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VIII. THE GREEKS AT THERMOPYLE.-BYRON.

THEY fell devoted, but undying;

The věry 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 wrapped 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,
The 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.

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II.

126. GREECE.

E who hath bent him o'er the dead, Ere the first day of death is fled, The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before Decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,
And marked the mild, angelic air,

The rapture of repose, that's there,
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the plăcid cheek-

And but for that sad, shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold obstruction's apathy
Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon→

Yes, but for these, and these ǎlone,

Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,-
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first-last look by death revealed!
2. Such is the aspect of this shōre;
'Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deady fair,
We start-for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb-
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of feeling past away!
Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth.

3. Clime of the unforgotten brave!

1

Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave!
Say, is not this Thermopyla? 1
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free-
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this.
The gulf, the rock, of Salamis!"
These scenes, their story not unknown,

1 Ther mŏp ́ ý læ, a famous pass of Greece, about five miles long, and originally from 50 to 60 yards in width. It is hemmed in on one side by precipitous rocks of from 400 to 600 feet in height, and on the other side by the sea and an impassable Here Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans died in defending Greece against the invasion

morass.

of Xerxes, B. C. 489.

'Săl' a mis, an island of Greece, in the Gulf of Ægina, ten miles W. of Athens. Its shape is very irreg ular; the surface is mountainous and wooded in some parts. In the channel between it and the main land, the Greeks, under Themistocles, gained a memorable naval victory over the Persians, B. C. 480.

1

Arise, and make again your own :
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear,
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame ;
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.

4. Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it, many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,

Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command—
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse, to stranger's eye,
The graves of those that can not die!
"Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough, no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell.
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

III.

127. SONG OF THE GREEKS, 1822.

GAIN to the battle, Achaians!1

Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance;

Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree,—

BYRON.

It has been, and shall yět be, the land of the free ;

For the cross of our faith is replanted,

The pale dying crescent is daunted,

Achaians, (a kd' anz), the people of Achaia, a department of the king. dom of Greece.

And we march that the footprints of Ma'homet's' slaves
May be washed out in blood from our forefathers' graves.
Their spirits are hovering o'er us,

And the sword shall to glory restore us.

2. Ah! what though no succor advances,
Nor Christendom's chivalrous lances

Are stretched in our aid?-Be the combat our own!
And we'll perish or conquer more proudly ǎlone;
For we've sworn by our country's assaulters,
By the virgins they've dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins,
That, living, we will be victorious,

Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious.
3. A breath of submission we breathe not:

The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not:
Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid,
And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade.

Earth may hide, waves engulf, fire consume us;
But they shall not to slavery doom us :

If they rule, it shall be o'er our ashes and graves :-
But we've smote them already with fire on the waves,

And new triumphs on land are befōre us ;—
To the charge!-Heaven's banner is o'er us.

4. This day-shall ye blush for its story;
Or brighten your lives with its glory?—
Our women-oh, say, shall they shriek in despair,
Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair?
Accursed may his memory blacken,

If a coward there be that would slacken

Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth
Being sprung from, and named for, the god-like of earth.
Strike home!-and the world shall revere us
As heroes descended from heroes.

1 Mā' hom ět, a false prophet of Arabia, who, by the mere force of his genius and his convictions, subdued many nations to his religion, his laws and his scepter;

and whose authority at the present time is acknowledged by nearly two hundred millions of souls. He was born in 570, and died on the 8th of July, 632.

5. Old Greece lightens up with emotion!

Her inlands, her isles of the ocean,

Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring,
And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon's' spring.
Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness,

That were cold, and extinguished in sadness;
Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving armis,
Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,—
When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens

Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens!

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Α

IV.

128. MARCO BOZZARIS.

T midnight, in his guarded tent,

A was

The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power;

In dreams, through camp and court, he bōre
The trophies of a conqueror ;

In dreams, his song of triumph heard ;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring;

Then pressed that monarch's throne,-a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,

As Eden's garden bird.

2. At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris' ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood

1Hělí con, a famous mountain in Boeotia, in Greece, from which flows a fountain, and where resided the Muses.

? Marco Bozzaris, (bôt' så ris), a Suliote of Arnaout and Greek descent, was born in 1789. He was early involved in revolutionary movements. His most brilliant exploit is the one

here described, in which, with a handful of five hundred Suliotes, at midnight, August 20th, 1823, he surprised a Turkish army of twenty thousand men, fought his way to the very tent of the commander-in-chief, and was killed by a random shot, while making the pasha prisoner. The victory, however, was complete.

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