Where soft the sunbeams play, the zephyrs blow, ’Tis hard to deem that misery can be nigh; Where the clear heavens in blue transparence glow, Life should be calm and cloudless as the sky; --Yet o’er the low, dark dwellings of the dead, Verdure and flowers in summer-bloom may smile, And ivy-boughs their graceful drapery spread In green luxuriance o’er the ruin’d pile; And mantling woodbine veil the wither’d tree;-- And thus it is, fair land! forsaken Greece, with thee. IX. For all the loveliness, and light, and bloom That yet are thine, surviving many a storm, Are but as heaven’s warm radiance on the tomb, The rose’s blush that masks the canker-worm. And thou art desolate--thy morn hath pass’d! So dazzling in the splendour of its sway, That the dark shades the night hath o’er thee cast Throw tenfold gloom around thy deep decay. Once proud in freedom, still in ruin fair, Thy fate hath been unmatch’d--in glory and despair. X. For thee, lost land! the hero’s blood hath flow’d, The high in soul have brightly lived and died; For thee the light of soaring genius glow’d O’er the fair arts it form’d and glorified. Thine were the minds whose energies sublime So distanced ages in their lightning-race, The task they left the sons of later time Was but to follow their illumined trace. --Now, bow’d to earth, thy children, to be free, Must break each link that binds their filial hearts to thee. XI. Lo! to the scenes of fiction’s wildest tales, Her own bright East, thy son, Morea! flies,[14] To seek repose midst rich, romantic vales, Whose incense mounts to Asia’s vivid skies. There shall he rest?--Alas! his hopes in vain Guide to the sun-clad regions of the palm: Peace dwells not now on oriental plain, Though earth is fruitfulness, and air is balm; And the sad wanderer finds but lawless foes, Where patriarchs reign’d of old in pastoral repose. XII. Where Syria’s mountains rise, or Yemen’s groves, Or Tigris rolls his genii-haunted wave, Life to his eye, as wearily it roves, Wears but two forms--the tyrant and the slave! There the fierce Arab leads his daring horde Where sweeps the sand-storm o’er the burning wild; There stern Oppression waves the wasting sword O’er plains that smile as ancient Eden smiled; And the vale’s bosom, and the desert’s gloom, Yield to the injured there no shelter save the tomb. XIII.