MODERN GREECE.

“O Greece! thou sapient nurse of finer arts,

Which to bright Science blooming Fancy bore,

Be this thy praise, that thou, and thou alone,

In these hast led the way, in these excell’d,

Crown’d with the laurel of assenting Time.”

Thomson’s Liberty.

I.

Oh! who hath trod thy consecrated clime,

Fair land of Phidias! theme of lofty strains!

And traced each scene that, midst the wrecks of time,

The print of Glory’s parting step retains;

Nor for awhile, in high-wrought dreams, forgot,

Musing on years gone by in brightness there,

The hopes, the fears, the sorrows of his lot,

The hues his fate hath worn, or yet may wear;

As when, from mountain-heights, his ardent eye

Of sea and heaven hath track’d the blue infinity?

II.

Is there who views with cold unalter’d mien,

His frozen heart with proud indifference fraught,

Each sacred haunt, each unforgotten scene,

Where Freedom triumph’d, or where Wisdom taught?

Souls that too deeply feel! oh, envy not

The sullen calm your fate hath never known:

Through the dull twilight of that wintery lot

Genius ne’er pierced, nor Fancy’s sunbeam shone,

Nor those high thoughts that, hailing Glory’s trace,

Glow with the generous flames of every age and race.

III.

But blest the wanderer whose enthusiast mind

Each muse of ancient days hath deep imbued

With lofty lore, and all his thoughts refined

In the calm school of silent solitude;

Pour’d on his ear, midst groves and glens retired,

The mighty strains of each illustrious clime,

All that hath lived, while empires have expired,

To float for ever on the winds of time;

And on his soul indelibly portray’d

Fair visionary forms, to fill each classic shade.

IV.

Is not this mind, to meaner thoughts unknown,

A sanctuary of beauty and of light?

There he may dwell in regions all his own,

A world of dreams, where all is pure and bright.

For him the scenes of old renown possess

Romantic charms, all veil’d from other eyes;

There every form of nature’s loveliness

Wakes in his breast a thousand sympathies;

As music’s voice, in some lone mountain dell,

From rocks and caves around calls forth each echo’s swell.

V.

For him Italia’s brilliant skies illume

The bard’s lone haunts, the warrior’s combat-plains,

And the wild rose yet lives to breath and bloom

Round Doric Pæstum’s solitary fanes.[12]

But most, fair Greece! on thy majestic shore

He feels the fervours of his spirit rise;

Thou birth-place of the Muse! whose voice of yore

Breathed in thy groves immortal harmonies;

And lingers still around the well-known coast,

Murmuring a wild farewell to fame and freedom lost.

VI.

By seas that flow in brightness as they lave

Thy rocks, th’ enthusiast rapt in thought may stray,

While roves his eye o’er that deserted wave,

Once the proud scene of battle’s dread array.

—O ye blue waters! ye, of old that bore

The free, the conquering, hymn’d by choral strains,

How sleep ye now around the silent shore,

The lonely realm of ruins and of chains!

How are the mighty vanish’d in their pride!

E’en as their barks have left no traces on your tide.

VII.

Hush’d are the Pæans whose exulting tone

Swell’d o’er that tide[13]—the sons of battle sleep—

The wind’s wild sigh, the halcyon’s voice alone

Blend with the plaintive murmur of the deep.

Yet when those waves have caught the splendid hues

Of morn’s rich firmament, serenely bright,

Or setting suns the lovely shore suffuse

With all their purple mellowness of light,

Oh! who could view the scene, so calmly fair,

Nor dream that peace, and joy, and liberty were there?

VIII.

Where soft the sunbeams play, the zephyrs blow,

’Tis hard to deem that misery can be nigh;

Where the clear heavens in blue transparence glow,

Life should be calm and cloudless as the sky;

—Yet o’er the low, dark dwellings of the dead,

Verdure and flowers in summer-bloom may smile,

And ivy-boughs their graceful drapery spread

In green luxuriance o’er the ruin’d pile;

And mantling woodbine veil the wither’d tree;—

And thus it is, fair land! forsaken Greece, with thee.

IX.

For all the loveliness, and light, and bloom

That yet are thine, surviving many a storm,

Are but as heaven’s warm radiance on the tomb,

The rose’s blush that masks the canker-worm.

And thou art desolate—thy morn hath pass’d!

So dazzling in the splendour of its sway,

That the dark shades the night hath o’er thee cast

Throw tenfold gloom around thy deep decay.

Once proud in freedom, still in ruin fair,

Thy fate hath been unmatch’d—in glory and despair.

X.

For thee, lost land! the hero’s blood hath flow’d,

The high in soul have brightly lived and died;

For thee the light of soaring genius glow’d

O’er the fair arts it form’d and glorified.

Thine were the minds whose energies sublime

So distanced ages in their lightning-race,

The task they left the sons of later time

Was but to follow their illumined trace.

—Now, bow’d to earth, thy children, to be free,

Must break each link that binds their filial hearts to thee.

XI.

Lo! to the scenes of fiction’s wildest tales,

Her own bright East, thy son, Morea! flies,[14]

To seek repose midst rich, romantic vales,

Whose incense mounts to Asia’s vivid skies.

There shall he rest?—Alas! his hopes in vain

Guide to the sun-clad regions of the palm:

Peace dwells not now on oriental plain,

Though earth is fruitfulness, and air is balm;

And the sad wanderer finds but lawless foes,

Where patriarchs reign’d of old in pastoral repose.

XII.

Where Syria’s mountains rise, or Yemen’s groves,

Or Tigris rolls his genii-haunted wave,

Life to his eye, as wearily it roves,

Wears but two forms—the tyrant and the slave!

There the fierce Arab leads his daring horde

Where sweeps the sand-storm o’er the burning wild;

There stern Oppression waves the wasting sword

O’er plains that smile as ancient Eden smiled;

And the vale’s bosom, and the desert’s gloom,

Yield to the injured there no shelter save the tomb.

XIII.

But thou, fair world! whose fresh unsullied charms

Welcomed Columbus from the western wave,

Wilt thou receive the wanderer to thine arms,[15]

The lost descendant of the immortal brave?

Amidst the wild magnificence of shades

That o’er thy floods their twilight-grandeur cast,

In the green depth of thine untrodden glades

Shall he not rear his bower of peace at last?

Yes! thou hast many a lone, majestic scene,

Shrined in primeval woods, where despot ne’er hath been.

XIV.

There by some lake, whose blue expansive breast

Bright from afar, an inland ocean, gleams,

Girt with vast solitudes, profusely dress’d

In tints like those that float o’er poet’s dreams;

Or where some flood from pine-clad mountain pours

Its might of waters, glittering in their foam,

Midst the rich verdure of its wooded shores,

The exiled Greek hath fix’d his sylvan home:

So deeply lone, that round the wild retreat

Scarce have the paths been trod by Indian huntsman’s feet.

XV.

The forests are around him in their pride,

The green savannas, and the mighty waves;

And isles of flowers, bright-floating o’er the tide,[16]

That images the fairy worlds it laves,

And stillness, and luxuriance. O’er his head

The ancient cedars wave their peopled bowers,

On high the palms their graceful foliage spread,

Cinctured with roses the magnolia towers;

And from those green arcades a thousand tones

Wake with each breeze, whose voice through Nature’s temple moans.

XVI.

And there, no traces left by brighter days

For glory lost may wake a sigh of grief;

Some grassy mound, perchance, may meet his gaze,

The lone memorial of an Indian chief.

There man not yet hath mark’d the boundless plain

With marble records of his fame and power;

The forest is his everlasting fane,

The palm his monument, the rock his tower:

Th’ eternal torrent and the giant tree

Remind him but that they, like him, are wildly free.

XVII.

But doth the exile’s heart serenely there

In sunshine dwell?—Ah! when was exile blest?

When did bright scenes, clear heavens, or summer air,

Chase from his soul the fever of unrest?

—There is a heart-sick weariness of mood,

That like slow poison wastes the vital glow,

And shrines itself in mental solitude,

An uncomplaining and a nameless woe.

That coldly smiles midst pleasure’s brightest ray,

As the chill glacier’s peak reflects the flush of day.

XVIII.

Such grief is theirs, who, fix’d on foreign shore,

Sigh for the spirit of their native gales,

As pines the seaman, midst the ocean’s roar,

For the green earth, with all its woods and vales.

Thus feels thy child, whose memory dwells with thee,

Loved Greece! all sunk and blighted as thou art

Though thought and step in western wilds be free,

Yet thine are still the daydreams of his heart:

The deserts spread between, the billows foam,

Thou, distant and in chains, are yet his spirit’s home.

XIX.

In vain for him the gay liannes entwine,

Or the green fire-fly sparkles through the brakes,

Or summer-winds waft odours from the pine,

As eve’s last blush is dying on the lakes.

Through thy fair vales his fancy roves the while,

Or breathes the freshness of Cithæron’s height,

Or dreams how softly Athens’ towers would smile,

Or Sunium’s ruins, in the fading light;

On Corinth’s cliff what sunset hues may sleep,

Or, at that placid hour, how calm th’ Ægean deep!

XX.

What scenes, what sunbeams, are to him like thine?

(The all of thine no tyrant could destroy!)

E’en to the stranger’s roving eye, they shine

Soft as a vision of remember’d joy.

And he who comes, the pilgrim of a day,

A passing wanderer o’er each Attic hill,

Sighs as his footsteps turn from thy decay,

To laughing climes, where all is splendour still;

And views with fond regret thy lessening shore,

As he would watch a star that sets to rise no more.

XXI.

Realm of sad beauty! thou art as a shrine

That Fancy visits with Devotion’s zeal,

To catch high thoughts and impulses divine,

And all the glow of soul enthusiasts feel

Amidst the tombs of heroes—for the brave

Whose dust, so many an age, hath been thy soil,

Foremost in honour’s phalanx, died to save

The land redeem’d and hallow’d by their toil;

And there is language in thy lightest gale,

That o’er the plains they won seems murmuring yet their tale.

XXII.

And he, whose heart is weary of the strife

Of meaner spirits, and whose mental gaze

Would shun the dull cold littleness of life,

Awhile to dwell amidst sublimer days,

Must turn to thee, whose every valley teems

With proud remembrances that cannot die.

Thy glens are peopled with inspiring dreams,

Thy winds, the voice of oracles gone by;

And midst thy laurel shades the wanderer hears

The sound of mighty names, the hymns of vanish’d years.

XXIII.

Through that deep solitude be his to stray,

By Faun and Oread loved in ages past,

Where clear Peneus winds his rapid way

Though the cleft heights, in antique grandeur vast.

Romantic Tempe! thou art yet the same—

Wild, as when sung by bards of elder time:[17]

Years, that have changed thy river’s classic name,[18]

Have left thee still in savage pomp sublime;

And from thine Alpine clefts and marble caves,

In living lustre still break forth the fountain waves.

XXIV.

Beneath thy mountain battlements and towers,

Where the rich arbute’s coral berries glow,[19]

Or midst th’ exuberance of thy forest bowers,

Casting deep shadows o’er the current’s flow,

Oft shall the pilgrim pause, in lone recess,

As rock and stream some glancing light have caught,

And gaze, till Nature’s mighty forms impress

His soul with deep sublimity of thought;

And linger oft, recalling many a tale,

That breeze, and wave, and wood seem whispering through thy dale.

XXV.

He, thought-entranced, may wander where of old

From Delphi’s chasm the mystic vapour rose,

And trembling nations heard their doom foretold

By the dread spirit throned midst rocks and snows.

Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust,

And silence now the hallow’d haunt possess,

Still is the scene of ancient rites august,

Magnificent in mountain loneliness;

Still inspiration hovel’s o’er the ground,

Where Greece her councils held,[20] her Pythian victors crown’d.

XXVI.

Or let his steps the rude gray cliffs explore

Of that wild pass, once dyed with Spartan blood,

When by the waves that break on Œta’s shore,

The few, the fearless, the devoted, stood!

Or rove where, shadowing Mantinea’s plain,

Bloom the wild laurels o’er the warlike dead,[21]

Or lone Platæa’s ruins yet remain

To mark the battle-field of ages fled:

Still o’er such scenes presides a sacred power,

Though Fiction’s gods have fled from fountain, grot, and bower.

XXVII.

Oh! still unblamed may fancy fondly deem

That, lingering yet, benignant genii dwell

Where mortal worth has hallow’d grove or stream,

To sway the heart with some ennobling spell;

For mightiest minds have felt their blest control

In the wood’s murmur, in the zephyr’s sigh,

And these are dreams that lend a voice and soul,

And a high power, to Nature’s majesty!

And who can rove o’er Grecian shores, nor feel,

Soft o’er his inmost heart, their secret magic steal?

XXVIII.

Yet many a sad reality is there,

That Fancy’s bright illusions cannot veil.

Pure laughs the light, and balmy breathes the air,

But Slavery’s mien will tell its bitter tale;

And there, not Peace, but Desolation, throws

Delusive quiet o’er full many a scene—

Deep as the brooding torpor of repose

That follows where the earthquake’s track hath been;

Or solemn calm on Ocean’s breast that lies,

When sinks the storm, and death has hush’d the seamen’s cries.

XXIX.

Hast thou beheld some sovereign spirit, hurl’d

By Fate’s rude tempest from its radiant sphere,

Doom’d to resign the homage of a world,

For Pity’s deepest sigh and saddest tear?

Oh! hast thou watch’d the awful wreck of mind

That weareth still a glory in decay?

Seen all that dazzles and delights mankind—

Thought, science, genius—to the storm a prey;

And o’er the blasted tree, the wither’d ground,

Despair’s wild nightshade spread, and darkly flourish round?

XXX.

So mayst thou gaze, in sad and awe-struck thought,

On the deep fall of that yet lovely clime:

Such there the ruin Time and Fate have wrought,

So changed the bright, the splendid, the sublime.

There the proud monuments of Valour’s name,

The mighty works Ambition piled on high,

The rich remains by Art bequeath’d to Fame—

Grace, beauty, grandeur, strength, and symmetry,

Blend in decay; while all that yet is fair

Seems only spared to tell how much hath perish’d there!

XXXI.

There, while around lie mingling in the dust

The column’s graceful shaft, with weeds o’er grown,

The mouldering torso, the forgotten bust.

The warrior’s urn, the altar’s mossy stone—

Amidst the loneliness of shatter’d fanes,

Still matchless monuments of other years—

O’er cypress groves or solitary plains,

Its eastern form the minaret proudly rears:

As on some captive city’s ruin’d wall

The victor’s banner waves, exulting o’er its fall.

XXXII.

Still, where that column of the mosque aspires,

Landmark of slavery, towering o’er the waste,

There science droops, the Muses hush their lyres

And o’er the blooms of fancy and of taste

Spreads the chill blight;—as in that orient isle

Where the dark upas taints the gale around,[22]

Within its precincts not a flower may smile,

Nor dew nor sunshine fertilise the ground;

Nor wild birds’ music float on zephyr’s breath,

But all is silence round, and solitude, and death.

XXXIII.

Far other influence pour’d the Crescent’s light

O’er conquer’d realms, in ages pass’d away;

Full and alone it beam’d, intensely bright,

While distant climes in midnight darkness lay.

Then rose th’ Alhambra, with its founts and shades,

Fair marble halls, alcoves, and orange bowers:

Its sculptured lions,[23] richly wrought arcades,

Aërial pillars, and enchanted towers;

Light, splendid, wild, as some Arabian tale

Would picture fairy domes that fleet before the gale.

XXXIV.

Then foster’d genius lent each caliph’s throne

Lustre barbaric pomp could ne’er attain;

And stars unnumber’d o’er the orient shone,

Bright as that Pleïad, sphered in Mecca’s fane.[24]

From Bagdat’s palaces the choral strains

Rose and re-echoed to the desert’s bound,

And Science, woo’d on Egypt’s burning plains,

Rear’d her majestic head with glory crown’d;

And the wild Muses breathed romantic lore

From Syria’s palmy groves to Andalusia’s shore.

XXXV.

Those years have past in radiance—they have past,

As sinks the daystar in the tropic main;

His parting beams no soft reflection cast,

They burn—are quench’d—and deepest shadows reign.

And Fame and Science have not left a trace

In the vast regions of the Moslem’s power,—

Regions, to intellect a desert space,

A wild without a fountain or a flower,

Where towers Oppression midst the deepening glooms,

As dark and lone ascends the cypress midst the tombs.

XXXVI.

Alas for thee, fair Greece! when Asia pour’d

Her fierce fanatics to Byzantium’s wall;

When Europe sheath’d, in apathy, her sword,

And heard unmoved the fated city’s call.

No bold crusaders ranged their serried line

Of spears and banners round a falling throne;

And thou, O last and noblest Constantine![25]

Didst meet the storm unshrinking and alone.

Oh! blest to die in freedom, though in vain—

Thine empire’s proud exchange the grave, and not the chain!

XXXVII.

Hush’d is Byzantium—’tis the dead of night—

The closing night of that imperial race![26]

And all is vigil—but the eye of light

Shall soon unfold, a wilder scene to trace:

There is a murmuring stillness on the train

Thronging the midnight streets, at morn to die;

And to the cross, in fair Sophia’s fane,

For the last time is raised Devotion’s eye;

And, in his heart while faith’s bright visions rise,

There kneels the high-soul’d prince, the summon’d of the skies.

XXXVIII.

Day breaks in light and glory—’tis the hour

Of conflict and of fate—the war-note calls—

Despair hath lent a stern, delirious power

To the brave few that guard the rampart walls.

Far over Marmora’s waves th’ artillery’s peal

Proclaims an empire’s doom in every note;

Tambour and trumpet swell the clash of steel,

Round spire and dome the clouds of battle float;

From camp and wave rush on the Crescent’s host,

And the Seven Towers[27] are scaled, and all is won and lost.

XXXIX.

Then, Greece! the tempest rose that burst on thee,

Land of the bard, the warrior, and the sage!

Oh! where were then thy sons, the great, the free,

Whose deeds are guiding stars from age to age?

Though firm thy battlements of crags and snows,

And bright the memory of thy days of pride,

In mountain might though Corinth’s fortress rose,

On, unresisted, roll’d th’ invading tide!

Oh! vain the rock, the rampart, and the tower,

If Freedom guard them not with Mind’s unconquer’d power.

XL.

Where were th’ avengers then, whose viewless might

Preserved inviolate their awful fane,[28]

When through the steep defiles, to Delphi’s height,

In martial splendour pour’d the Persian’s train?

Then did those mighty and mysterious Powers,

Arm’d with the elements, to vengeance wake,

Call the dread storms to darken round their towers,

Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break;

Till far around, with deep and fearful clang,

Sounds of unearthly war through wild Parnassus rang.

XLI.

Where was the spirit of the victor-throng

Whose tombs are glorious by Scamander’s tide,

Whose names are bright in everlasting song,

The lords of war, the praised, the deified?

Where he, the hero of a thousand lays,

Who from the dead at Marathon arose[29]

All arm’d; and beaming on the Athenians’ gaze,

A battle-meteor, guided to their foes?

Or they whose forms to Alaric’s awe-struck eye,[30]

Hovering o’er Athens, blazed in airy panoply?

XLII.

Ye slept, O heroes! chief ones of the earth![31]

High demigods of ancient days! ye slept:

There lived no spark of your ascendant worth

When o’er your land the victor Moslem swept.

No patriot then the sons of freedom led,

In mountain pass devotedly to die;

The martyr-spirit of resolve was fled,

And the high soul’s unconquer’d buoyancy;

And by your graves, and on your battle-plains,

Warriors! your children knelt to wear the stranger’s chains.

XLIII.

Now have your trophies vanish’d, and your homes

Are moulder’d from the earth, while scarce remain

E’en the faint traces of the ancient tombs

That mark where sleep the slayers or the slain.

Your deeds are with the days of glory flown,

The lyres are hush’d that swell’d your fame afar,

The halls that echo’d to their sounds are gone,

Perish’d the conquering weapons of your war;[32]

And if a mossy stone your names retain,

’Tis but to tell your sons, for them ye died in vain.

XLIV.

Yet, where some lone sepulchral relic stands,

That with those names tradition hallows yet,

Oft shall the wandering son of other lands

Linger in solemn thought and hush’d regret.

And still have legends mark’d the lonely spot

Where low the dust of Agamemnon lies;

And shades of kings and leaders unforgot,

Hovering around, to fancy’s vision rise.

Souls of the heroes! seek your rest again,

Nor mark how changed the realms that saw your glory’s reign.

XLV.

Lo, where th’ Albanian spreads his despot sway

O’er Thessaly’s rich vales and glowing plains,

Whose sons in sullen abjectness obey,

Nor lift the hand indignant at its chains:

Oh! doth the land that gave Achilles birth,

And many a chief of old illustrious line,

Yield not one spirit of unconquer’d worth

To kindle those that now in bondage pine?

No! on its mountain-air is slavery’s breath,

And terror chills the hearts whose utter’d plaints were death.

XLVI.

Yet if thy light, fair Freedom, rested there,

How rich in charms were that romantic clime,

With streams, and woods, and pastoral valleys fair,

And wall’d with mountains, haughtily sublime!

Heights that might well be deem’d the Muses’ reign,

Since, claiming proud alliance with the skies,

They lose in loftier spheres their wild domain—

Meet home for those retired divinities

That love, where nought of earth may e’er intrude,

Brightly to dwell on high, in lonely sanctitude.

XLVII.

There in rude grandeur daringly ascends

Stern Pindus, rearing many a pine-clad height;

He with the clouds his bleak dominion blends,

Frowning o’er vales in woodland verdure bright.

Wild and august in consecrated pride,

There through the deep-blue heaven Olympus towers,

Girdled with mists, light-floating as to hide

The rock-built palace of immortal powers;

Where far on high the sunbeam finds repose,

Amidst th’ eternal pomp of forests and of snows.