Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 17881824601. 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 Phoebus sprung! | |
Eternal summer gilds them yet, | 5 |
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 | 10 |
To sounds which echo further west | |
Than your sires’ ‘Islands of the Blest. | |
The mountains look on Marathon— | |
And Marathon looks on the sea; | |
And musing there an hour alone, | 15 |
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; | 20 |
And ships, by thousands, lay below, | |
And men in nations;—all were his! | |
He counted them at break of day— | |
And when the sun set, where were they? | |
And where are they? and where art thou, | 25 |
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? | 30 |
‘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? | 35 |
For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear. | |
Must we but weep o’er days more blest? | |
Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled. | |
Earth! render back from out thy breast | |
A remnant of our Spartan dead! | 40 |
Of the three hundred grant but three, | |
To make a new Thermopylæ! | |
What, silent still? and silent all? | |
Ah! no;—the voices of the dead | |
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall, | 45 |
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! | 50 |
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; | 55 |
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 meant them for a slave? | 60 |
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 | 65 |
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 | 70 |
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 | 75 |
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; | 80 |
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! | 85 |
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. | 90 |
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— | 95 |
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! |