Mark the fell track of desolating war! Here arts and commerce with auspicious reign Once breathed sweet influence on the happy plain; While o’er the lawn, with dance and festive song, Young Pleasure led the jocund Hours along; In gay luxuriance Ceres too was seen To crown the vallies with eternal green: For wealth, for valour, courted and revered, What Albion is, fair Candia then appeared.— Ah! who the flight of ages can revoke? } The free-born spirit of her sons is broke, } They bow to Ottoman’s imperious yoke; } No longer Fame their drooping heart inspires, For stern Oppression quenched its genial fires: Though still her fields, with golden harvests crown’d, Supply the barren shores of Greece around, Sharp penury afflicts these wretched isles, There Hope ne’er dawns, and Pleasure never smiles; The vassal wretch contented drags his chain, And hears his famished babes lament in vain; These eyes have seen the dull reluctant soil A seventh year mock the weary labourer’s toil.— No blooming Venus, on the desert shore, Now views with triumph captive gods adore; No lovely Helens now with fatal charms Excite th’ avenging chiefs of Greece to arms; No fair Penelopes enchant the eye, For whom contending kings were proud to die; Here sullen Beauty sheds a twilight ray, While Sorrow bids her vernal bloom decay; Those charms, so long renowned in classic strains, Had dimly shone on Albion’s happier plains! Now, in the southern hemisphere, the sun, Through the bright Virgin, and the Scales, had run, And on th’ ecliptic wheeled his winding way Till the fierce Scorpion felt his flaming ray. Four days becalmed the vessel here remains, And yet no hopes of aiding wind obtains; For sickening vapours lull the air to sleep, And not a breeze awakes the silent deep: This, when th’ autumnal equinox is o’er, And Phœbus in the north declines no more, The watchful mariner, whom Heaven informs, Oft deems the prelude of approaching storms.— No dread of storms the master’s soul restrain, A captive fettered to the oar of gain: His anxious heart, impatient of delay, Expects the winds to sail from Candia’s bay, Determined, from whatever point they rise, To trust his fortune to the seas and skies. Thou living ray of intellectual fire, Whose voluntary gleams my verse inspire, Ere yet the deepening incidents prevail, Till roused attention feel our plaintive tale; Record whom chief among the gallant crew Th’ unblest pursuit of fortune hither drew: Can sons of Neptune, generous, brave, and bold, In pain and hazard toil for sordid gold? They can! for gold, too oft with magic art, Can rule the passions and corrupt the heart: This crowns the prosperous villain with applause,