For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, | |
Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, | |
Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page. | |
LXXVI | |
720 | Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not |
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? | |
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? | |
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? no! | |
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, | |
725 | 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; | |
Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thine years of shame. | |
LXXVII | |
The city won for Allah from the Giaour, | |
730 | The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest; |
And the Serai’s impenetrable tower | |
Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest; | |
Or Wahab’s rebel brood who dared divest | |
The prophet’s | |
735 | May wind their path of blood along the West; |
But ne’er will freedom seek this fated soil, | |
But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil. | |
LXXVIII | |
Yet mark their mirth – ere lenten days begin, | |
That penance which their holy rites prepare | |
740 | To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin, |
By daily abstinence and nightly prayer; | |
But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, | |
Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all, | |
To take of pleasaunce each his secret share, | |
745 | In motley robe to dance at masking ball, |
And join the mimic train of merry Carnival. | |
LXXIX | |
And whose more rife with merriment than thine, | |
Oh Stamboul! once the empress of their reign? | |
Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine, | |
750 | And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: |
(Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!) | |
Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, | |
All felt the common joy they now must feign, | |
Nor oft I’ve seen such sight, nor heard such song, | |
755 | As woo’d the eye, and thrill’d the Bosphorus along. |
LXXX | |
Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore, | |
Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone, | |
And timely echo’d back the measured oar, | |
And rippling waters made a pleasant moan: | |
760 | The Queen of tides on high consenting shone, |
And when a transient breeze swept o’er the wave, | |
‘Twas, as if darting from her heavenly throne, | |
A brighter glance her form reflected gave, | |
Till sparkling billows seem’d to light the banks they lave. | |
LXXXI | |
765 | Glanced many a light caique along the foam, |
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land, | |
Ne thought had man or maid of rest or home, | |
While many a languid eye and thrilling hand | |
Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand, | |
770 | Or gently prest, return’d the pressure still: |
Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band, | |
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will, | |
These hours, and only these, redeem Life’s years of ill! | |
LXXXII | |
But, midst the throng in merry masquerade, | |
775 | Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain, |
Even through the closest searment half betray’d? | |
To such the gentle murmurs of the main | |
Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain; | |
To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd | |
780 | Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain: |
How do they loathe the laughter idly loud, | |
And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud! | |
LXXXIII | |
This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, | |
If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast: | |
785 | Not such as prate of war, but skulk in peace, |
The bondsman’s peace, who sighs for all he lost, | |
Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost, | |
And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: | |
Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most; | |
790 | Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record |
Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde! | |
LXXXIV | |
When riseth Lacedemon’s hardihood, | |
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, | |
When Athens’ children are with hearts endued, | |
795 | When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, |
Then may’st thou be restored; but not till then. | |
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; | |
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when | |
Can man its shatter’d splendour renovate, | |
800 | Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate? |
LXXXV | |
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 favourite now; | |
805 | 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; | |
LXXXVI | |
810 | Save where some solitary column mourns |
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave | |
Save where Tritonia’s airy shrine adorns | |
Colonna’s cliff, | |
Save o’er some warrior’s half-forgotten grave, | |
815 | Where the gray stones and unmolested grass |
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, | |
While strangers only not regardless pass, | |
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh ‘Alas!’ | |
LXXXVII | |
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; | |
820 | Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, |
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, | |
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields; | |
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, | |
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air; | |
825 | Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, |
Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare; | |
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. | |
LXXXVIII | |
Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground; | |
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, | |
830 | 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 | |
835 | Defies the power which crush’d thy temples gone: |
Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon. | |
LXXXIX | |
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; | |
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord – | |
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame | |
840 | The Battle-field, where Persia’s victim horde |
First bow’d beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword, | |
As on the morn to distant Glory dear, | |
When Marathon became a magic word; | |
Which utter’d, to the hearer’s eye appear | |
845 | The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career, |
XC | |
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; | |
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; | |
Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below; | |
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear! | |
850 | Such was the scene – what now remaineth here? |
What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground, | |
Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear? | |
The rifled urn, the violated mound, | |
The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. | |
XCI | |
855 | Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past |
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; | |
Long shall the voyager, with th’ Ionian blast, | |
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; | |
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue |