THE LOTUS-EATERS.

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd vine-
To hear the emerald-colored water faliing
Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.

VIII.

The Lotus blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotus blows by every winding creek:

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All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Through every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is

blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind
In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly

curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centered in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered-down
in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ALFRED TENNYSON.

Pericles and Aspasia.

HIS was the ruler of the land

THIS

When Athens was the land of fame;
This was the light that led the band

When each was like a living flame;
The center of earth's noblest ring--
Of more than men the more than king.

Yet not by fetter, nor by spear,

His sovereignty was held or won :
Feared-but alone as freemen fear,

Loved-but as freemen love alone,
He waved the scepter o'er his kind
By nature's first great title--mind!

Resistless words were on his tongue

Then cloquence first flashed below;
Full armed to life the portent sprung-
Minerva from the Thunderer's brow!
And his the sole, the sacred hand
That shook her ægis o'er the land.

SONG OF THE GREEK POET.

And throned immortal by his side,

A woman sits with eye sublime,—
Aspasia, all his spirit's bride;

But if their solemn love were crime,
Pity the beauty and the sage-
Their crime was in their darkened age.

He perished, but his wreath was won—

He perished in his height of fame;
Then sunk the cloud on Athens' sun,

Yet still she conquered in his name.
Filled with his soul, she could not die;
Her conquest was Posterity!

GEORGE CROLY.

Song of the Greek Poet.

THE

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 farther 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; For standing on the Persian's grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

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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,

Ev'n as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a Plush-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 Thermopyla!

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.

SONG OF THE GREEK POET.

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 gave-
Think 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 PolycratesA 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.