I’ve taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind Which is itself, no changes bring surprise; Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find A country with--aye, or without mankind; Yet was I born where men are proud to be,-- Not without cause; and should I leave behind The inviolate Island of the sage and free, And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay My ashes in a soil which is not mine, My Spirit shall resume it--if we may Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land’s language: if too fond and far These aspirations in their scope incline,-- If my Fame should be, as my fortunes are, Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar My name from out the temple where the dead Are honoured by the Nations--let it be-- And light the Laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan’s epitaph on me-- ‘Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.’ Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need-- The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. _Byron._ L 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 sires’ ‘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 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 Thermopylæ!