Her banner float above thy waves Where proudly it hath swept before? To break the fetter and the chain; No! coward souls! the light which shone With helmet shattered, spear in rust; Where sleeps the spirit, that of old Dashed down to earth the Persian plume; When the loud chant of triumph told, How fatal was the despot's doom? Tyrants have trampled on the clay, Where death has hushed them into rest. Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill, A glory shines of ages fled; GREECE. And fame her light is pouring still, Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance; In might, in majesty revealed. In vain, in vain the hero calls; In vain he sounds the trumpet loud; His banner totters; see, it falls In ruin, freedom's battle shroud: Lost land! where Genius made his reign, • * Ypsilanti. 109 Where science raised her sacred fane, Of ignorance hath brooded long; The sons of science and of song. Thy sun hath set, the evening storm Gone is thy glory's diadem, And freedom never more shall cease To pour her mournful requiem O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece! THE CORAL GROVE. BY J. G. PERCIVAL. DEEP in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove, Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with falling dew, But in bright and changeful beauty shine, Far down in the green and glassy brine, Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; The water is calm and still below, For the winds and the waves are absent there, And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air: There, with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter: There, with a light and easy motion, 112 THE CORAL GROVE. The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea: And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe, when the wrathful Spirit of storms, Has made the top of the waves his own: And when the ship from his fury flies, Where the myriad voices of Ocean roar, When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the wreck on shore; Then, far below, in the peaceful sea, The purple mullet and goldfish rove, Where the waters murmur tranquilly, Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. |