"O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been So lonely 'twas, that God himself "O sweeter than the marriage feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, With a goodly company! 600 To walk together to the kirk "To walk together to the kirk, 605 And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, BYRON. [MODERN GREECE.] CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO II LXXXV. AND yet how lovely in thine age of woe, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth; LXXXVI. Save where some solitary column.mourns While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!" LXXXVII. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild : 5 10 15 20 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 25 LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground; LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; 30 35 Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde 40 First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word; Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career, 45 XC. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below; Such was the scene what now remaineth here? What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground, The rifled urn, the violated mound, The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around 50 XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendor past As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. 55 60 But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died. XCIII. Let such approach this consecrated land, 70 And pass in peace along the magic waste: But spare its relics - let no busy hand 75 Deface the scenes, already now defaced! Not for such purpose were these altars placed. So may our country's name be undisgraced, So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was rear'd, By every honest joy of love and life endear'd! 80 [VENICE.] CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV. I. I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; I saw from out the wave her structures rise O'er the far times when many a subject land Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! II. She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was; her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 15 Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased. III. In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! 20 25 |