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Teme

With tongues all sweet and low,
Like a pleasant rhyme,

They tell how much I owe

To Thee and Thine.

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

1787-1879.

THE LITTLE BEACHBIRD.

Thou little bird! thou dweller by the sea!
Why takest thou its melancholy voice,
And with that boding cry

O'er the waves dost thou fly?

O rather, bird! with me

Through the fair land rejoice!

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale,
As driven by the beating storm at sea;

Thy cry is weak and scared,

As if thy mates had shared

The doom of us; thy wail

What does it bring to me?

Thou call'st along the sand and haunt'st the surge,
Restless and sad, as if, in strange accord

With the motion and the roar

Of waves that drive to shore,

One spirit did ye urge,—

The Mystery-the Word.

Of thousands thou both sepulchre and pall,
Old Ocean! art. A requiem o'er the dead
From out thy gloomy cells

A tale of mourning tells :

Tells of man's woe and fall,
His sinless glory fled.

Then turn thee, little bird! and take thy flight
Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring
Thy spirit never more!

Come, quit with me the shore

For gladness and the light

Where birds of summer sing!

GEORGE GORDON BYRON (LORD BYRON). 1788-1824.

THE ISLES OF GREECE.

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 Phœbus 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 Bless'd."

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;
But 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?

'Tis 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 bless'd?
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!" 'Tis 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!

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 mean'd 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 :

O 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.

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.

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.

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!

TO THYRZA.

And thou art dead! as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth :

And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth.

Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness of mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot :

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not.

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot.

To me there needs no stone to tell
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last,

As fervently as thou

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow;

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong or change or fault in me.

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