Thou too art gone - and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.

DANTE IN EXILE.

(Prophecy of DANTE, Canto i.)

ALAS! with what a weight upon my brow

The sense of earth and earthly things come back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,

The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,

And the frail few years I may yet expect

Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd

On the lone rock of desolate Despair

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail

Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;

Nor raise my voice - for who would heed my wail? I am not of this people, nor this age,

And yet my harpings will unfold a tale Which shall preserve these times when not a page

Of their perturbèd annals could attract

An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,

Did not my verse embalm full many an act

Worthless as they who wrought it: 't is the doom Of spirits of my order to be rack'd

In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him- who now is but a name,

And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his - by him unheard, unheeded — fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus — to tame

My mind down from its own infinity –

To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,

A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,

Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things That make communion sweet, and soften pain

To feel me in the solitude of kings

Without the power that makes them bear a crownTo envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down On Arno, till he perches, it may be,

Within my all inexorable town,

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry—this to see

And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile-not a slave of me.

THE ISLES OF GREECE.

(SONG OF A Greek.)

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 sate 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?

'T is 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!

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!" 'T is 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 !

1

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 gave —
Think 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 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!

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.