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And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:
Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most;
Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record
Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!

LXXXIV.

When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,

When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then mayst 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,
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; *
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.

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; t
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,

• On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains even in winter.

+ Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the publis edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, forined by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of time.

În all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the Ægean deep:" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's Shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell :

"Here in the dead of night by Lonna's steep,
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep."

This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was more striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners, subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very sagaciously, bat falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus sayed our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance. Colonna ta no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there

"The hireling artist plants his paltry desk,
And makes degraded nature picturesque."

(See HODGSON'S Lady Jane Grey, &c.)

But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist, and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances.

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 :
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;
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,
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
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;
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

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 !
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.

"Sta, viator, heroem calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous German general Count Merci-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, &c., were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-"Expende-quot libras in duce summo-invenies!"-was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight.

XCI.

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
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore:.
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate and bards adore,

As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

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The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; He that is lonely, hither let him roam, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth; But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

XCIII.

Let such approach this consecrated land,
And pass in peace along the magic waste:
But spare its relics-let no busy hand
Deface the scenes, already how defaced!
Not for such purpose were these altars placed.
Revere the remnants nations once revered :
So may our country's name be undisgraced,
So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was rear'd,

By every honest joy of love and life endear'd!

XCIV.

For thee, who thus in too protracted song Hast soothed thine idlesse with inglorious lays, Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng Of louder minstrels in these later days: To such resign the strife for fading baysIll may such contest now the spirit move Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise, Since cold each kinder heart that might approve, And none are left to please when none are left to love.

XCV.

Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me; Who did for me what none beside have done, Nor shrank from one, albeit unworthy thee. What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! Nor stay'd to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall seeWould they had never been, or were to come! Would he had ne'er return'd to find fresh cause to roam!

XCVI.

Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved !
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast:
The parent, friend, and now the more than friend;

Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,

And grief with grief continuing still to blend,

Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to lend.

XCVII.

Then must I plunge again into the crowd,
And follow all that Peace disdains to seek?
Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,
False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek,
To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak;
Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer,
To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique;
Smiles form the channel of a future tear,

Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.

XCVIII.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroy'd:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd,
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy'd.

CANTO THE THIRD.

"Afin que cette application vous forçat de penser à autre chose; Il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps."-Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776.

I.

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child !
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted, -not as now we part,
But with a hope. -

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour 's gone by,

When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

II.

Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed. And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail

III.

In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the gushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years

Plod the last sands of life, where not a flower appears.

IV.

Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain,
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,
And both may jar; it may be that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing.
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling,
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V.

He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance; he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

VI.

"Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth.

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