Men, who their duties know, But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain. These constitute a state; And sovereign law, that state's collected will, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill: The fiend Discretion, like a vapor, sinks, Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. CXIII.-MARATHON. MARATHON; the scene of a celebrated battle in the early history of Greece. ATHENA; Athens. HELLAS; Greece. IONIAN; Grecian. WHERE'ER we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground, Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career! NEW EC. S.--18 What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground, The rifled urn, the violated mound, The dust, thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. Yet to the remnants of thy splendor past, Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; As Pallas and the Muse unvail their awful lore. FROM BYRON. CXIV. ATHENS. ERASMUS, PASCAL, MIRABEAU, GALILEO, Sidney; distinguished men who were persecuted for their liberal opinions; Erasms translated the Greek Testament into Latin; Mirabeau was an early leader of the French Revolution; Galileo discovered the true relations of the heavenly bodies. ALL the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whenever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, and consoling. It stood by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty; liberty in bondage; health in sickness; society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and wait for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens. The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of the yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated. Her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language, into a barbarous jargon. Her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivaled her greatness, shall have shared her fate when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts; her influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control. FROM MACAULAY. CXV.-GREECE. CLIME of the unforgotten brave! These waters blue that round you lave, These scenes, their story not unknown, Bear witness, Greece, thy living page! CXVI.-THE FLIGHT OF XERXES. XERXES, king of Persia, assembled a fleet of a thousand sail and an army of many millions, to effect the conquest of Greece. At Salamis, he was completely overthrown, and fled from the battle alone. I SAW him on the battle eve, When like a king he bore him; Proud hosts, in glittering helm and greave, The warrior, and the warrior's deeds; The morrow, and the morrow's meeds; No daunting thoughts came o'er him. He looked on ocean; its broad breast On earth; and saw, from east to west, While rocks, and glen, and cave, and coast, The thunder of their feet! I saw him next, alone. Nor camp, He, who with heaven contended, He stood: fleet, army, treasure,—gone! But wave and wind swept ruthless on, For they were monarchs there; And Xerxes, in a single bark, Where late his thousand ships were dark, Must all their fury dare: What a revenge, a trophy, this, For thee, immortal Salamis! |