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these:

It made Anacreon's song divine;

He served - but served Polycrates —

A tyrant: but our masters then

Were still at least our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore: And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks They have a king who buys and sells;

In native swords and native ranks

The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade:

I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marble steep,

Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:

There, swan-like, let me sing and die! A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

A

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ›

NCIENT of days! august Athena! where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?

Gone glimmering through the dream of things that

were:

First in the race that led to Glory's goal,

They won, and passed away-is this the whole?

A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole

Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!

Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,

In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait

Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,

Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow

Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,

Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,

But every carl can lord it o'er thy land:

Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,

Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,

From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.

Hereditary bondmen! know ye not

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.

Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame.