LXXXIII. This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most- LXXXIV. When riseth Lacedemon's hardihood, When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, When Athens' children are with hearts endued, When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then. A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust and when Can man its shatter'd splendour renovate, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ? LXXXV. 66 And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth; LXXXVI. Save where some solitary column mourns While strangers only not regardless pass, LXXXVII. Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon; Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lord; Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word ;70 Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career, XC. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past XCII. The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; He that is lonely, hither let him roam, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth : But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.71 XCIII. Let such approach this consecrated land, So may our country's name be undisgraced, So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was rear'd, By every honest joy of love and life endear'd! XCIV. For thee, who thus in too protracted song Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise, Since cold each kinder heart that might approve, And none are left to please when none are left to love. XCV. Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me; Who did for me what none beside have done, Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee. What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall seeWould they had never been, or were to come! Would he had ne'er return'd to find fresh cause to roam! XCVI Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, And clings to thoughts now better far removed! But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last. All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast; The parent, friend, and now the more than friend : Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to lend. XCVII. Then must I plunge again into the crowd, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. |