| |
| GONE are the glorious Greeks of old, | |
| Glorious in mien and mind; | |
| Their bones are mingled with the mould, | |
| Their dust is on the wind; | |
| The forms they hewed from living stone | 5 |
| Survive the waste of years, alone, | |
| And, scattered with their ashes, show | |
| What greatness perished long ago. | |
| |
| Yet fresh the myrtles there,—the springs | |
| Gush brightly as of yore; | 10 |
| Flowers blossom from the dust of kings, | |
| As many an age before. | |
| There nature moulds as nobly now, | |
| As e’er of old, the human brow; | |
| And copies still the martial form | 15 |
| That braved Platæa’s battle storm. | |
| |
| Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek | |
| Their heaven in Hellas’ skies; | |
| Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek, | |
| Her sunshine lit thine eyes; | 20 |
| Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains | |
| Heard by old poets, and thy veins | |
| Swell with the blood of demigods, | |
| That slumber in thy country’s sods. | |
| |
| Now is thy nation free—though late— | 25 |
| Thy elder brethren broke— | |
| Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight, | |
| The intolerable yoke. | |
| And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see | |
| Her youth renewed in such as thee; | 30 |
| A shoot of that old vine that made | |
| The nations silent in its shade. | |
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