LXXXII.

But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain?
Even through the closest searment half betrayed?"

To such the gentle murmurs of the main

Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;

T

A

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!}}

This must he feel-the true-born son of Greece,
If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast,
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,
2:00

And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:

Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee mostTheir birth, their blood, and that sublime record 3] ઘ 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 arts endued, When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, Then mayst thou be restor❜d; 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, Recal 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 ever-green, thy hills of snow 37
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.

38

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the grey stones and unmolested grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh

LXXXVII.

"Alas!"

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 smil❜d,
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 bowed 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!

I

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....

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.