He gave each muscle all its strength, pay. For no one sent the second He placed in view; resolved to please, All things were set; the hour was come, The painter looked. He sketched the piece, Of Titian's tints, of Guido's air: 'Those eyes, My Lord, the spirit there, The features, fraught with sense and wit, "Oh, pardon me," the artist cried ; The piece even common eyes must strike: I warrant it extremely like." My lord examined it anew; No looking-glass seemed half so true. MARCO BOZZARIS. T midnight, in his guarded | He woke to die 'midst flame and smoke, tent, the hour When Greece, her knee in And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Should tremble at his "Strike till the last armed foe expires! power: In dreams through camp and Strike for the green graves of your sires, court he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of Then wore his monarch's signet-ring, Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king; 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, And now there breathed that haunted air As quick, as far, as they. An hour passed on. The Turk awoke; God and your native land!" They fought like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered, but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw Then saw in death his eyelids close Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! Come to the mother's when she feels, "To arms! they come! The Greek! the And thou art terrible: the tear, Greek !" The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of agony, are thine. 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. Come when his task of fame is wrought, Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought, Come in her crowning hour, and then Of sky and stars to prisoned men; cry To the world-seeking Genoese When the land-wind, from woods of palm And orange-groves and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas. Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, For thine her evening prayer is said And she, the mother of thy boys, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame'sOne of the few, the immortal, names That were not born to die. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. THE NEW AGE. THUNDERING and bursting In torrents, in waves, Carolling and shouting Over tombs, amid graves, See, on the cumbered plain, Clearing a stage, Scattering the past about, Comes the new age. Bards make new poems; Life is their prize; MATTHEW ARNOLD. A VISION OF VIRGINS. HAD a vision of the night. And in their hands, like a blue star, they Blocked in by black hills, Crowned for a feast. I could not see the where a half moon Of morn, and whitened. Drifts of dry brown sand, This way and that, were heaped below; and flats Of water glaring shallows where strange bats Came and went and moths flickered. To the right, Face; The Form was not all human. As the flame He, turning, took them by the hand And led them each up the white stairway, and The door closed. At that moment the moon dipped Its last breath, had blown open; and, so rent, there A wild star swimming in the lurid air. Fell like a nightmare on the land, because Then I could perceive They were Her blue lips Quite calm, and each still face unearthly fair, I had a vision on that midnight plain. hall, Again Five women, and the beauty of despair |