270 EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYMENT. George Herbert. If, as a flower doth spread and die, The sweetness and the praise were thine 99 But the extension and the room, Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine At thy great doom. For as thou dost impart thy grace, The measure of our joys is in this place, Let me not languish, then, and spend As is the dust, to which that life doth tend, All things are busy; only I Neither bring honey with the bees, Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry To water these. I am no link of thy great chain, Lord, place me in thy concert, give one strain To my poor reed. THE ISLES OF GREECE. — Byron. THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece ! The Scian and the Teian Muse, To sounds which echo farther west The mountains look on Marathon, 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 men in nations; all were his ! 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! 272 THE ISLES OF GREECE. And must thy lyre, so long divine, "T is something, in the dearth of fame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; For Greeks a blush,- for Greece a tear. Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush? Our fathers bled. What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no; he voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, "Let one living head, In vain, in vain; strike other chords; And shed the blood of Scio's vine! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Of two such lessons, why forget 'The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gave, 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. The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! O, 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! Such as the Doric mothers bore; Trust not for freedom to the Franks, The only hope of courage dwells; Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 274 EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY. Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, There, swan-like, let me sing and die. EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY.— Wordsworth. "WHY, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away? "Where are your books? that light bequeathed To beings else forlorn and blind! Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed "You look round on your mother earth, As if you were her first-born birth, One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, "The eye, it cannot choose but see; |