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THE SAME.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto ii. Stanzas 84-88.)

When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood, When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, When Athens' children are with hearts endued, When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then! A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust and when Can man its shatter'd splendour renovate, Recal its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ?

And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou !
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now;
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough :
So perish monuments of mortal birth,

So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth;

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;

Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,

While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!”

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air ;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground, No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon : Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone : Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

HELLESPONT.

(THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS, Canto ii.)

THE winds are high on Helle's wave,
As on that night of stormy water
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret-torch was blazing high,
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds warn'd him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go,
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw that light of love,
The only star it hail'd above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
"Ye waves, divide not lovers long!"-
That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedew'd in vain,

The desert of old Priam's pride ;

The tombs, sole relics of his reign,

All-save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle !

TROY.

(DON JUAN, Canto iv. Stanzas 76-78.)

THERE, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
(Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea)
Entomb'd the bravest of the brave, Achilles ;
They say so-(Bryant says the contrary) :
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
The tumulus-of whom? Heaven knows; 't may be
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus ;

All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us.

High barrows, without marble, or a name,
A vast, untill'd, and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance, still the same,

And old Scamander, (if 'tis he) remain ;
The situation seems still form'd for fame-

A hundred thousand men might fight again
With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls;

Troops of untended horses; here and there
Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;
Some shepherds (unlike Paris) led to stare
A moment at the European youth

Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;
A Turk, with beads in hand, and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,

Are what I found there-but the devil a Phrygian.

THE DRACHENFELS.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iii.)

THE castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossom'd trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scatter'd cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strew'd a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with me.

And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers

Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine,--
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

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