9.

Jn 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 !

10.

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?

11.

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.

12.

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.

13.

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.

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60

70

14.

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.

15.

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 slaves.

16.

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 die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

GREAT NAMES

(CANTO III, lxxxviii-xciv)

BUT words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link

Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper-even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,
His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,

Or graven stone found in a barrack's station
In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

And glory long has made the sages smile;
'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind-
Depending more upon the historian's style

Than on the name a person leaves behind:
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle :
The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,
Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

Milton's the prince of poets-so we say ;
A little heavy, but no less divine :

An independent being in his day

ΙΟ

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Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine;

But his life falling into Johnson's way,

We're told this great high priest of all the Nine

Was whipt at college-a harsh sire-odd spouse,
For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

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All these are, certes, entertaining facts,

Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts;

Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes); Like Cromwell's pranks ;-but although truth exacts These amiable descriptions from the scribes,

As most essential to their hero's story,

They do not much contribute to his glory.

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All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of 'Pantisocrasy;
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).

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

Are good manure for their more bare biography,
Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birthday of typography
A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the Excursion
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

WORDSWORTH

(CANTO III. xcviii—c)

6

WE learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps ;
We feel without him, Wordsworth

wakes,-

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50

sometimes

To show with what complacency he creeps,
With his dear Waggoners,' around his lakes.
He wishes for " a boat to sail the deeps-
Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes
Another outcry for a little boat,'

And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain,
And Pegasus runs restive in his 'Waggon,'
Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?
Or pray Medea for a single dragon?

Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain,

He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

ΤΟ

"Pedlars," and " Boats," and "Waggons!

shades

"

Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? That trash of such sort not alone evades

Oh! ye

Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss
Flcats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades
Of sense and song above your graves may hiss-
The little boatman' and his Peter Bell'
Can sneer at him who drew 'Achitophel' !

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་

AVE MARIA

(CANTO III, ci—cix)

T' OUR tale.-The feast was over, the slaves gone,
The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;
The Arab lore and poet's song were done,
And every sound of revelry expired;

The lady and her lover, left alone,

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The rosy flood of twilight's sky admired Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,

That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee !

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!

Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove

What though 'tis but a pictured image strike,

That painting is no idol,-'tis too like.

ΙΟ

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