| |
1822.
LAND 1 of the brave! where lie inurn’d | |
| The shrouded forms of mortal clay, | |
| In whom the fire of valor burn’d | |
| And blazed upon the battle’s fray: | |
| Land, where the gallant Spartan few | 5 |
| Bled at Thermopylæ of yore, | |
| When death his purple garment threw | |
| On Helle’s consecrated shore! | |
| |
| Land of the Muse! within thy bowers | |
| Her soul entrancing echoes rung, | 10 |
| While on their course the rapid hours | |
| Paused at the melody she sung— | |
| Till every grove and every hill, | |
| And every stream that flow’d along, | |
| From morn to night repeated still | 15 |
| The winning harmony of song. | |
| |
| Land of dead heroes! living slaves! | |
| Shall glory gild thy clime no more? | |
| Her banner float above thy waves | |
| Where proudly it hath swept before? | 20 |
| Hath not remembrance then a charm | |
| To break the fetters and the chain, | |
| To bid thy children nerve the arm, | |
| And strike for freedom once again? | |
| |
| No! coward souls! the light which shone | 25 |
| On Leuctra’s war-empurpled day, | |
| The light which beam’d on Marathon, | |
| Hath lost its splendor, ceased to play; | |
| And thou art but a shadow now, | |
| With helmet shatter’d—spear in rust— | 30 |
| Thy honor but a dream—and thou | |
| Despised—degraded in the dust! | |
| |
| Where sleeps the spirit, that of old | |
| Dash’d down to earth the Persian plume, | |
| When the loud chant of triumph told | 35 |
| How fatal was the despot’s doom?— | |
| The bold three hundred—where are they, | |
| Who died on battle’s gory breast? | |
| Tyrants have trampled on the clay, | |
| Where death has hush’d them into rest. | 40 |
| |
| Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill | |
| A glory shines of ages fled; | |
| And fame her light is pouring still, | |
| Not on the living, but the dead! | |
| But ’t is the dim sepulchral light, | 45 |
| Which sheds a faint and feeble ray, | |
| As moon-beams on the brow of night, | |
| When tempests sweep upon their way. | |
| |
| Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance, | |
| Behold thy banner waves afar; | 50 |
| Behold the glittering weapons glance | |
| Along the gleaming front of war! | |
| A gallant chief, of high emprize, | |
| Is urging foremost in the field, | |
| Who calls upon thee to arise | 55 |
| In might—in majesty reveal’d. | |
| |
| In vain in vain the hero calls— | |
| In vain he sounds the trumpet loud! | |
| His banner totters—see! it falls | |
| In ruin, freedom’s battle shroud: | 60 |
| Thy children have no soul to dare | |
| Such deeds as glorified their sires; | |
| There valor ’s but a meteor’s glare, | |
| Which gleams a moment, and expires. | |
| |
| Lost land! where genius made his reign, | 65 |
| And rear’d his golden arch on high; | |
| Where science raised her sacred fane, | |
| Its summits peering to the sky; | |
| Upon thy clime the midnight deep | |
| Of ignorance hath brooded long, | 70 |
| And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep | |
| The sons of science and of song. | |
| |
| Thy sun hath set—the evening storm | |
| Hath pass’d in giant fury by, | |
| To blast the beauty of thy form, | 75 |
| And spread its pall upon the sky! | |
| Gone is thy glory’s diadem, | |
| And freedom never more shall cease | |
| To pour her mournful requiem | |
| O’er blighted, lost, degraded Greece! | 80 |
