How calm and clear
The silent air!
How smooth and still the glassy ocean!
While stars above
Seem lamps of love,
To light the temple of devotion.
LAND of the brave! where lie inurned
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valor burned
And blazed upon the battle's fray :
Land, where the gallant Spartan few
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,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung-
Till every grove and every hill, -
And every stream that flowed along,
From morn to night repeated still
'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?
Hath not remembrance then a charm
To break the fetters and the chain,
To bid thy children nerve the arın,
And strike for freedom once again?
No! coward souls! the light which shone
On Leuctra's war-empurpled day,
The light which beamed on Marathon,
Hath lost its splendor, ceased to play;
And thou art but a shadow now,
With helmet shattered-spear in rust→→→→
Thy honor but a dream-and thou
Despised-degraded in the dust!
Where sleeps the spirit, that of old
Dashed down to earth the Persian plume,
When the loud chant of triumph told
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 hushed them into rest.
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,
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 tranci
Behold thy banner waves afar ;
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
In might in majesty revealed.
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:
'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
And reared 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,
And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep
The sons of science and of song.
Thy sun hath set-the evening storm
Hath passed in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,
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!
AWAY, away, to the anxious flower
That droops and pines for its truant bee; With beauty renewed like the morning hour "T will wait for my coming with anxious glee. Ah little, but little, the rose-spirit dreams
Of the last dear place of her wanderer's restLike the evening dew, in the mountain streams, She would waste should I tell of the tulip's breast. Away, away, for the earliest kiss
Must be mine from the freshest and sweetest rose ; Oh! there's nought upon earth like the young bee's bliss,
When the morning rose-leaves over him close. Hid from the beam of his rival-Sun,
Couched in the bosom of beauty's flower, He rests, till its choicest treasures are won, From the scorching ray or the drenching shower
248 TO A LADY, WITH A WITHERED LEAF.
TO A LADY, WITH A WITHERED LEAF
WHAT offering can the minstrel bring,
To cast upon affection's shrine?
'Twas hard thy magic spell to fling
O'er the fond heart already thine!
Thou wouldst not prize the glittering gem
Thou wouldst but cast the pearl away ;
For thine is now a diadem,
Of lustre brighter far than they.
I will not bring the spring-tide flower,
Reposing on its gentle leaf;
Its memory lives but for an hour
I would not thine should be as brief.
My heart!-but that has long been thine→→→ "T were but a worthless offering;
The ruin of a rifled shrine,
A flower that fast is withering.
My song!-'t is but a mournful strain,
So deep in sorrow's mantle clad,
E'en echo will not wake again
The music of a strain so sad.
A withered leaf!-nay, scorn it not,
Nor deem it all unworthy thee;
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