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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Greece and her Heroes

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Greece and her Heroes

By Lord Byron (1788–1824)

From ‘The Siege of Corinth’

THEY fell devoted, but undying;

The very gale their names seemed sighing:

The waters murmured of their name;

The woods were peopled with their fame;

The silent pillar, lone and gray,

Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;

Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,

Their memory sparkled o’er the fountain:

The meanest rill, the mightiest river,

Rolled mingling with their fame forever.

Despite of every yoke she bears,

That land is glory’s still, and theirs!

’Tis still a watchword to the earth:

When man would do a deed of worth

He points to Greece, and turns to tread,

So sanctioned, on the tyrant’s head;

He looks to her, and rushes on

Where life is lost, or freedom won.