Liberty to Athens. PERCIVAL.
THE flag of freedom floats once more
Around the lofty Parthenon;
It waves, as waved the palm of yore,
In days departed long and gone;
As bright a glory, from the skies,
Pours down its light around those towers,
And once again the Greeks arise,
As in their country's noblest hours;
Their swords are girt in virtue's cause,
Minerva's sacred hill is free-
O! may she keep her equal laws,
While man shall live, and time shall be.
The pride of all her shrines went down ;
The Goth, the Frank, the Turk, had reft
The laurel from her civick crown;
Her helm by many a sword was cleft:
She lay among her ruins low-
Where grew the palm, the cypress rose,
And crushed and bruised by many a blow,
She cowered beneath her savage foes;
But now again she springs from earth,
Her loud, awakening trumpet speaks;
She rises in a brighter birth,
And sounds redemption to the Greeks.
It is the classick jubilee
Their servile years have rolled away;
The clouds that hovered o'er them flee,
They hail the dawn of freedom's day;
From Heaven the golden light descends,
The times of old are on the wing,
And glory there her pinion bends,
And beauty wakes a fairer spring;
The hills of Greece, her rocks, her waves,
Are all in triumph's pomp arrayed;
A light that points their tyrants' graves,
Plays round each bold Athenian's blade,
The Parthenon, the sacred shrine,
Where wisdom held her pure abode :
The hill of Mars, where light divine
Proclaimed the true, but unknown God;
Where justice held unyielding sway,
And trampled all corruption down,
And onward took her lofty way,
To reach at truth's unfading crown :
The rock, where liberty was full,
Where eloquence her torrents rolled,
And loud, against the despot's rule,
A knell the patriot's fury tolled.
The stage, whereon the drama spake,
In tones, that seemed the words of Heaven,
Which made the wretch in terrour shake,
As by avenging furies driven :
The groves and gardens, where the fire
Of wisdom, as a fountain, burned,
And every eye, that dared aspire
To truth, has long in worship turned :
The halls and porticoes, where trod
The moral sage, severe, unstained,
And where the intellectual God
In all the light of science reigned.
The schools, where rose in symmetry
The simple, but majestick pile,
Where marble threw its roughness by,
To glow, to frown, to weep, to smile,
Where colours made the canvass live,
Where musick rolled her flood along,
And all the charms, that art can give,
Were blent with beauty, love, and song:
The port, from whose capacious womb
Her navies took their conquering road,
The heralds of an awful doom
To all, who would not kiss her rod.
On these a dawn of glory springs,
These trophies of her brightest fame;
Away the long chained city flings
Her weeds, her shackles, and her shame :
Again her ancient souls awake,
Harmodius bares anew his sword;
Her sons in wrath their fetters break,
And freedom is their only lord.
The Flight and Death of Rodolph.-PINKNEY.
WHILE Hope attends her sacred fire,
All joy rejoices in its pyre;
Once quenched, what ray the flame renews?
What but calamity ensues?
When ill report disgraced his name,
And turned to infamy his fame,
Bearing from home his blighted prime,
He journeyed to some distant clime,
Where babbling rumour could not trace
His footsteps to a resting place.
Mean while, the quest of happiness
He made, despairing of success;
Unhoped, but not pursued the less,
It urged around the world its flight
Away from him, like day from night.
There are, who deem of misery
As if it ever craved to die:
They err; the full of soul regard,
More than the calm, their graves with hate;
The loss of such a life is hard,
And, ending their eventful fate,
From so much into nothing must
The change be pain-from this to dust!-
To fill the chasms of the breast,
"Tis happiness they seek, not rest;
Wishing for something to amend
Existence, they must shun its end;
And this the princely will betrays
To many sufferings and days.
How feels the guiltless dreamer, who,
With idly curious gaze,
Has let his mind's glance wander through
The relicks of past days?-
As feels the pilgrim that has scanned,
Within their skirting wall,
The moon-lit marbles of some grand
Disburied capital;
Masses of whiteness and of gloom,
The darkly bright remains
Of desolate palace, empty tomb,
And desecrated fanes :-
For in the ruins of old hours,
Remembrance haply sees
Temples, and tombs, and palaces,
Not different from these.
But such mere musings could not now
Move Rodolph's lip, or curl his brow:
His countenance had lost its free
And former fine transparency,
Nor would, as once, his spirit pass
Its fleshly mask, like light through glass.
In his sad aspect seemed to be
Troubled reflections of a life,
Nourished by passion, spent in strife—
Gleams, as of drowned antiquity,
From cities underneath the sea,
Which glooms in famous Galilee.
In the calm scene he viewed was aught,
That might disturb a froward thought?
He saw, new married to the air,
The tranquil, waveless deep,
Reposing in a night as fair
As woman's softest sleep:
Peaceful and silent, were met all
The elements in festival,
And the wide universe seemed to be
One clear obscure transparency.
Could such a quiet Fancy wake?
And doth she from her slumbers break,
As drowsy mortals often will,
When lamps go out, or clocks fall still?
No less than when the Wind-God's breath
Blackens the wilderness beneath,
Until contrasted stars blaze bright
With their own proper heavenly light,
And almost make the gazer sigh,
For our unseen mythology.
Motion or rest, a sound, a glance,
Alike rouse memory from its trance.
Perhaps, presentiment of ill
Might shake him-hearts are prophets still.
What though the fount of Castaly
Not now stains leaves with prophecy ?-
What though are of another age
Omens, and Sibyl's boding page ?-
Augurs and oracles resign
Their voices-fear can still divine:
Dreams and hand writings on the wall
Need not foretell our fortune's fall;
Domitian in his galleries,
The soul all hostile advents sees,
As in the mirror stone;
Like shadows by a brilliant day
Cast down from falcons on their prey;
Or watery demons, in strong light,
By haunted waves of fountains old,
Shown indistinctly to the sight
Of the inquisitive and bold.
The mind is capable to show
Thoughts of so dim a feature,
That consciousness can only know
Their presence, not their nature;
Things, which, like fleeting insect mothers,
Supply recording life to others,
And forthwith lose their own.
He backed his steed, and took his way
Where a large cemetery lay,
Beaming beneath the star-light gay,
A white spot in the greenery,
Semblant of what it well might be-
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