"The Spartans used not the trumpet in their march into battle" says Thucydides, because they wished not to excite the rage of their warriors. Their charging-step was made to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders.' The valour of the Spartan was too highly tempered to require a stunning or rousing impulse. His spirit was like a steed too proud for the spur.''
CAMPBELL on the Elegiac Poetry of the Greeks.
'Twas morn upon the Grecian hills,
Where peasants dressed the vines,
Sunlight was on Citharon's rills,
Arcadia's rocks and pines.
And brightly, through the reeds and flowers,
Eurotas wandered by,
When a sound arose from Sparta's towers
Of soleinn harmony.
Was it the hunters' choral strain
To the woodland-goddess poured?
Did virgin-hands in Pallas' fame
Strike the full-sounding chord?
But helms were glancing on the stream,
Spears ranged in close array,
And shields flung back a glorious beam
To the morn of a fearful day!
And the mountain-echoes of the land
Swelled through the deep-blue sky,
While to soft strains moved forth a band
Of men that moved to die.
They inarched not with the trumpet's blast,
Nor bade the horn peal out,
And the laurel-groves, as on they passed,
Rung with no battle-shout!"
They asked no clarion's voice to fire
Their souls with an inpulse high;
But the Dorian reed and Spartan lyre
For the sons of Liberty!
And still sweet flutes, their path around,
Sent forth Eolian breath;
They needed not a sterner sound
"To marshall them for death!
So moved they calmly to their field,
Thence never to return,
Save bearing back the Spartan shield,
Or on it proudly borne !
THE kings of old have shrine and tomb,
In many a minister's haughty gloom;
And green along the ocean side,
The mounds arise where heroes died;
But show me, on thy flowery breast,
Earth! where thy nameless Martyrs rest!
Ten thousands, that uncheered by praise,
Have made one offering of their days;
For Truth, for Heaven, from Freedom's sake,
Resigned, the bitter cup to take,
And silently, in fearless faith,
Bowing their noble souls to death.
Where sleep they, Earth?-by no proud stone
Their narrow couch of rest is known,
The still sad glory of their name,
Hallows no mountain unto Fame,
No-not a tree the record bears
Of their deep thoughts and lonely prayers.
Yet haply all round lie strewed
The ashes of that multitude;
It may be that we each day tread
Where thus devoted hearts have bled,
And the young flowers our children sow,
Take root in holy dust below.
THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE. 151
Oh! that the many rustling leaves
Which round our homes the summer weaves,
Or that the streams, in whose glad voice
Our own familiar paths rejoice,
Might whisper through the starry sky
To tell where those blest slumberers lie!
Would not our inmost hearts be stilled
With knowledge of their presence filled,
And by its breathings taught to prize
The meekness of self-sacrifice?
-But the old woods and sounding waves
Are silent as those humble graves.
Yet what if no light footstep there
In pilgrim love and awe repair!
So let it be like Him, whose clay
Deep buried by his Maker lay,
They sleep in secret, but their sod,
Unknown to man, is marked of God.
THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE.
DARK chieftain of the heath and height!
Wild feaster on the hills by night!
Seest thou the stormy sunset's glow,
Flung back by glancing spears below?
Now for one strife of stern despair!
The foe hath track'd thee to thy lair.
Thou, against whom the voice of blood,
Hath risen from rock and lonely wood,
And in whose dreams a moan should be,
Not of the water, nor the tree;
Haply thine own last hour is nigh,
Yet thou shalt not forsaken die.
There's one, that pale beside thee stands,
More true than all thy mountain bands!
She will not shrink in doubt and dread,
When the balls whistle round thy head;
Nor leave thee, though thy closing eye,
No longer may to her's reply.
Oh! many a soft and quiet grace
Hath faded from her soul and face;
And many a thought, a fitting guest,
Of woman's meek religious breast,
Hath perished, in her wanderings wide,
'Through the deep forests, by thy side.
Yet, mournfully surviving all,
A flower upon a ruin's wall,
A friendless thing, whose lot is cast,
Of lovely ones to be the last;
Sad, but unchanged through good and ill,
Thine is her lone devotion still.
And, oh! not wholly lost the heart,
Where that undying love hath part;
Not worthless all, though far and long
From home estranged, and guided wrong :
Yet may its depths by heaven be stirred,
Its prayer for thee be pour'd and heard.
-Has his heart forgot, so far away,
Those native scenes-those rocks and torrents gray;
The tall bananas whispering to the breeze;
The shores-the sound of those encircling seas
Heard from his infant days-and the piled heap
Of holy stones, where his forefathers sleep.
Ir waved not through an eastern sky,
Beside a fount of Araby;
It was not fanned by southern breeze,
In some green isle of India seas;
Nor did its graceful shadow sleep
O'er stream of Afric, lone and deep.
But fair the exiled palm tree grew,
'Midst foliage of no kindred hue;
Through the laburnum's dropping gold
Uprose the stem of orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the moss-beds at his-feet.
Strange looked it there!-the willows streamed
Where silvery waters near it gleamed;
The lime-bough lured the honey bee
To murmur by the Desert's tree;
And showers of snowy roses made
A lustre in its fan-like shade.
There came an eve of festal hours-
Rich music filled that garden's bowers;
Lamps, that from flowering branches hung,
On sparks of dew soft colours flung;
And bright forms glanced-a fairy show-
Under the blossoms to and fro.
But one, a lone one, 'midst the throng,
Seemed reckless all of dance or song :
He was a youth of dusky mien,
Whereon the Indian sun had been ;
Of crested brow, and long black hair-
A stranger, like the Palm tree, there.
And slowly, sadly, moved his plumes,
Glittering athwart the leafy glooms:
He passed the pale green olives by,
Nor won the chesnut flowers his eye;
But when to that sole Palm he came,
Then shot a rapture through his frame !
To him, to him, it rustling spoke,
The silence of his soul it broke!
It whispered of its own bright isle,
That lit the ocean with a smile;
Aye, to his ear that native tone
Had something of the sea-wave's moan!
His mother's cabin-home that lay
Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay;
The dashing of his brethren's oar;
The conch's wild note along the shore;
All, through his wakening bosom swept ;
He clasped his country's tree and wept.*
Oh! scorn him not!-the strength, whereby
The patriot girds himself to die-
Th' unconquerable power which fills
The freeman, battling on his hills-
These have one fountain, deep and clear,
The same whence gushed that child-like tear!
*This incident is, I think, recorded by De Lille, in his poem of Le Jardins."
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