THE ISLES OF GREECE. 1. The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace,— Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, 1 2. The Scian and the Teian 2 muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, 3. The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dream'd that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave. He counted them at break of day— And when the sun set where were they? 5. And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now— The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine? 6. 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, For what is left the poet here? 7. Must we but weep o'er days more blest? 8. What, silent still? and silent all? And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise,--we come, we come!" "Tis but the living who are dumb. 9. In vain-in vain: strike other chords; And shed the blood of Scio's vine! 10. You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, The nobler and the manlier one? 11. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! It made Anacreon's song divine: He served but served Polycrates A tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen. 12. The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure to bind. 13. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Such as the Doric mothers bore; 14. Trust not for freedom to the Franks- 15. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 16. Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, "Don Juan," Canto III., 1819.] 1821.] You gave much more than me you gave; Which is not fairly to behave, My Murray. Because if a live dog, 't is said, A live lord must be worth two dead, And if, as the opinion goes, My Murray. Verse hath a better sale than prose,- But now this sheet is nearly cramm'd, 1 "Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II.," by Horace Walpole. 2 Memoirs by James Earl Waldegrave. When Byron began to write he refused payment; later he drove hard bargains. 4 Byron discovered his genius for satire only when he took up the stanza of "Don Juan." "The Vision of Judgment," written in the same metre, gives in moderate compass the best idea of his mastery of the satiric vein. |