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!

Lord Byron

THE

Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,

On its predestined circle rolled

With thunder speed: the Angels even
Draw strength from gazing on its glance,
Though none its meaning fathom may:-
The world's unwithered countenance
Is bright as at Creation's day.

GABRIEL

And swift and swift, with rapid lightness,
The adorned Earth spins silently,
Alternating Elysian brightness

With deep and dreadful night; the sea
Foams in broad billows from the deep
Up to the rocks, and rocks and Ocean,
Onward, with spheres which never sleep,
Are hurried in eternal motion.

MICHAEL

And tempests in contention roar

From land to sea, from sea to land,
And, raging, weave a chain of power,
Which girds the earth, as with a band.—

1 Translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

A flashing desolation there.

Flames before the thunder's way;
But Thy servants, Lord, revere
The gentle changes of Thy day.

CHORUS OF THE THREE

The Angels draw strength from Thy glance,
Though no one comprehend Thee may;—
Thy world's unwithered countenance

Is bright as on Creation's day.

Goethe

200

TO EVENING

F aught of oaten stop or pastoral song

IF

May hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear,

Like thy own brawling springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales;

O Nymph reserved,-while now the bright-haired sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,

With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed;

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum,-

Now teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some softened strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit;

As musing slow I hail

Thy genial loved return.

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who slept in buds the day,

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet,

Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.

Or, if chill blustering winds or driving rain
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;
And hears their simple bell; and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw

The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!

While Summer loves to sport

Beneath thy lingering light;

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train

And rudely rends thy robes;

So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,

Thy gentlest influence own,

And love thy favorite name!

William Collins

201

MYSTE

TO NIGHT

YSTERIOUS NIGHT! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report

divine, and heard thy name,

Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

Blanco White