| |
| AT midnight, in his guarded tent, | |
| The Turk was dreaming of the hour | |
| When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, | |
| Should tremble at his power: | |
| In dreams, through camp and court, he bore | 5 |
| The trophies of a conqueror; | |
| In dreams his song of triumph heard; | |
| Then wore his monarch’s signet ring: | |
| Then pressed that monarch’s throne—a king; | |
| As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, | 10 |
| As Eden’s garden bird. | |
| |
| At midnight, in the forest shades, | |
| Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, | |
| True as the steel of their tried blades, | |
| Heroes in heart and hand. | 15 |
| There had the Persian’s thousands stood, | |
| There had the glad earth drunk their blood | |
| On old Platæa’s day; | |
| And now there breathed that haunted air | |
| The sons of sires who conquered there, | 20 |
| With arm to strike and soul to dare, | |
| As quick, as far as they. | |
| |
| An hour passed on—the Turk awoke; | |
| That bright dream was his last; | |
| He woke—to hear his sentries shriek, | 25 |
| “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 | |
| As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; | 30 |
| And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, | |
| Bozzaris cheer his band: | |
| “Strike—till the last armed foe expires; | |
| Strike—for your altars and your fires; | |
| Strike—for the green graves of your sires; | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| His few surviving comrades saw | |
| His smile when rang their proud hurrah, | |
| And the red field was won; | |
| Then saw in death his eyelids close | |
| Calmly, as to a night’s repose, | 45 |
| Like flowers at set of sun. | |
| |
| Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! | |
| Come to the mother’s, when she feels, | |
| For the first time, her first-born’s breath; | |
| Come when the blessed seals | 50 |
| That close the pestilence are broke, | |
| And crowded cities wail its stroke; | |
| Come in consumption’s ghastly form, | |
| The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; | |
| Come when the heart beats high and warm | 55 |
| With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; | |
| And thou art terrible—the tear, | |
| The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, | |
| And all we know, or dream, or fear | |
| Of agony are thine. | 60 |
| |
| But to the hero, when his sword | |
| Has won the battle for the free, | |
| Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word; | |
| And in its hollow tones are heard | |
| The thanks of millions yet to be. | 65 |
| Come, when his task of fame is wrought— | |
| Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought— | |
| Come in her crowning hour—and then | |
| Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light | |
| To him is welcome as the sight | 70 |
| Of sky and stars to prisoned men; | |
| Thy grasp is welcome as the hand | |
| Of brother in a foreign land; | |
| Thy summons welcome as the cry | |
| That told the Indian isles were nigh | 75 |
| To the world-seeking Genoese, | |
| When the land wind, from woods of palm, | |
| And orange-groves, and fields of balm, | |
| Blew o’er the Haytian seas. | |
| |
| Bozzaris! with the storied brave | 80 |
| 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 | 85 |
| 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; | 90 |
| For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed, | |
| Her marble wrought, her music breathed; | |
| For thee she rings the birthday bells; | |
| Of thee her babe’s first lisping tells; | |
| For thine her evening prayer is said | 95 |
| At palace-couch and cottage-bed; | |
| Her soldier, closing with the foe, | |
| Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; | |
| His plighted maiden, when she fears | |
| For him the joy of her young years, | 100 |
| Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; | |
| And she, the mother of thy boys, | |
| Though in her eye and faded cheek | |
| Is read the grief she will not speak, | |
| The memory of her buried joys, | 105 |
| And even she who gave thee birth, | |
| Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, | |
| Talk of thy doom without a sigh; | |
| For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s: | |
| One of the few, the immortal names, | 110 |
| That were not born to die. | |
| |
