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In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war-much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on

Would be old Goethe's-(see what says De. In Italy he'd ape the Trecentisti ; ' * [Staël); In Greece he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t'ye;

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 † and the Teian ‡ 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 dream'd 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 link'd among a fetter'd 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 Thermopyla !

• The poets of the fourteenth century, Dante, &c. Homer.

Anacreon.

$ The νήσοι μακαρων of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd islands or the Canaries.

Deep were the groans of Xerxes, when he saw
This havoc; for his seat, a lofty mound
Commanding the wide sea, o'erlook'd the hosts.
With rueful cries he rent his royal robes,
And through his troops embattled on the shore
Gave signal of retreat, then started wild
And fled disorder'd.'-ÆSCHYLUS.

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 gaveThink 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 PolycratesA 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 saves
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

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

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Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts,
Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well de-
scribes);
[exacts
Like Cromwell's pranks ;-but although truth
These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
As most essential to their hero's story,

They do not much contribute to his glory.
XCIII.

All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of Pantisocracy ;'
Or Wordsworth, unexcised, unhired, who then
Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

XCIV.

Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography; Their loyal treason, renegado vigour,

Are good manure for their more bare biography.

Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigget

Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy, frowzy poem call'd The Excursion, Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

XCV.

He there builds up a formidable dyke

Between his own and others' intellect;

But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Johanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind-so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

XCVI.

But let me to my story: I must own,
If I have any fault, it is digression-
Leaving my people to proceed alone,

While I soliloquize beyond expression;
But these are my addresses from the throne,
Which put off business to the ensuing session;
Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

XCVII.

I know that what our neighbours call 'longueurs' (We've not so good a word, but have the thing, In that complete perfection which ensures

An epic from Bob Southey every spring-) Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the épopée

To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

XCVIII.

We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps ;' [wakes, We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes

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But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion

Of getting into heaven the shortest way:

My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars-all that springs from the great Whole,

Who hath produced, and will receive the scal.

CV.

Sweet hour of twilight !-in the solitude

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave fcwd o'er,

To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood, Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,

CVI.

The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless sorg. Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and me And vesper bells that rose the boughs along . The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs and their chase, and the fair throng,

Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover-shadow'd my mind's eye.*

CVII.

O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things+
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer.
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabour d steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings
Whate'er our household gods protect of Gear",
Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mothers
breast.

CVIII.

Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are for apart;

Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper niakes him start,

Seeming to weep the dying day's decay: Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely nothing dies but something morns!

• See Dryden's Theodore and Honoria.

†' Έσπερε παντα φέρεις,

Φέρεις οίνον φέρεις αιγα,

Φέρεις ματέρι παιδα.' Fragment of Sapphu

Era gia l'ora che volge 1 disio,

A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce il cacre,

Lo di ch' han detto a' dolci amici a do;

E che lo nuovo peregrin' d'amore

Punge, se ode Squilla di lontano, Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si more. DANTE'S Purgatory, canto r This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken y ha wana acknowledgment??

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