OF THE FAMOUS GREEK WAR SONG
Δεῦτε παιδες τῶν Ελλήνων,
Written by RIGA, who perished in the attempt to revolutionize Greece.
SONS of the Greeks, arise!
The glorious hour's gone forth,
And, worthy of such ties,
Display who gave us birth.
Sons of Greeks! let us go
In arms against the foe,
Till their hated blood shall flow
In a river past our feet.
Then manfully despising
The Turkish tyrant's yoke, Let your country see you rising, And all her chains are broke. Brave shades of chiefs and sages, Behold the coming strife!
Hellenes of past ages,
Oh! start again to life!
At the sound of my trumpet, breaking
Your sleep, oh join with me!
And the seven-hilled city seeking,
Fight, conquer, till we're free.
Sons of Greeks, etc.
Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers
Lethargic dost thou lie ?
Awake, and join thy numbers
With Athens, old ally!
Leonidas recalling,
That chief of ancient song,
Who saved ye once from falling,
The terrible! the strong!
Who made that bold diversion
In old Thermopylæ,
And warring with the Persian
To keep his country free;
With his three hundred waging
The battle, long he stood,
And like a lion raging,
Expired in seas of blood.
OUR life is two-fold; Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence : Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their developement have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon ou waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,—they speak
Like sybils of the future; they have power-
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows-Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind?-The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'a
Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs;-the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man :
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing-the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautifu!:
And both were young-yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had look'd
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in her's;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye follow'd her's and saw with her's,
Which coloured all his objects :—he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all upon a tone,
A touch of her's, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously-his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share :
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother-but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.-It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not-and why?
Time taught him a deep answer-when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned :
Within an antique Oratory stood
The boy of whom I spake ;-he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro; anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion-then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears,
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet; as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there :
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw
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