CHAPTER V.

POETRY CONNECTED WITH ANCIENT HISTORY.

I.-GREECE.

WHERE'ER we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muses' tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon;
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone;
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon.

The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord.
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame
The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above,-earth's, ocean's plain below;
Death in the front, destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene,-what now remaineth here ?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,

The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger, spurns around!

Byron.

II.-ROME.

Он, Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts, their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples. Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day,-

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago;
The Scipio's tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness ?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride:

She saw her glories, star by star, expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide Temple and tower went down, nor left a site: Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, "Here was or is," where all is doubly night ?

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas! for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page!-but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside, decay.

Alas, for Earth! for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free.

Byron.

III.-PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE,
SILENT the warrior smiled, and pleased, resigned
To tender passions all his mighty mind:
His beauteous princess cast a mournful look,
Hung on his hand, and then dejected spoke;
Her bosom labour'd with a boding sigh,
And the big tear stood trembling in her eye :-
"Too daring prince! ah, whither dost thou run?
Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son!

And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, an helpless orphan he!

For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain:
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain !
Oh, grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of Heaven, an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
No parent now remains, my griefs to share,
No father's aid, no mother's tender care;
The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire,
Laid Thebe waste, and slew my warlike sire!
His fate compassion in the victor bred;
Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead,
His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil,
And laid him decent on the funeral pile;

Then raised a mountain where his bones were burn'd,
The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorn'd.
Jove's sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow
A barren shade, and in his honour grow.
By the same arm my seven brave brothers fell,
In one sad day beheld the gates of hell;
While the fat herds and snowy flocks they fed,
Amid their fields the hapless heroes bled!
My mother lived to bear the victor's bands,
The queen of Hippoplacia's sylvan lands:
Redeem'd too late, she scarce beheld again
Her pleasing empire and her native plain,

When ah! opprest by life-consuming woe,
She fell a victim to Diana's bow.

Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee.
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all,
Once more will perish if my Hector fall.
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share:
Oh, prove a husband's and a father's care!
That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy:
Thou, from this tower defend the important post
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack had given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from Heaven.
Let others in the field their arm employ,
But stay my Hector here and guard his Troy."
The chief reply'd: "That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown'd,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the
Attaint the lustre of my former name, [ground,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame!
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains;
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories, and my own.

"Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread;
I see thee trembling, weeping captive led!
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes of which so large a part was thine!

;

To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring. There, while you groan beneath the load of life, They cry, Behold the mighty Hector's wife!' Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see, Embitters all thy woes by naming me.

The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name;
May I lay cold before that dreadful day,
Prest with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh nor see thee weep.'
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy,
Stretch'd his fond arms to clasp his lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm, and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasten'd to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brow unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground;
Then kiss'd the child, and lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferr'd a father's prayer:-

"O Thou, whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,
And say, 'This chief transcends his father's fame!'
While pleased amidst the general shouts of Troy.
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy."
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd.
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with a smile a tender tear.