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THE GREEK BOY.

GONE are the glorious Greeks of old,
Glorious in mien and mind;

Their bones are mingled with the mould,
Their dust is on the wind;

The forms they hewed from living stone,
Survive the waste of years, alone,

And scattered with their ashes, show
What greatness perished long ago.

Yet fresh the myrtles there-the springs Gush brightly as of yore;

Flowers blossom from the dust of kings,
As many an age before.

There nature moulds as nobly now,
As e'er of old, the human brow;

And copies still the martial form

That braved Platea's battle storm.

Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek Their Heaven in Hellas' skies;

Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek,

Her sunshine lit thine eyes;

THE GREEK BOY.

Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains
Heard by old poets, and thy veins

Swell with the blood of demigods,

That slumber in thy country's sods.

Now is thy nation free-though late—
Thy elder brethren broke—

Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight,
The intolerable yoke.

And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see
Her youth renewed in such as thee;
A shoot of that old vine that made

The nations silent in its shade.

175

"UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD."

UPON the mountain's distant head,

With trackless snows forever white,
Where all is still, and cold, and dead,
Late shines the day's departing light.

But far below those icy rocks,

The vales, in summer bloom arrayed,
Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks,

Are dim with mist and dark with shade.

'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts
And eyes where generous meanings burn,
Earliest the light of life departs,

But lingers with the cold and stern.

SONNET-WILLIAM TELL.

CHAINS may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
TELL, of the iron heart! they could not tamne ;
For thou wert of the mountains; they proclain
The everlasting creed of liberty.

That creed is written on the untrampled snow,

Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,

Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow. Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around

Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,

And to thy brief captivity was brought

A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.

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TO THE RIVER ARVE.

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF MONT BLANC

NOT from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth within its bosom, locks

Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst

Born where the thunder and the blast,
And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
By these low. homes, as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves ;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,

With heaven's own beam and image shine.

Yet stay! for here are flowers and trees;
Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees-

Here linger till thy waves are clear.

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