II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were : They won, and pass'd away is this the whole? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! III. power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Will rise with other years, till man shall lea.n Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds ; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven — V. Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, (1) It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c. and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. Where demi-gods appear'd, as records tell. Why ev?n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell! VI. Look on its broken arch, its ruin❜d wall, And Passion's host, that never brook'd control: VII. Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, VIII. Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be With those who made our mortal labours light! The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! IX. There, thou!-whose love and life together fled, - Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead And woo the vision to my vacant breast: If aught of young Remembrance then remain, For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest! X. Here let me sit upon this massy stone, The marble column's yet unshaken base; XI. But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Thy free-born men should spare what once was free, XII. But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast, To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared ; (3) Cold as the crags upon his native coast, His mind as barren and his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, Aught to displace Athena's poor remains Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains, (*) And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains. (1) The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: originally there were 150. These columns, however, are by many supposed to belong to the Pantheon. (2) The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. (3) See Appendix to this Canto [A], for a note too long to be placed here. (4) I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines. "When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with XIII. What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, XIV. Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appall'd Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthrall'd, What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more, Idly he wander'd on the Stygian shore, Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before. XV. Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee, Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed To guard those relics ne'er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr'd! XVI. But where is Harold? shall I then forget To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave? one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, Téλos! -I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar. (1) According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer. See CHANDLER. No loved-one now in feign'd lament could rave; And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes. XVII. He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea, So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow. XVIII. And oh, the little warlike world within! XIX. White is the glassy deck, without a stain, From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve. (1) The netting to prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during ac tion. |