Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.
By GreeceJames G. Brooks (1801–1841)
L
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valor burn’d
And blazed upon the battle’s fray:
Land, where the gallant Spartan few
Bled at Thermopylæ of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Helle’s consecrated shore!
Her soul entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung—
Till every grove and every hill,
And every stream that flow’d along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
Her banner float above thy waves
Where proudly it hath swept before?
Hath not remembrance then a charm
To break the fetters and the chain,
To bid thy children nerve the arm,
And strike for freedom once again?
On Leuctra’s war-empurpled day,
The light which beam’d on Marathon,
Hath lost its splendor, ceased to play;
And thou art but a shadow now,
With helmet shatter’d—spear in rust—
Thy honor but a dream—and thou
Despised—degraded in the dust!
Dash’d down to earth the Persian plume,
When the loud chant of triumph told
How fatal was the despot’s doom?—
The bold three hundred—where are they,
Who died on battle’s gory breast?
Tyrants have trampled on the clay,
Where death has hush’d them into rest.
A glory shines of ages fled;
And fame her light is pouring still,
Not on the living, but the dead!
But ’t is the dim sepulchral light,
Which sheds a faint and feeble ray,
As moon-beams on the brow of night,
When tempests sweep upon their way.
Behold thy banner waves afar;
Behold the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief, of high emprize,
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise
In might—in majesty reveal’d.
In vain he sounds the trumpet loud!
His banner totters—see! it falls
In ruin, freedom’s battle shroud:
Thy children have no soul to dare
Such deeds as glorified their sires;
There valor ’s but a meteor’s glare,
Which gleams a moment, and expires.
And rear’d his golden arch on high;
Where science raised her sacred fane,
Its summits peering to the sky;
Upon thy clime the midnight deep
Of ignorance hath brooded long,
And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep
The sons of science and of song.
Hath pass’d in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,
And spread its pall upon the sky!
Gone is thy glory’s diadem,
And freedom never more shall cease
To pour her mournful requiem
O’er blighted, lost, degraded Greece!