GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788-1824)

From Don Juan, LXXXV

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 sires’ ‘Islands of the Blest.’

The mountains look on Marathon –

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;

For standing on the Persian’s grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

’Tis something in the dearth of fame,

Though linked among a fettered 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!

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, oue countrymen.

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.

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!

LXXXVII

Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung,

The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;

If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,

Yet in these times he might have done much worse:

His strain display’d some feeling – right or wrong;

And feeling, in a poet, is the source

Of others’ feeling; but they are such liars,

And take all colours – like the hands of dyers.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

Hellas

The world’s great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn:

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,

Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains

From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains

Against the morning star.

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep

Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

Fraught with a later prize;

Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies.

A new Ulysses leaves once more

Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,

If earth Death’s scroll must be!

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy

Which dawns upon the free:

Although a subtler Sphinx renew

Riddles od death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendour of its prime;

And leave, if naught so bright may live,

All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose

Shall burst, more bright and good

Than all who fell, than One who rose,

Than many unsubdued:

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

But votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?

Cease! must men kill and die?

Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn

Of bitter prophecy!

The world is weary of the past –

O might it die or rest al last!

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve:

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! More happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

Ye know on earth, and al ye need to know.*

*In an epistle to Bailey, dated 22^nd November 1817, Keats stated: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth - whether it existed before or not – for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love; they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.”