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From “The Giaour”
CLIME of the unforgotten brave! | |
| Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave, | |
| Was Freedom’s home or Glory’s grave! | |
| Shrine of the mighty! can it be | |
| That this is all remains of thee? | 5 |
| Approach, thou craven, crouching slave; | |
| Say, is not this Thermopylæ? | |
| These waters blue that round you lave, | |
| O servile offspring of the free,— | |
| Pronounce what sea, what shore is this? | 10 |
| The gulf, the rock of Salamis! | |
| These scenes, their story not unknown, | |
| Arise, and make again your own; | |
| Snatch from the ashes of your sires | |
| The embers of their former fires; | 15 |
| And he who in the strife expires | |
| Will add to theirs a name of fear | |
| That Tyranny shall quake to hear, | |
| And leave his sons a hope, a fame, | |
| They too will rather die than shame; | 20 |
| For Freedom’s battle once begun, | |
| Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, | |
| Though baffled oft is ever won. | |
| Bear witness, Greece, thy living page; | |
| Attest it, many a deathless age: | 25 |
| While kings, in dusty darkness hid, | |
| Have left a nameless pyramid, | |
| Thy heroes, though the general doom | |
| Hath swept the column from their tomb, | |
| A mightier monument command, | 30 |
| The mountains of their native land! | |
| There points thy Muse to stranger’s eye | |
| The graves of those that cannot die! | |
| ’T were long to tell, and sad to trace, | |
| Each step from splendor to disgrace: | 35 |
| Enough,—no foreign foe could quell | |
| Thy soul, till from itself it fell; | |
| Yes! self-abasement paved the way | |
| To villain-bonds and despot sway. | |
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| What can he tell who treads thy shore? | 40 |
| No legend of thine olden time, | |
| No theme on which the Muse might soar, | |
| High as thine own in days of yore, | |
| When man was worthy of thy clime. | |
| The hearts within thy valleys bred, | 45 |
| The fiery souls that might have led | |
| Thy sons to deeds sublime, | |
| Now crawl from cradle to the grave, | |
| Slaves—nay, the bondsmen of a slave, | |
| And callous save to crime. | 50 |
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