Chapter 22

He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,-- The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, (Before Decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)-- And marked the mild angelic air, The rapture of repose that's there, The fixed yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek, And--but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, And but for that chill, changeless brow, Where cold Obstruction's apathy Appalls the gazing mourner's heart, As if to him it could impart The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon-- Yes, but for these and these alone, Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, He still might doubt the tyrant's power; So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, The first, last look by death revealed! Such is the aspect of this shore; 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more! So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there. Hers is the loveliness in death That parts not quite with parting breath; But beauty with that fearful bloom, That hue which haunts it to the tomb, Expression's last receding ray, A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling passed away! Spark of that flame--perchance of heavenly birth-- Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!

Clime of the unforgotten brave! Whose land from plain to mountain-cave Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave! Shrine of the mighty! can it be That this is all remains of thee? Approach, thou craven crouching slave: Say, is not this Thermopylæ? These waters blue that round you lave, O servile offspring of the free-- Pronounce what sea, what shore is this? The gulf, the rock of Salamis! These scenes, their story not unknown, Arise, and make again your own; Snatch from the ashes of your sires The embers of their former fires; And he who in the strife expires Will add to theirs a name of fear That Tyranny shall quake to hear, And leave his sons a hope, a fame, They too will rather die than shame: For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son, Though baffled oft, is ever won. Bear witness, Greece, thy living page, Attest it many a deathless age! While kings, in dusty darkness hid, Have left a nameless pyramid, Thy heroes, though the general doom Hath swept the column from their tomb, A mightier monument command, The mountains of their native land! There points thy Muse to stranger's eye The graves of those that cannot die!

'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendor to disgrace: Enough--no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! self-abasement paved the way To villain-bonds and despot sway.

THE HELLESPONT AND TROY

From 'The Bride of Abydos'

The winds are high on Helle's wave; As on that night of stormy water, When Love, who sent, forgot to save The young, the beautiful, the brave, The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter. Oh! when alone along the sky Her turret torch was blazing high, Though rising gale, and breaking foam, And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home; And clouds aloft and tides below, With signs and sounds, forbade to go: He could not see, he would not hear, Or sound or sign foreboding fear; His eye but saw the light of love, The only star it hailed above; His ear but rang with Hero's song, "Ye waves, divide not lovers long!"-- That tale is old, but love anew May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle's tide Rolls darkly heaving to the main; And Night's descending shadows hide That field with blood bedewed in vain, The desert of old Priam's pride, The tombs, sole relics of his reign, All--save immortal dreams that could beguile The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!

Oh! yet--for there my steps have been; These feet have pressed the sacred shore; These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne-- Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn, To trace again those fields of yore, Believing every hillock green Contains no fabled hero's ashes, And that around the undoubted scene Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes,-- Be long my lot! and cold were he Who there could gaze denying thee!

GREECE AND HER HEROES

From 'The Siege of Corinth'

They fell devoted, but undying; The very gale their names seemed sighing: The waters murmured of their name; The woods were peopled with their fame; The silent pillar, lone and gray, Claimed kindred with their sacred clay; Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain: The meanest rill, the mightiest river, Rolled mingling with their fame forever. Despite of every yoke she bears, That land is glory's still, and theirs! 'Tis still a watchword to the earth: When man would do a deed of worth He points to Greece, and turns to tread, So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head; He looks to her, and rushes on Where life is lost, or freedom won.

THE ISLES OF GREECE

From 'Don Juan'

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, But all except their sun is set.

The Scian[108] and the Teian[109] muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse; Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon-- And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations;--all were his! He counted them at break of day-- And when the sun set, where were they?

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?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face: For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.

Must _we_ but weep o'er days more blest? Must _we_ but blush?--Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylæ!

What, silent still? and silent all? Ah, no;--the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, "Let one living head, But one, arise--we come, we come!" 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain--in vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call, How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gave-- Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these: It made Anacreon's song divine; He served--but served Polycrates-- A tyrant: but our masters then Were still at least our countrymen.

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.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore: And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks-- They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Our virgins dance beneath the shade: I see their glorious black eyes shine; But, gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marble steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep: There, swan-like, let me sing and die! A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-- Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

FOOTNOTES:

[108] Homer.

[109] Anacreon.

GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were: First in the race that led to Glory's goal, They won, and passed away--is this the whole? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

. . . . . . .

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylæ's sepulchral strait-- Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain? Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, But every earl can lord it o'er thy land: Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.

. . . . . . .

Hereditary bondmen! 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, 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 thy years of shame....

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 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 shattered splendor renovate, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

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 favorite 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;

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 gray stones and long-neglected grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "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 smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born 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.

Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mold, 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 crushed thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

TO ROME

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

O Rome! my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day-- A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago: The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep, Barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:-- Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, "Here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err: The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap Our hands, and cry "Eureka! it is clear--" When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas, the lofty city! and alas, The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be Her resurrection; all beside--decay. Alas for Earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

THE COLISEUM

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long explored but still exhaustless mine Of contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody Circus's genial laws, And such the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not? What matters where we fall to fill the maws Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot? Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low; And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, _There_ were his young barbarians all at play, _There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday: All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged?--Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

. . . . . . .

A ruin--yet what ruin! from its mass Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared; Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? Alas! developed, opens the decay, When the colossal fabric's form is neared: It will not bear the brightness of the day, Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air The garland-forest which the gray walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head; When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,-- Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

At the Storming of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, 1527

From 'The Deformed Transformed'

'Tis the morn, but dim and dark. Whither flies the silent lark? Whither shrinks the clouded sun? Is the day indeed begun? Nature's eye is melancholy O'er the city high and holy; But without there is a din Should arouse the saints within, And revive the heroic ashes Round which yellow Tiber dashes. O ye seven hills! awaken, Ere your very base be shaken!

Hearken to the steady stamp! Mars is in their every tramp! Not a step is out of tune, As the tides obey the moon! On they march, though to self-slaughter, Regular as rolling water, Whose high waves o'ersweep the border Of huge moles, but keep their order, Breaking only rank by rank. Hearken to the armor's clank! Look down o'er each frowning warrior, How he glares upon the barrier: Look on each step of each ladder, As the stripes that streak an adder.

Look upon the bristling wall, Manned without an interval! Round and round, and tier on tier, Cannon's black mouth, shining spear, Lit match, bell-mouthed musquetoon, Gaping to be murderous soon-- All the warlike gear of old, Mixed with what we now behold, In this strife 'twixt old and new, Gather like a locust's crew. Shade of Remus! 'tis a time Awful as thy brother's crime! Christians war against Christ's shrine: Must its lot be like to thine?

Near--and near--and nearer still, As the earthquake saps the hill, First with trembling, hollow motion, Like a scarce-awakened ocean, Then with stronger shock and louder, Till the rocks are crushed to powder,-- Onward sweeps the rolling host! Heroes of the immortal boast! Mighty chiefs! eternal shadows! First flowers of the bloody meadows Which encompass Rome, the mother Of a people without brother! Will you sleep when nations' quarrels Plow the root up of your laurels? Ye who wept o'er Carthage burning, Weep not--_strike_! for Rome is mourning!

Onward sweep the varied nations! Famine long hath dealt their rations. To the wall, with hate and hunger, Numerous as wolves, and stronger, On they sweep. O glorious city! Must thou be a theme for pity? Fight like your first sire, each Roman! Alaric was a gentle foeman, Matched with Bourbon's black banditti. Rouse thee, thou eternal city! Rouse thee! Rather give the torch With thine own hand to thy porch, Than behold such hosts pollute Your worst dwelling with their foot.

Ah! behold yon bleeding spectre! Ilion's children find no Hector; Priam's offspring loved their brother; Rome's great sire forgot his mother, When he slew his gallant twin, With inexpiable sin. See the giant shadow stride O'er the ramparts high and wide! When the first o'erleapt thy wall, Its foundation mourned his fall. Now, though towering like a Babel, Who to stop his steps are able? Stalking o'er thy highest dome, Remus claims his vengeance, Rome!

Now they reach thee in their anger; Fire and smoke and hellish clangor Are around thee, thou world's wonder! Death is in thy walls and under. Now the meeting steel first clashes, Downward then the ladder crashes, With its iron load all gleaming, Lying at its foot blaspheming. Up again! for every warrior Slain, another climbs the barrier. Thicker grows the strife; thy ditches Europe's mingling gore enriches. Rome! although thy wall may perish, Such manure thy fields will cherish, Making gay the harvest-home; But thy hearths! alas, O Rome!-- Yet be Rome amidst thine anguish, Fight as thou wast wont to vanquish!

Yet once more, ye old Penates, Let not your quenched hearths be Atè's! Yet again, ye shadowy heroes, Yield not to these stranger Neros! Though the son who slew his mother Shed Rome's blood, he was your brother: 'Twas the Roman curbed the Roman;-- Brennus was a baffled foeman. Yet again, ye saints and martyrs, Rise! for yours are holier charters! Mighty gods of temples falling, Yet in ruin still appalling, Mightier founders of those altars True and Christian--strike the assaulters! Tiber! Tiber! let thy torrent Show even nature's self abhorrent. Let each breathing heart dilated Turn, as doth the lion baited: Rome be crushed to one wide tomb, But be still the Roman's Rome!

VENICE

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'