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LESSON CXLIV.

The Greek Emigrant's Song.-J. G. PERCIVAL.

Now launch the boat upon the wave-
The wind is blowing off the shore-
I will not live, a cowering slave,

In these polluted islands more.
Beyond the wild, dark-heaving sea,
There is a better home for me.

The wind is blowing off the shore,
And out to sea the streamers fly—
My musick is the dashing roar,

My canopy the stainless sky-
It bends above, so fair a blue

That heaven seems opening to my view.
I will not live, a cowering slave,
Though all the charms of life may shine
Around me, and the land, the wave,
And sky be drawn in tints divine.-
Give lowering skies and rocks to me
If there my spirit can be free.

Sweeter than spicy gales, that blow

From orange groves with wooing breath,
The winds may from these islands flow,—
But, 'tis an atmosphere of death,—
The lotus, which transformed the brave
And haughty to a willing slave.
Softer than Minder's winding stream,
The wave may ripple on this coast,
And brighter than the morning beam,
In golden swell be round it tost-
Give me a rude and stormy shore,
So power can never threat me more.
Brighter than all the tales, they tell
Of Eastern pomp and pageantry,
Our sunset skies in glory swell,

Hung round with glowing tapestry :-
The horrours of a winter storm
Swell brighter o'er a Freeman's form.

The Spring may here with Autumn twine,
And both combined may rule the year,
And fresh-blown flowers and racy wine

In frosted clusters still be near :--
Dearer the wild and snowy hills
Where hale and ruddy Freedom smiles.
Beyond the wild, dark-heaving sea,
And Ocean's stormy vastness o'er,
There is a better home for me,

A welcomer and dearer shore:

There hands, and hearts, and souls, are twined,.
And free the Man, and free the mind.

LESSON CXLV.

Song of the Greeks, 1822.-CAMPBELL.

AGAIN to the battle, Achaians!

Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance;
Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree-
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free;
For the cross of our faith is replanted,

The pale dying crescent is daunted,

And we march that the foot-prints of Mahomet's slaves May be washed out in blood from our forefathers' graves. Their spirits are hovering o'er us,

And the sword shall to glory restore us.

Ah! what though no succour advances,

Nor Christendom's chivalrous lances

Are stretched in our aid ?-Be the combat our own!
And we'll perish or conquer more proudly alone:

For we've sworn, by our country's assaulters,
By the virgins they've dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins,
That living, we will be victorious,

Or that dying, our deaths shall be glorious.

A breath of submission we breathe not:

at

The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe Bulsion.

Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid, lacably And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade. that the

Earth may hide-waves ingalph-fire consume us,
But they shall not to slavery doom us:

If they rule, it shall be o'er our ashes and graves:
But we've smote them already with fire on the waves,
And new triumphs on land are before us.

To the charge!—Heaven's banner is o'er us.
This day-shall ye blush for its story?
Or brighten your lives with its glory?—
Our women-Oh, say, shall they shriek in despair,
Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair?
Accursed may his memory blacken,

If a coward there be that would slacken,

Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth. Strike home!-and the world shall revere us

As heroes descended from heroes.

Old Greece lightens up with emotion

Her inlands, her isles of the ocean :

Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring,
And the Nine shall new-hallow their Helicon's spring.
Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness,

That were cold, and extinguished in sadness;
Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms,
Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,
When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens
Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens.

LESSON CXLVI.

Letter from the British Spy, in Virginia.—WIRT.

Richmond, September 22, 1803.: - I HAVE just returned from an interesting morning's ride. My object was to visit the site of the Indian town, Powha tan; which, you will remember, was the metropolis of the minions of Pocahuntas' father, and, very probably, the rthplace of that celebrated princess.

The town was built on the river, about two miles below and now occupied by Richmond: that is, about two Thelow the head of tide water.

Swel of the slight manner in which the Indians have

always constructed their habitations, I was not at all disappointed in finding no vestige of the old town. But as I traversed the ground over which Pocahuntas had so often bounded and frolicked in the sprightly morning of her youth, I could not help recalling the principal features of her history, and heaving a sigh of mingled pity and veneration to her memory.

Good Heaven! What an eventful life was hers! To speak of nothing else, the arrival of the English in her father's dominions must have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) a most portentous phenomenon. It is not easy for us to conceive the amazement and consternation which must have filled her mind and that of her nation at the first appearance of our countrymen. Their great ship, with all her sails spread, advancing in solemn majesty to the shore; their complexion; their dress; their language; their domestick animals; their cargo of new and glittering wealth; and then the thunder and irresistible force of their artillery; the distant country announced by them, far beyond the great water, of which the oldest Indian had never heard, or thought, or dreamed—all this was so new, so wonderful, so tremendous, that, I do seriously suppose, the personal descent of an army of Milton's celestial angels, robed in light, sporting in the bright beams of the sun and redoubling their splendour, making divine harmony with their golden harps, or playing with the bolt and chasing the rapid lightning of heaven, would excite not more astonishment in Great Britain, than did the debarkation of the English among the aborigines of Virginia.

Poor Indians! Where are they now? Indeed, this is a truly afflicting consideration. The people here may say what they please; but, on the principles of eternal truth and justice, they have no right to this country. They say that they have bought it.-Bought it! Yes;-of whom?Of the poor trembling natives who knew that refusal would be vain; and who strove to make a merit of necessity by seeming to yield with grace, what they knew that they had not the power to retain. Such a bargain might appease the conscience of a gentleman of the green bag, “ worn and hackneyed" in the arts and frauds of his profession; but in heaven's chancery, there can be little doubt that it has been long since set aside on the ground of compulsion.

Poor wretches! No wonder that they are so implacably vindictive against the white people; no wonder that the

rage of resentment is handed down from generation to generation; no wonder that they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators; no wonder that in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able; that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing, and rejoice, as the victim shrieks and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious odour as it arises from the burning blood of the white man.

Yet the people, here, affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white men. Go, Virginian; erase, from the Indian nation, the tradition of their wrongs; make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields and through these forests, their beloved forefathers, once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Make them forget too, if you can, that in the midst of all this innocence, simplicity and bliss-the white man came; and lo!-the animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, thoughtless joy were over; that ever since, they have been made to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation; treated like dogs; their lives, their liberties, the sport of the white men; their country and the graves of their fathers torn from them, in cruel succession: until, driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and through a period of two hundred years, rolled back, nation upon nation, they find themselves fugitives, vagrants and strangers in their own country, and look forward to the certain period when their descendants will be totally extinguished by wars, driven at the point of the bayonet into the western ocean, or reduced to a fate still more deplorable and horrid, the condition of slaves.

Go, administer the cup of oblivion to recollections and anticipations like these, and then you will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a nation even yet bleeding afresh, from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually

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