With nature's mother-wit and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He raised a mortal to the skies ;
She drew an angel down!
Marco Bozzaris was the great hero of modern Greece in her struggle for independence. He was killed in 1823, while heading an assault by night on the Turkish camp at Laspi, where stood the ancient Platæa, famed for a victory (479 B.C.) of the Greeks over Mardonius, the Persian commander. The dying expression of Bozzaris was, "To die for liberty is a pleasure, not a pain." Mr. Halleck is an American poet of some note. He was born in Connecticut in 1795.
AT midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:
In dreams, through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring-
Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
An hour passed on-the Turk awoke
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
"To ARMS! they come!-the GREEK! the GREEK!"
He woke, to die 'midst flame and smoke
And shout and groan and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band-
"Strike, till the last armed foe expires! STRIKE, for your altars and your fires! STRIKE, for the green graves of your sires! GOD, and your native land!”
They fought like brave men, long and well,
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered ;-but Bozzaris fell
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile, when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
They saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessèd seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song and dance and wine,—
And thou art terrible: the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear,
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word,
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
BOZZARIS! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time
Rest thee: there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
We tell thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art freedom's now, and fame's-
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die!
XI. THE CID'S FUNERAL PROCESSION.
Felicia Dorothea Browne, Mrs. Hemans, was born in Liverpool in 1793, and died in Dublin in 1835. She is best known by her minor pieces, which have always been highly popular; but some of her more ambitious efforts, such as the "Forest Sanctuary," and "Vespers of Palermo," are no less deserving of favour.
Don Roderigo Dias de Bivar, called the Cid,—that is, Lord or Noble,-was a famous Spanish hero. The city of Valencia being besieged by the Moors while he lay on his death-bed, he gave orders that when a sally was made his dead body should be carried out to battle.
THE Moor had beleaguered Valencia's towers,
And lances gleamed up through her citron-bowers,
And the tents of the desert had girt her plain,
And camels were trampling the vines of Spain,
For the Cid was gone to rest.
There were men from wilds where the death-wind sweeps,
There were spears from hills where the lion sleeps,
There were bows from sands where the ostrich runs;
For the shrill horn of Afric had called her sons.
To the battles of the West.
The midnight bell o'er the dim seas heard,
Like the roar of waters the air had stirred;
The stars were shining o'er tower and wave,
And the camp lay hushed as a wizard's cave;
But the Christians woke that night.
They reared the Cid on his barbed1 steed,
Like a warrior mailed for the hour of need;
And they fixed the sword in the cold right hand,
Which had fought so well for his father's land,
And the shield from his neck hung bright.
There was arming heard in Valencia's halls,
There was vigil kept on the rampart walls;
Stars had not faded, nor clouds turned red,
When the knights had girded the noble dead,
And the burial train moved out.
With a measured pace, as the pace of one,
Was the still death-march of the host begun;
With a silent step went the cuirassed bands,
Like a lion's tread on the burning sands,
And they gave no battle-shout.
When the first went forth, it was midnight deep,—
In heaven was the moon, in the camp was sleep;
When the last through the city gates had gone,
O'er tent and rampart the bright day shone,
With a sun-burst from the sea.
There were knights five hundred went armed before
And Bermudez the Cid's green standard bore;
To its last fair field, with the break of morn,
Was the glorious banner in silence borne,
On the glad wind streaming free.
And the Campeador1 came stately then,
Like a leader circled with steel-clad men:
The helmet was down o'er the face of the dead,
But his steed went proud, by a warrior led,
For he knew that the Cid was there.
He was there, the Cid, with his own good sword,
And Ximena following her noble lord;
Her eye was solemn, her step was slow,
But there rose not a sound of war or woe,
Nor a whisper on the air.
The halls in Valencia were still and lone,
The churches were empty, the masses done;
There was not a voice through the wide streets far,
Not a footfall heard in the Alcazar;3
So the burial-train moved out.
Campeador; that is, Champion, a title of the Cid.
With a measured pace, as the pace of one,
Was the still death-march of the host begun;
With a silent step went the cuirassed bands,
Like a lion's tread on the burning sands,
And they gave no battle-shout.
But the hills pealed with a cry ere long,
When the Christians burst on the Paynim1 throng!
With a sudden flash of the lance and spear,
And a charge of the war-steed in full career,
It was Alvar Fanez came!
He that was wrapt with no funeral-shroud,
Had passed before, like a threatening cloud!
And the storm rushed down on the tented plain,
And the archer-Queen3 with her bands lay slain,
For the Cid upheld his fame.
Then a terror fell on the King Bucar,
And the Libyan kings who had joined his war;
And their hearts grew heavy and died away,
And their hands could not wield an assagay,
For the dreadful things they saw!
For it seemed where Minaya his onset made,
There were seventy thousand knights arrayed,
All white as snow on Nevada's' steep,
And they came like the foam of a roaring deep-
'Twas a sight of fear and awe.
And the crested form of a warrior tall,
With a sword of fire, went before them all;
With a sword of fire and a banner pale,
And a blood-red cross on his shadowy mail,
He rode in the battle's van!
There was fear in the path of his dim white horse,
There was death in the giant-warrior's course!
2 A famous follower of the Cid.
A Moorish princess who led a band of female archers, to assist the Moorish
king, Bucar, in his invasion of Spain.
6 That is, Alvar Fanez Minaya.
7 A range of mountains in Spain.
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