The Hundred Best English Poems | Page 9

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 Thermopylæ!
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 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.
XV.
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.
XVI.
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves
and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let
me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine--
Dash down
yon cup of Samian wine!
Coleridge's Text.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.
20. Hohenlinden.
On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay th' untrodden
snow;
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat, at dead of night,

Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.
By torch and trumpet fast array'd,
Each horseman drew his battle
blade,
And furious every charger neigh'd,
To join the dreadful
revelry.
Then shook the hills with thunder riv'n,
Then rush'd the steed to battle
driv'n,
And louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flash'd the red
artillery.
But redder yet that light shall glow,
On Linden's hills of stained snow,

And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling