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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 cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendour 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.

BYRON.

GREECE.

AIR 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' 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 forbode the dismal hour which now

Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain
But every carle can lord it o'er thy land:

Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens has still considerable remains; it was seized by Thrasybulus, previous to the expulsion of

the Thirty.

Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,

Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, From birth to death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned

In all save form alone, how changed! and who
That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,
Who would but deem their bosoms burned anew
With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty!
And many dream withal the hour is nigh
That gives them back their fathers' heritage:
For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,
Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,

Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page.

Hereditary bondsmen! 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 thine years of shame.

When riseth Lacedæmon'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,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaims 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 ;

cave;

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the *
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, freely brave,

While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering, like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"

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.

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 gray Marathon.

*Of Mount Pentelicus, whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave formed by the quarries still remains, and will to the end of

time.

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;
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bough;
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.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng;
Long shall the voyager, with the Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;
He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

And gaze complacent on congenial earth.
Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth!
But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,
And scarce regret the region of his birth,
When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,
Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

Let such approach this consecrated land,
And pass in peace along the magic waste:
But spare its relics-let no busy hand
Deface the scenes, already how defaced!
Not for such purpose were these altars placed:
Revere the remnants nations once revered:
So may our country's name be undisgraced,
So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was reared,
By every honest joy of love and life endeared.

BYRON.

THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS.

TILL be that cloud withdrawn-Oh! mark on high,

Crowning yon hill, with temples richly graced,

That fane, august in perfect symmetry,
The proudest model of Athenian taste.
Fair Parthenon! thy Doric pillars rise
In simple dignity, thy marble's hue
Unsullied shines, relieved by brilliant skies,
That round thee spread their deep ethereal blue:
And Art o'er all thy light proportions throws
The harmony of grace, the beauty of repose.

And lovely o'er thee sleeps the sunny glow,
When morn and eve in tranquil splendour reign,
And on thy sculptures, as the smile, bestow
Hues that the pencil emulates in vain.
Then the fair forms that Phidias wrought, unfold
Each latent grace, developing in light,
Catch from soft clouds of purple and of gold,
Each tint that passes, tremulously bright;
And seem indeed whate'er devotion deems,
While so suffused with heaven, so mingling with its beams,

But oh! what words the vision may portray,
The form of sanctitude that guards thy shrine!

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