THE GREEK BOY.

201

Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek,

Her sunshine lit thine eyes;

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.

THE PAST.

THOU unrelenting Past!

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,

And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground, And last, Man's Life on earth,

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,

Thou hast my earlier friends-the good-the kind,

Yielded to thee with tears

The venerable form-the exalted mind.