5. Old Greece lightens up with emotion!
Her inlands, her isles of the ocean,
Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring,
And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon's' spring.
Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness,
That were cold, and extinguished in sadness; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms, Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens!
THOMAS CAMPBELL.
IV.
128. MARCO BOZZARIS.
Α'
T midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power;
In dreams, through camp and court, he bōre
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams, his song of triumph heard ;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring;
Then pressed that monarch's throne,—a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
2. 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's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
1Hěl' ĭ con, a famous mountain in Boeotia, in Greece, from which flows a fountain, and where resided the Muscs.
? Marco Bozzaris, (bôt' så ris), a Suliote of Arnaout and Greek descent, was born in 1789. He was early involved in revolutionary movements. His most brilliant exploit is the one
here described, in which, with a handful of five hundred Suliotes, at midnight, August 20th, 1823, he surprised a Turkish army of twenty thousand men, fought his way to the very tent of the commander-in-chief, and was killed by a random shot, while making the pasha prisoner. The victory, however, was complete.
On old Platea's' day;
And now, there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.
3. An hour passed on-the Turk ǎwōke;
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 saber-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 armed foe expires;
STRIKE-for your altars and your fires;
STRIKE-for the green graves of your sires;
GOD and your native land!
4. They fought-like brave men, lõng and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered—but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile, when rang their proud huzza,
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.
5. Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother, 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's shock, the ocean's storm;
1 Platæa, (plå tè å), a ruined city of Greece. Near it, B. c. 479, the Greeks, under Pausanias, totally de
feated and nearly annihilated the grand Persian army, under Mardonius, who was killed in the action.
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.
6. 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.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee: there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
We tell thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's,-
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die!
HALLECK. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK was born at Guilford, in Connecticut, August, 1795, and at the age of eighteen entered the banking-house of Jacob Barker, in New York, with which he was associated several years, susequently performing the duties of a book-keeper in the private office of John Jacob Astor. Soon after the decease of that noted millionaire, in 1848, he retired to his birth-place, where he has since resided. He evinced a taste for poetry and wrote verses at a very carly period. "Twilight," his first offering to the "Evening Post," appeared in October, 1818. The year following he gained his first celebrity in literature as a town wit, by producing, with his friend Drake, several witty and satirical pieces, which appeared in the columns of the "Evening Post" with the signature of Croaker & Co.; and his fame was fully established by the publication of a volume of his poems in 1827. His poetry is characterized by its music and perfection of versification, and its vigor and healthy sentiment.
I.
129. THE CLOSING YEAR.
'TIS midnight's holy hour—and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er
The still and pulselèss world. Hark! on the winds
The bell's deep tones are swelling-'tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With měl'ancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand,-
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter with his agèd locks,-and breathe,
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year,
Gone from the earth forever.
For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness.
Has gone, and with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course,
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful-
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man-and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous-and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.
The battle-plain, where sword, and spear, and shield,
Flashed in the light of mid-day,-and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!—what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity? On, still on
He presses, and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag,—but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or wearinèss,
And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinions.
Revolutions sweep
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink,
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Al'pine avalanche,
Startling the nations,-and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry of GOD,
Glitter a while in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void: yet Time-
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not
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