LXXXIII. This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost, And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: LXXXIV. When riseth Lacedemon'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 splendour renovate, Recal its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate? LXXXV. And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou! So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth; LXXXVI. Save where some solitary column mourns While strangers only not regardless pass, LXXXVH. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads arounds, 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 :9 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, LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same Unchanged in all except its foreign lord— Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word; Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career. XC. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past sages venerate and bards adore, XCII. The parted bosom clings to wonted home, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. XCIII. Let such approach this consecrated land, Not for such purpose were these altars placed : So may our country's name be undisgraced, XCIV. For thee, who thus in too protracted song Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise; And none are left to please when none are left to love. XCV. Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! Whom youth and youth's affection bound to me; Who did for me what none beside have done, Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee. What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall seeWould they had never been, or were to come! Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam! XCVI. Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! And clings to thoughts now better far removed! But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last. All thou could'st have of mine, stern Death! thou hast; And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatched the little joy that life had yet to lend. XCVII. Then must I plunge again into the crowd, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. |