Such grief is theirs, who, fix’d on foreign shore, Sigh for the spirit of their native gales, As pines the seaman, midst the ocean’s roar, For the green earth, with all its woods and vales. Thus feels thy child, whose memory dwells with thee, Loved Greece! all sunk and blighted as thou art Though thought and step in western wilds be free, Yet thine are still the daydreams of his heart: The deserts spread between, the billows foam, Thou, distant and in chains, are yet his spirit’s home. XIX. In vain for him the gay liannes entwine, Or the green fire-fly sparkles through the brakes, Or summer-winds waft odours from the pine, As eve’s last blush is dying on the lakes. Through thy fair vales his fancy roves the while, Or breathes the freshness of Cithæron’s height, Or dreams how softly Athens’ towers would smile, Or Sunium’s ruins, in the fading light; On Corinth’s cliff what sunset hues may sleep, Or, at that placid hour, how calm th’ Ægean deep! XX. What scenes, what sunbeams, are to him like thine? (The all of thine no tyrant could destroy!) E’en to the stranger’s roving eye, they shine Soft as a vision of remember’d joy. And he who comes, the pilgrim of a day, A passing wanderer o’er each Attic hill, Sighs as his footsteps turn from thy decay, To laughing climes, where all is splendour still; And views with fond regret thy lessening shore, As he would watch a star that sets to rise no more. XXI. Realm of sad beauty! thou art as a shrine That Fancy visits with Devotion’s zeal, To catch high thoughts and impulses divine, And all the glow of soul enthusiasts feel Amidst the tombs of heroes--for the brave Whose dust, so many an age, hath been thy soil, Foremost in honour’s phalanx, died to save The land redeem’d and hallow’d by their toil; And there is language in thy lightest gale, That o’er the plains they won seems murmuring yet their tale. XXII. And he, whose heart is weary of the strife Of meaner spirits, and whose mental gaze Would shun the dull cold littleness of life, Awhile to dwell amidst sublimer days, Must turn to thee, whose every valley teems With proud remembrances that cannot die. Thy glens are peopled with inspiring dreams, Thy winds, the voice of oracles gone by; And midst thy laurel shades the wanderer hears The sound of mighty names, the hymns of vanish’d years. XXIII.