If they must mourn, or may rejoice

In that annihilating voice,

Which pierces the deep hills through and through

With an echo dread and new :

You might have heard it, on that day,

O'er Salamis and Megara;

(We have heard the hearers say,)

Even unto Piræus' bay.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt, Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;

But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,

And all but the after carnage done.
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plunder'd dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,

That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,

Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,

Make a pause, and turn again—
With banded backs against the wall,
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall.

There stood an old man—his hairs were white,

But his veteran arm was full of might:

So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,

The dead before him, on that day,

In a semicircle lay;

Still he combated unwounded,

Though retreating, unsurrounded.
Many a scar of former fight
Lurk'd beneath his corslet bright;
But of every wound his body bore,
Each and all had been ta'en before:

Though aged, he was so iron of limb,
Few of our youth could cope with him;
And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,
Outnumbered his thin hairs of silver grey.
From right to left his sabre swept :
Many an Othman mother wept
Sons that were unborn, when dipp'd
His weapon first in Moslem gore,
Ere his years could count a score.
Of all he might have been the sire
Who fell that day beneath his ire:
For, sonless left long years ago,
His wrath made many a childless foe;
And since the day, when in the strait
His only boy had met his fate,
His parent's iron hand did doom
More than a human hecatomb.
If shades by carnage be appeased,
Patroclus' spirit less was pleased
Than his, Minotti's son, who died
Where Asia's bounds and ours divide.
Buried he lay, where thousands before

For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore;
What of them is left to tell

Where they lie, and how they fell?

Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves; But they live in the verse that immortally saves.

DID

BYRON. Siege of Corinth.

ye not hear it ?—No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;

On with the dance-let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

But hark!-that heavy sound breaks in once more,

As if the clouds its echo would repeat,

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before:

Arm! arm! it is-it is--the cannon's opening roar!

Within a window'd niche of that high hall

Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival,

And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well, Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell: He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,

And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress; And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago

Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs,
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

And there was mounting in hot haste; the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war:
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;

And near,

the beat of the alarming drum

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips-"The foe! they come !

they come !"

BYRON.

BUT thou art fled

Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice :—but thou art fled-
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips.
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery.
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain,
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
It is a woe too " deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit,
Whose light adorn'd the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope:

But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

SHELLEY. From 1792 to 1822.

HARK! from the dim church tower,
The deep slow curfew's chime !
A heavy sound unto hall and bower,
In England's olden time.

Sadly 'twas heard by him who came
From the fields of his toil at night,
And who might not see his own hearth-flame
In his children's eyes make light.

Sternly and sadly heard,

As it quench'd the wood-fire's glow,

Which had cheered the board with the mirthful word
And the red wine's foaming flow:

Until that sullen boding knell
Flung out from every fane,

On harp, and lip, and spirit, fell
With a weight and with a chain.

Woe for the pilgrim then,

In the wild deer's forest far!

No cottage lamp to the haunts of men,
Might guide him, as a star.

And woe for him whose wakeful soul,

With love aspiring fill'd,

Would have liv'd o'er some immortal scroll,

While the sounds of earth were still'd!

And yet a deeper woe

For the watcher by the bed