“How long will ye slumber? When will ye take heart, And fear the reproach of your neighbors at hand? Fy! comrades, to think ye have peace for your part, Whilst the sword and the arrow are wasting our land! Shame! grasp the shield close! cover well the bold breast! Aloft raise the spear as ye march on the foe! With no thought of retreat, with no terror confessed, Hurl your last dart in dying, or strike your last blow! Oh! ’tis noble and glorious to fight for our all— For our country, our children, the wife of our love! Death comes not the sooner! no soldier shall fall Ere his thread is spun out by the sisters above. Once to die is man’s doom; rush, rush to the fight! He cannot escape, though his blood were Jove’s own; For a while let him cheat the shrill arrow by flight: Fate will catch him at last in his chamber alone. Unlamented he dies—unregretted? not so, When, the tower of his country, in death falls the brave; Thrice hallowed his name amongst all, high or low, As with blessings alive, so with tears in the grave.” H. N. COLERIDGE. =Tyrtæus.=—Another proficient in this variety of elegy was Tyrtæus, supposed to have been born in the Attic town of Aphidnæ. He led the Spartans in the Second Messenian War (685-668 B.C.), they having, by the direction of an oracle, sent to Athens for a general, to secure the success which had before been denied them. The story is that the jealous Athenians despatched to their neighbors a deformed schoolmaster, the cripple Tyrtæus, in the belief that his services would be of little value; but they mistook. The greatest military genius could not have accomplished more; for Tyrtæus, by his wise counsels and inspiriting war-songs, made his soldiers invincible. Messenia fell, and her citizens became slaves to the Spartans. Nor, afterward, was the poetry of Tyrtæus less efficacious in quelling civil dissensions and establishing domestic peace. In every respect, “the Muse of Sparta,” as he was called, proved to be to his adopted country the blessing promised by the oracle. Tyrtæus is said to have invented the trumpet, and introduced it as a companion to the flute, then the chief instrument in use. Some have interpreted the lameness of the bard as signifying his limping measure, the second line of the elegiac couplet being, as we have seen, a foot shorter than the first. Of the many productions of Tyrtæus, consisting of marching-songs, as well as warlike and political elegies, only a few fragments survive. His poems, characterized by terseness and impassioned power, were long popular among the Spartans, who, on a campaign, were wont to recite them after each evening meal to kindle afresh their martial fire. BATTLE-HYMN OF TYRTÆUS.