Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat

  Of sated Grandeur from the city’s noise:

  And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet;

  But Peace abhorreth artificial joys,

  And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys.

  LXV.

  Fierce are Albania’s children, yet they lack

  Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.

  Where is the foe that ever saw their back?

  Who can so well the toil of war endure?

  Their native fastnesses not more secure

  Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:

  Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,

  When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,

  Unshaken rushing on where’er their chief may lead.

  LXVI.

  Childe Harold saw them in their chieftain’s tower,

  Thronging to war in splendour and success;

  And after viewed them, when, within their power,

  Himself awhile the victim of distress;

  That saddening hour when bad men hotlier press:

  But these did shelter him beneath their roof,

  When less barbarians would have cheered him less,

  And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof –

  In aught that tries the heart how few withstand the proof!

  LXVII.

  It chanced that adverse winds once drove his bark

  Full on the coast of Suli’s shaggy shore,

  When all around was desolate and dark;

  To land was perilous, to sojourn more;

  Yet for awhile the mariners forbore,

  Dubious to trust where treachery might lurk:

  At length they ventured forth, though doubting sore

  That those who loathe alike the Frank and Turk

  Might once again renew their ancient butcher-work.

  LXVIII.

  Vain fear! the Suliotes stretched the welcome hand,

  Led them o’er rocks and past the dangerous swamp,

  Kinder than polished slaves, though not so bland,

  And piled the hearth, and wrung their garments damp,

  And filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful lamp,

  And spread their fare: though homely, all they had:

  Such conduct bears Philanthropy’s rare stamp –

  To rest the weary and to soothe the sad,

  Doth lesson happier men, and shames at least the bad.

  LXIX.

  It came to pass, that when he did address

  Himself to quit at length this mountain land,

  Combined marauders half-way barred egress,

  And wasted far and near with glaive and brand;

  And therefore did he take a trusty band

  To traverse Acarnania forest wide,

  In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned,

  Till he did greet white Achelous’ tide,

  And from his farther bank Ætolia’s wolds espied.

  LXX.

  Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,

  And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,

  How brown the foliage of the green hill’s grove,

  Nodding at midnight o’er the calm bay’s breast,

  As winds come whispering lightly from the west,

  Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep’s serene:

  Here Harold was received a welcome guest;

  Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,

  For many a joy could he from night’s soft presence glean.

  LXXI.

  On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed,

  The feast was done, the red wine circling fast,

  And he that unawares had there ygazed

  With gaping wonderment had stared aghast;

  For ere night’s midmost, stillest hour was past,

  The native revels of the troop began;

  Each palikar his sabre from him cast,

  And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man,

  Yelling their uncouth dirge, long danced the kirtled clan.

  LXXII.

  Childe Harold at a little distance stood,

  And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie,

  Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude:

  In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see

  Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee:

  And as the flames along their faces gleamed,

  Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free,

  The long wild locks that to their girdles streamed,

  While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half screamed:

  Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy larum afar

  Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war;

  All the sons of the mountains arise at the note,

  Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!

  Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,

  To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote?

  To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,

  And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.

  Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive

  The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?

  Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?

  What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?

  Macedonia sends forth her invincible race;

  For a time they abandon the cave and the chase:

  But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before

  The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o’er.

  Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves,

  And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,

  Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar,

  And track to his covert the captive on shore.

  I ask not the pleasure that riches supply,

  My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy:

  Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair,

  And many a maid from her mother shall tear.

  I love the fair face of the maid in her youth;

  Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe:

  Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre,

  And sing us a song on the fall of her sire.

  Remember the moment when Previsa fell,

  The shrieks of the conquered, the conqueror’s yell;

  The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared,

  The wealthy we slaughtered, the lovely we spared.

  I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear;

  He neither must know who would serve the Vizier;

  Since the days of our prophet, the crescent ne’er saw

  A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha.

  Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped,

  Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread;

  When his Delhis come dashing in blood o’er the banks,

  How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks!

  Selictar! unsheath then our chief’s scimitar:

  Tambourgi! thy larum gives promise of war.

  Ye mountains that see us descend to the shore,

  Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!

  LXXIII.

  Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!

  Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!

  Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,

  And long accustomed bondage uncreate?

  Not such thy sons who whilome did await,

  The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,

  In bleak Thermopylæ’s sepulchral strait –

  Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,

  Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb?

  LXXIV.

  Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle’s brow


  Thou sat’st with Thrasybulus and his train,

  Couldst thou forbode the dismal hour which now

  Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?

  Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,

  But every carle can lord it o’er thy land;

  Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,

  Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,

  From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.

  LXXV.

  In all save form alone, how changed! and who

  That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,

  Who would but deem their bosom burned anew

  With thy unquenchèd beam, lost Liberty!

  And many dream withal the hour is nigh

  That gives them back their fathers’ heritage:

  For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,

  Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,

  Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page.

  LXXVI.

  Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not

  Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

  By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?

  Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!

  True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,

  But not for you will Freedom’s altars flame.

  Shades of the Helots! triumph o’er your foe:

  Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;

  Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thy years of shame.

  LXXVII.

  The city won for Allah from the Giaour,

  The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest;

  And the Serai’s impenetrable tower

  Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;

  Or Wahab’s rebel brood, who dared divest

  The Prophet’s tomb of all its pious spoil,

  May wind their path of blood along the West;

  But ne’er will Freedom seek this fated soil,

  But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.

  LXXVIII.

  Yet mark their mirth – ere lenten days begin,

  That penance which their holy rites prepare

  To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin,

  By daily abstinence and nightly prayer;

  But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear,

  Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,

  To take of pleasaunce each his secret share,

  In motley robe to dance at masking ball,

  And join the mimic train of merry Carnival.

  LXXIX.

  And whose more rife with merriment than thine,

  O Stamboul! once the empress of their reign?

  Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine

  And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:

  (Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)

  Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,

  All felt the common joy they now must feign;

  Nor oft I’ve seen such sight, nor heard such song,

  As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.

  LXXX.

  Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore;

  Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone,

  And timely echoed back the measured oar,

  And rippling waters made a pleasant moan:

  The Queen of tides on high consenting shone;

  And when a transient breeze swept o’er the wave,

  ‘Twas as if, darting from her heavenly throne,

  A brighter glance her form reflected gave,

  Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave.

  LXXXI.

  Glanced many a light caique along the foam,

  Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,

  No thought had man or maid of rest or home,

  While many a languid eye and thrilling hand

  Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,

  Or gently pressed, returned the pressure still:

  Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,

  Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,

  These hours, and only these, redeemed Life’s years of ill!

  LXXXII.

  But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,

  Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,

  E’en through the closest searment half-betrayed?

  To such the gentle murmurs of the main

  Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;

  To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd

  Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain:

  How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,

  And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!

  LXXXIII.

  This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,

  If Greece one true-born patriot can boast:

  Not such as prate of war but skulk in peace,

  The bondsman’s peace, who sighs for all he lost,

  Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost,

  And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:

  Ah, Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most –

  Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record

  Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!

  LXXXIV.

  When riseth Lacedæmon’s hardihood,

  When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,

  When Athens’ children are with hearts endued,

  When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,

  Then mayst thou be restored; but not till then.

  A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;

  An hour may lay it in the dust: and when

  Can man its shattered splendour renovate,

  Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

  LXXXV.

  And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,

  Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!

  Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,

  Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favourite now;

  Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow,

  Commingling slowly with heroic earth,

  Broke by the share of every rustic plough:

  So perish monuments of mortal birth,

  So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;

  LXXXVI.

  Save where some solitary column mourns

  Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;

  Save where Tritonia’s airy shrine adorns

  Colonna’s cliff, and gleams along the wave;

  Save o’er some warrior’s half-forgotten grave,

  Where the grey stones and unmolested grass

  Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,

  While strangers only not regardless pass,

  Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh ‘Alas!’

  LXXXVII.

  Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild:

  Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

  Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled,

  And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;

  There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,

  The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;

  Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,

  Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare;

  Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

  LXXXVIII.

  Where’er we tread, ‘tis haunted, holy ground;

  No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,

  But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,

  And all the Muse’s tales seem truly told,

  Till the sense aches with gazing to behold

  The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
<
br />   Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,

  Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:

  Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon.

  LXXXIX.

  The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;

  Unchanged in all except its foreign lord –

  Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame;

  The battle-field, where Persia’s victim horde

  First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword,

  As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

  When Marathon became a magic word;

  Which uttered, to the hearer’s eye appear

  The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career.

  XC.

  The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;

  The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;

  Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below;

  Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!

  Such was the scene – what now remaineth here?

  What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground,

  Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear?

  The rifled urn, the violated mound,

  The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

  XCI.

  Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past

  Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng:

  Long shall the voyager, with th’ Ionian blast,

  Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;

  Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue

  Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore:

  Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!

  Which sages venerate and bards adore,

  As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

  XCII.

  The parted bosom clings to wonted home,

  If aught that’s kindred cheer the welcome hearth;

  He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

  And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

  Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth;

  But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,

  And scarce regret the region of his birth,

  When wandering slow by Delphi’s sacred side,

  Or gazing o’er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

  XCIII.

  Let such approach this consecrated land,

  And pass in peace along the magic waste:

  But spare its relics – let no busy hand

  Deface the scenes, already how defaced!

  Not for such purpose were these altars placed.

  Revere the remnants nations once revered;

  So may our country’s name be undisgraced,

  So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was reared,

  By every honest joy of love and life endeared!

  XCIV.

  For thee, who thus in too protracted song