The air is sweet with violets running wild*
'Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals;
Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,
Sailed slowly by two thousand years ago,
For Athens,-when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the Pæstan gardens, slacked her course.
How solemn is this stillness! nothing stirs,
Save the shrill-voiced cigala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the fluted shaft with short quick spring,
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.-
In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries,
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confused,
Athwart the innumerable columns flung)
In such an hour he came who saw and told,
Led by the mighty Genius of the Place!
Walls of some capital city first appeared,
Half razed, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn ;-
And what within them? what but in the midst
These three in more than their original grandeur,
And, round about, no stone upon another?
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements.
NOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime; Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. tions them with the honey of Hybla.
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o'er the garden of Gúl* in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky, In colour though varied, in beauty may vie, And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye; Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine? 'Tis the clime of the East; 'tis the land of the SunCan he smile on such deeds as his children have done? Oh! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell
Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell
AIR clime! where every season smiles
Benignant o'er those blessed isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to loneliness delight.
There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek
Reflects the tints of many a peak,
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the eastern wave:
And if at times a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odours there!
For there the Rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale,*
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale:
His queen, the garden queen, his Rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows,
Far from the winters of the West,
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by Nature given
In softest incense back to heaven;
And, grateful, yields that smiling sky
Her fairest hue and fragrant sigh.
And many a summer flower is there,
And many a shade that Love might share;
And many a grotto, meant for rest,
That holds the pirate for a guest;
Whose bark in sheltering cove below
Lurks for the passing peaceful prow,
Till the gay mariner's guitar +
Is heard, and seen the evening star;
Then stealing with the muffled oar,
Far shaded by the rocky shore,
Rush the night prowlers on the prey,
And turn to groans his roundelay.
Strange that where Nature loved to trace,
As if for gods, a dwelling-place,
And every charm and grace hath mixed
Within the paradise she fixed,
There man, enamoured of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness;
The attachment of the Nightingale to the Rose is a well-known Persian fable. "The Bulbul of a thousand tales," is one of his appellations.
+ The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night, with a steady fair wind, and during a calm. It is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.
And trample, brute-like, o'er each flower
That tasks not one laborious hour,
Nor claims the culture of his hand
To bloom along the fairy land,
But springs as to preclude his care,
And sweetly wooes him-but to spare!
Strange that where all is peace beside,
There Passion riots in her pride,
And Lust and Rapine wildly reign,
To darken o'er the fair domain.
It is as though the fiends prevailed
Against the seraphs they assailed,
And, fixed on heavenly thrones, should dwell
The freed inheritors of hell;
So soft the scene, so formed for joy!-
So curst the tyrants that destroy!—
He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress—
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers),
And marked the mild, angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there—
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek;
And-but for that sad, shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now;
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon:
Yes, but for these, and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look, by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore.
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,-
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded halo hovering round decay,—
The farewell beam of Feeling passed away!
Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!
Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopyla?
These waters blue that round you lave,
Oh, servile offspring of the free—
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise and make again thine own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
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