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(From Don Juan)
THE 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 Phœbus sprung! | |
| Eternal summer gilds them yet, | 5 |
| But all, except their sun, is set. | |
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| 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 | 10 |
| To sounds which echo further west | |
| Than your sires’ “Islands of the Blest.” | |
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| The mountains look on Marathon, | |
| And Marathon looks on the sea; | |
| And musing there an hour alone, | 15 |
| 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 sate on the rocky brow | |
| Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis; | 20 |
| And ships, by thousands, lay below, | |
| And men in nations;—all were his! | |
| He counted them at break of day, | |
| And when the sun set where were they? | |
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| And where are they? and where art thou, | 25 |
| 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? | 30 |
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| ’T is something, in the dearth of fame, | |
| Though linked among the fettered race, | |
| To feel at least a patriot’s shame, | |
| Even as I sing, suffuse my face; | |
| For what is left the poet here? | 35 |
| For Greeks a blush,—for Greece a tear. | |
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| 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! | 40 |
| Of the three hundred grant but three, | |
| To make a new Thermopylæ! | |
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| What, silent still? and silent all? | |
| Ah, no; the voices of the dead | |
| Sound like a distant torrent’s fall, | 45 |
| And answer, “Let one living head, | |
| But one, arise,—we come, we come!” | |
| ’T is but the living who are dumb. | |
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| In vain,—in vain: strike other chords: | |
| Fill high the cup with Samian wine! | 50 |
| 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? | |
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| You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; | 55 |
| 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? | 60 |
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| 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 Polycrates,— | |
| A tyrant; but our masters then | 65 |
| Were still, at least, our countrymen. | |
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| The tyrant of the Chersonese | |
| Was freedom’s best and bravest friend; | |
| That tyrant was Miltiades! | |
| O that the present hour would lend | 70 |
| Another despot of the kind! | |
| Such chains as his were sure to bind. | |
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| Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! | |
| On Suli’s rock and Parga’s shore | |
| Exists the remnant of a line | 75 |
| Such as the Doric mothers bore; | |
| And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, | |
| The Heracleidan blood might own. | |
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| Trust not for freedom to the Franks,— | |
| They have a king who buys and sells: | 80 |
| In native swords and native ranks | |
| The only hope of courage dwells; | |
| But Turkish force and Latin fraud | |
| Would break your shield, however broad. | |
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| Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! | 85 |
| Our virgins dance beneath the shade,— | |
| I see their glorious black eyes shine; | |
| But, gazing on each glowing maid, | |
| My own the burning tear-drop laves, | |
| To think such breasts must suckle slaves. | 90 |
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| Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep, | |
| Where nothing, save the waves and I, | |
| May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; | |
| There, swan-like, let me sing and die. | |
| A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine,— | 95 |
| Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! | |
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