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 shatter'd 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, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!" LXXXVII. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 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 around, 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: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career, I 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 Which sages venerate and bards adore, As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. XCII. The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; And gaze complacent on congenial earth. 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, So may our country's name be undisgraced, So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was rear'd, By every honest joy of love and life endear'd! |