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 crushed thy temples gone: 
  Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon.

LORD BYRON.

* * * * *

SONG OF THE GREEK POET.

FROM “DON JUAN,” CANTO III.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  A king sat 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?

  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?

  ’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.

  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 Thermopylae!

  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.

  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!