Of erring judging men Can break the heart where it abides. Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, Can change with its false times and tides, Alas for Love! And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended, If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror Alas for thee! Image of the Above. SEMICHORUS II. Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn Through many an hostile Anarchy! At length they wept aloud, and cried, "The Sea! the Sea!" Through exile, persecution, and despair, Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: But Greece was as a hermit child, Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built To woman's growth, by dreams so mild, And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire tremble A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime, Which frowns above the idle foam of Time. SEMICHORUS I. Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made; Let the free possess the paradise they claim; Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed With our ruin, our resistance, and our name! SEMICHORUS II. Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, Their dishonour a remembrance to abide ! VOICE WITHOUT Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends The keys of ocean to the Islamite. — Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled, And British skill, directing Othman might, Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy This jubilee of unrevengèd blood! Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek es cape! SEMICHORUS I. Darkness has dawned in the East On the noon of time: The death-birds descend to their feast, From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love's folding-star To the Evening land! SEMICHORUS II. The young moon has fed The weak day is dead, But the night is not born; And, like loveliness panting with wild desire While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast flashing, soft, and bright. Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free! Guide us far, far away, To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day Thou art hidden From waves on which weary noon Faints in her summer swoon, Between Kingless continents sinless as Eden, Around mountains and islands inviolably SEMICHORUS I. Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream, Their shadows more clear float by sky, The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven. on death Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! CHORUS The world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew 1 |
