Teme With tongues all sweet and low, 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! 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, 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, 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, A tale of mourning tells : Tells of man's woe and fall, Then turn thee, little bird! and take thy flight 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! The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, To sounds which echo further West The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; I dream'd that Greece might still be free: For standing on the Persians' grave A King sate on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis, And men in nations,-all were his ; 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. 'Tis something in the dearth of fame, Must we but weep o'er days more bless'd? What! silent still? and silent all? 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! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet : 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! Such as the Doric mothers bore; Trust not for freedom to the Franks ! The only hope of courage dwells; Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 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 And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, 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, To me there needs no stone to tell 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. |