III.

Remember me—­Oh! pass not thou my grave
  Without one thought whose relics there recline: 
The only pang my bosom dare not brave
  Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.

IV.

My fondest—­faintest—­latest accents hear—­
  Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever asked—­a tear,
  The first—­last—­sole reward of so much love!

19. Song from “Don Juan."

I.

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.

II.

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.”

III.

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.

IV.

A King sate 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?

V.

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?

VI.

’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.

VII.

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!

VIII.

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.