CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE SECOND. I. COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven!-but thou, alas! Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow. (") (1) Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. (2) We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturb ance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a pace of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrilege. But "Man, vain man, Drest in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone glimmering through the dream of things that were : First in the race that led to Glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away is this the whole ? The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. III. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven Is't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound ; (1) It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c. and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. |