How Britain's hope and France's fear,
Victor of Cressy and Poitier,

In Bourdeaux dying lay.

"Raise my faint head, my squires," he said, "And let the casement be displayed,

That I may see once more

The splendor of the setting sun

Gleam on thy mirrored wave, Garonne,
And Blaye's empurpled shore.

"Like me, he sinks to Glory's sleep,
His fall the dews of evening steep,
As if in sorrow shed.

So soft shall fall the trickling tear,
When England's maids and matrons hear
Of their Black Edward dead.

"And though my sun of glory set,
Nor France nor England shall forget
The terror of my name;

And oft shall Britain's heroes rise,
New planets in these southern skies,

Through clouds of blood and flame."
SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Rob Roy.

THE ISLES OF GREECE.

THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sire's Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dream'd that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave.

A King sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations, all were his!
He counted them at break of day,
And when the sun set where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore,

The heroic lay is tuneless now,

The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though link'd among a fetter'd race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face,

For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush, — for Greece a tear

Must we but weep o'er days more blest!
Must we but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!

What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no; the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one, arise, we come, we come! " 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain - in vain! strike other chords;

Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal !

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave,
Think
ye
he meant them for a slave ?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's song divine :

He served -- but served Polycrates ·

A tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

O! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks, They have a King who buys and sells: In native swords and native ranks

The only hope of courage dwells; But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade;
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die:

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine,
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

LORD BYRON.

HESTER.

WHEN maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try
With vain endeavor.

A month or more has she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate

Of pride and joy no common rate
That flush'd her spirit:

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: if 't was not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule Which doth the human feeling cool; But she was train'd in Nature's school, Nature had blest her.

A waking eye, a prying mind,

A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.