The Hundred Best English Poems | Page 8

and said amang them a':--?"Ye are na Mary Morison!"
III.
O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace?Wha for thy sake wad gladly die??Or canst thou break that heart of his?Whase only faut is loving thee??If love for love thou wilt na gie,?At least be pity to me shown:?A thought ungentle canna be?The thought o' Mary Morison.
Henderson and Henley's Text.

LORD BYRON.
16. She Walks in Beauty.
I.
She walks in Beauty, like the night?Of cloudless climes and starry skies;?And all that's best of dark and bright?Meet in her aspect and her eyes:?Thus mellowed to that tender light?Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
II.
One shade the more, one ray the less,?Had half impaired the nameless grace?Which waves in every raven tress,?Or softly lightens o'er her face;?Where thoughts serenely sweet express,?How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
III.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,?So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,?The smiles that win, the tints that glow,?But tell of days in goodness spent,?A mind at peace with all below,?A heart whose love is innocent!
17. Oh! Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom.
I.
Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,?On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;?But on thy turf shall roses rear?Their leaves, the earliest of the year;?And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:
II.
And oft by yon blue gushing stream?Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head,?And feed deep thought with many a dream,?And lingering pause and lightly tread;?Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!
III.
Away! we know that tears are vain,?That Death nor heeds nor hears distress:?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.
18. 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.
III.
Remember me--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.
IV.
My fondest--faintest--latest accents hear--?Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove;?Then give me all I ever asked--a tear,?The first--last--sole reward of so much love!
19. Song from "Don Juan."
I.
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?Than your Sires' "Islands of the Blest."
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 Thermopyl?!
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.
XII.
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 chains as his were sure to bind.
XIII.
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.
XIV.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks--?They have a king who buys