Fill to their Matrons’ memory—­
      The Fair who knew no fear—­
    But gave the hero’s shield to be
      His bulwark or his bier.[3]
    We boast their dauntless blood——­it fills
      That lion-woman’s veins,
    Whose praise shall perish when thy hills,
      JELLALABAD, are plains! 
        That LADY’S health! who doubts she heard
          Of Greece, and loved to hear? 
        The wheat, two thousand years interr’d,
          Will still its harvest bear.[4]

    The lore of Greece—­the book still bright
      With Plato’s precious thought—­
    The Theban’s harp—­the judging-right
      Stagyra’s sophist taught—­
    Bard, Critic, Moralist to-day
      Can but their spirit speak,
    The self-same thoughts transfused.  Away,
      We are not Gael but Greek. 
        Then drink, and dream the red grape weeps
          Those dead but deathless lords,
        Whose influence in our bosom sleeps,
          Like music in the chords.

    Yet ’tis not in the chiming hour
      Of goblets, after all,
    That thoughts of old Hellenic Power
      Upon the heart should fall. 
    Go home—­and ponder o’er the hoard
      When night makes silent earth: 
    The Gods the Roman most adored,
      He worshipp’d at the hearth. 
        Then, drink and swear by Greece, that there
          Though Rhenish Huns may hive,
        In Britain we the liberty
          She loved will keep alive.

    CHORUS

        And thus we drink their memory
          Those glorious Greeks of old,
        On shore and sea the Famed and Free—­
          The Beautiful—­the Bold!

[Footnote 3:  “Return with it or upon it” was the well-known injunction of a Greek mother, as she handed her son his shield previous to the fight.]

[Footnote 4:  The mummy-wheat.]

* * * * *

THE PRAIRIE AND THE SWAMP.

AN ADVENTURE IN LOUISIANA.

It was a sultry September afternoon in the year 18—.  My friend Carleton and myself had been three days wandering about the prairies, and had nearly filled our tin boxes and other receptacles with specimens of rare and curious plants.  But we had not escaped paying the penalty of our zeal as naturalists, in the shape of a perfect roasting from the sun, which had shot down its rays during the whole time of our ramble, with an ardour only to be appreciated by those who have visited the Louisianian prairies.  What made matters worse our little store of wine had been early expended; some Taffia, with which we had replenished our flasks, had also disappeared; and the water we met with, besides being rare, contained so much vegetable and animal mater, as to be undrinkable unless qualified in some manner.  In this dilemma, we came to a halt under a clump of hickory trees, and dispatched Martin, Carleton’s Acadian servant, upon a voyage of discovery.  He had assured us that we must erelong fall in with some party of Americans—­or Cochon Yankees, as he called them—­who, in spite of the hatred borne them by the Acadians and Creoles, were daily becoming more numerous in the country.