18.

Will this unteach us to complain?

Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou - who tell'st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

Song from "The Corsair."

I.

DEEP in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.

II.

There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal-but unseen;
Which not the darkness of Despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.

Remember me

III.

Oh! pass not thou my grave

Without one thought whose relics there recline:

The only pang my bosom dare not brave

Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.

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,
But all, except their Sun, is set.

II.

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
To sounds which echo further west
Sires' "Islands of the Blest."

Than your

III.

The mountains look on Marathon

And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave.

IV.

A King sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
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?

V.

And where are they? and where art thou, 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?

VI.

'Tis something, in the dearth of Fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush for Greece a tear.

VII.

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!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla!

VIII.

What, silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;

the voices of the dead

Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise, we come, we come!" 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

IX.

In vain in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
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!

X.

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
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 ?

XI.

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

Were still, at least, our countrymen.