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From “Childe Harold” Canto II.
FAIR 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 whilom did await, | 5 |
| The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, | |
| In bleak Thermopylæ’s sepulchral strait,— | |
| O, who that gallant spirit shall resume, | |
| Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb? | |
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| Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle’s brow | 10 |
| Thou sat’st with Thrasybulus and his train, | |
| Couldst thou forebode 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; | 15 |
| Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, | |
| Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, | |
| From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned. | |
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| In all save form alone, how changed! and who | |
| That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, | 20 |
| Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew | |
| With thy unquenchèd 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, | 25 |
| Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, | |
| Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page. | |
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| Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not, | |
| Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? | |
| By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? | 30 |
| 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; | 35 |
| Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thy years of shame! * * * * * | |
| 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, | |
| Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favorite now. | 40 |
| 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; | 45 |
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| Save where some solitary column mourns | |
| Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; | |
| Save where Tritonia’s airy shrine adorns | |
| Colonna’s cliff, and gleams along the wave; | |
| Save o’er some warrior’s half-forgotten grave, | 50 |
| Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass | |
| Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, | |
| While strangers only not regardless pass, | |
| Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh “Alas!” | |
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| Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild, | 55 |
| Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, | |
| Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, | |
| And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; | |
| There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, | |
| The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air; | 60 |
| Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, | |
| Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare: | |
| Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. | |
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| Where’er we tread, ’t is haunted, holy ground; | |
| No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone: | |
| Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon. | |
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