Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (With Byron's Biography). Lord Byron

The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,

       Yet with smooth smile his Tyrant can accost,

       And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:

       Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most—

Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record187 Of hero Sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!

      LXXXIV.

      When riseth Lacedemon's Hardihood,

       When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,

When Athens' children are with hearts endued,fu When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then. A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust: and when Can Man its shattered splendour renovate, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

      LXXXV.

      And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,

       Land of lost Gods and godlike men, art thou!

Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, 37.B. Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now: Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow, Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough: So perish monuments of mortal birth, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth:188

      LXXXVI.

Save where some solitary column189 mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; 38.B. Save where Tritonia's190 airy shrine adorns Colonna's cliff,191 and gleams along the wave; Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the gray stones and unmolested grass Ages, but not Oblivion, feebly brave; While strangers, only, not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"

      LXXXVII.

      Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

       Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

Thine olive ripe as when Minerva192 smiled, And still his honied wealth Hymettus193 yields; There the blithe Bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born wanderer of thy mountain-air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:fv Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

LXXXVIII.194

      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 Muse's 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 crushed thy temples gone:

Age shakes Athenæ's tower, but spares gray Marathon.195

      LXXXIX.

      The Sun, the soil—but not the slave, the same;—

       Unchanged in all except its foreign Lord,

Preserves alike its bounds and boundless famefw The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word; 39.B. Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appearfx The camp, the host, the fight, the Conqueror's career,fy

      XC.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow—fz196 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 hallowed ground, Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?ga The rifled urn, the violated mound,197 The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

      XCI.

Yet to the remnants of thy Splendour pastgb Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,198 Hail the bright clime of Battle and of Song: Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast of the agéd! lesson of the young! Which Sages venerate and Bards adore, As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

      XCII.

      The parted bosom clings to wonted home,

       If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;

       He that is lonely—hither let him roam,

       And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

       Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth:

       But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,

       And scarce regret the region of his birth,

       When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,

Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.199

      XCIII.

      Let such approach this consecrated Land,

       And pass in peace along the magic waste;

       But spare its relics—let no busy hand

       Deface the scenes, already how defaced!

       Not for such purpose were these altars placed:

       Revere the remnants Nations once revered:

       So may our Country's name be undisgraced,

       So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was reared,

       By every honest joy of Love and Life endeared!

      XCIV.

      For thee, who thus in too protracted song