Must we but weep o'er days more blessed?
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!
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.
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 !
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?
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.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such claims 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
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;
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!
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.
Place me on Samian's marbled steep
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swanlike, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine.
THE DYING GLADIATOR.
THE seal is set. Now welcome, thou dread power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour,
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow unto the spot, all seeing but unseen.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran
In murmured pity, or loud roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. Wherefore not? What matter where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms-on battle plains or listed spot? Both are but theaters where the chief actors rot.
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony;
And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thundershower; and now
- he is gone
The arena swims around him
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay
There were his young barbarians all at play;
There was their Dacian mother he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday:
All this rushed with his blood.-Shall he expire,
And unavenged?- Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
O ROME, my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and empires, ye
Whose agonies are evils of a day!
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations! There she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
|