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 | 5 |
| The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: | |
| Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, | |
| Defies the power which crush’d thy temples gone: | |
| Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon. | |
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| The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; | 10 |
| Unchanged in all except its foreign lord— | |
| Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame; | |
| The Battlefield, where Persia’s victim horde | |
| First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword, | |
| As on the morn to distant Glory dear, | 15 |
| When Marathon became a magic word; | |
| Which uttered, to the hearer’s eye appear | |
| The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career. | |
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| The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; | |
| The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; | 20 |
| 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 hallow’d ground, | |
| Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear? | 25 |
| The rifled urn, the violated mound, | |
| The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger, spurns around. | |
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| Yet to the remnants of thy splendor past | |
| Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; | |
| Long shall the voyager, with th’ Ionian blast, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. | |
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