At midnight, in the forest shades,
    Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
  True as the steel of their tried blades,
    Heroes in heart and hand. 
  There had the Persian thousands stood,
  There had the glad earth drunk their blood
    On old Platoea’s day;
  And now there breathed that haunted air
  The sons of sires that conquer’d there,
  With arm to strike and soul to dare,
    As quick, as far as they.

  An hour pass’d on—­the Turk awoke;
    That bright dream was his last;
  He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
    “To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”
  He woke—­to die, midst flame, and smoke,
  And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
    And death-shots, falling thick and fast
  As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
  And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
    Bozzaris cheer his band: 
  “Strike—­till the last arm’d foe expires;
  Strike—­for your altars and your fires;
  Strike—­for the green graves of your sires: 
    God, and your native land!”

  They fought—­like brave men, long and well;
    They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
  They conquer’d—­but Bozzaris fell,
    Bleeding at every vein. 
  His few surviving comrades saw—­
  His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
    And the red field was won: 
  Then saw in death his eyelids close
  Calmly, as to a night’s repose
    Like flowers at set of sun.

  Come to the bridal chamber, Death! 
    Come to the mother’s, when she feels,
  For the first time, her first-born’s breath;
    Come when the blessed seals
  That close the pestilence, are broke,
  And crowded cities wail its stroke;
  Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
  The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
  Come when the heart beats high and warm,
    With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
  And thou art terrible:  the tear,
  The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
  And all we know, or dream, or fear,
    Of agony, are thine.

  But to the hero, when his sword
    Has won the battle for the free,
  Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
  And in its hollow tones are heard
    The thanks of millions yet to be. 
  Come, when his task of fame is wrought—­
  Come, with her laurel-leaf blood-bought—­
    Come, in her crowning hour—­and then
  Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light
  To him is welcome as the sight
    Of sky and stars to prison’d men: 
  Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
  Of brother in a foreign land;
  Thy summons welcome as the cry
  That told the Indian isles were nigh,
    To the world-seeking Genoese;
  When the land-wind from woods of palm,
  And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
    Blew o’er the Haytian seas.