[EXEUNT.]

SEMICHORUS 1: 
Would I were the winged cloud
Of a tempest swift and loud! 
I would scorn 650
The smile of morn
And the wave where the moonrise is born! 
I would leave
The spirits of eve
A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave 655
From other threads than mine! 
Bask in the deep blue noon divine. 
Who would?  Not I.

NOTE: 
657 the deep blue “Errata”, Wms. transcript; the blue edition 1822.

SEMICHORUS 2: 
Whither to fly?

SEMICHORUS 1: 
Where the rocks that gird th’ Aegean 660
Echo to the battle paean
Of the free—­
I would flee
A tempestuous herald of victory! 
My golden rain
For the Grecian slain 665
Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,
And my solemn thunder-knell
Should ring to the world the passing-bell
Of Tyranny! 670

SEMICHORUS 2: 
Ah king! wilt thou chain
The rack and the rain? 
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane? 
The storms are free,
But we—­ 675

CHORUS: 
O Slavery! thou frost of the world’s prime,
Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare! 
Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,
These brows thy branding garland bear,
But the free heart, the impassive soul 680
Scorn thy control!

SEMICHORUS 1: 
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!—­Around her born,
Shone like mountains in the morn 685
Glorious states;—­and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?

SEMICHORUS 2: 
Go,
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam: 
Deluge upon deluge followed, 690
Discord, Macedon, and Rome: 
And lastly thou!

SEMICHORUS 1: 
Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay; 695
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits, 700
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.

SEMICHORUS 2: 
Hear ye the blast,
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
From ruin her Titanian walls? 705
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery?  Argos, Corinth, Crete
Hear, and from their mountain thrones
The daemons and the nymphs repeat
The harmony.