Roll on! no clouds shall on thy waters lie Thou parent of the waterfall! proud river! Thy stream, by baser waters unalloyed, LESSON CLXVIII. Marco Bozzaris.*-F. G. HALLECK. AT midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour, * He fell in an attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, In dreams, through camp and court he bore In dreams his song of triumph heard; As Eden's garden bird. At midnight, in the forest shades, BOZZARIS ranged his Suliote band, a king; There had the Persian's thousands stood, And now there breathed that haunted air An hour passed on the Turk awoke ; That bright dream was his last; He woke to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek He woke to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast victory. His last words were, "To die for liberty is a pleasure, not a pain." The modern Greeks, like the Italians, pronounce a as in father, and zz like tz. This hero's name, therefore, is pronounced Bot-zah'-ris. "Strike- till the last armed foe expires; Strike for your altars and your fires; Strike-for the green graves of your sires; GOD, and your native land!" They fought like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered but BOZZARIS fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurra, And the red field was won: Then saw in death his eyelids close Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal chamber, Death! That close the pestilence are broke, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; The thanks of millions yet to be. 1 Come, when his task of fame is wrought- Of sky and stars to prisoned men: To the world-seeking Genoese, BOZZARIS! with the storied brave, Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee- there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb: But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone. For thee her poets' lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birth-day bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells : For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch, and cottage bed; Her soldier closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; たて His plighted maiden, when she fears For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die. LESSON CLXIX. Song of the Greeks, 1822.-CAMPBELL. Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance: Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free! The pale dying crescent is daunted; And we march that the foot-prints of Mah'omet's slaves May be washed out in blood from our forefathers' graves. Their spirits are hovering o'er us, And the sword shall to glory restore us. Ah! what though no succor advances, Nor Christendom's chivalrous * lănces Are stretched in our aid?-Be the combat t our own! Pron. ch as in church. † Pron. o as й. |