Marco Bozzaris

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

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,

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.

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,

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,

"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;

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;

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 hurrah,

And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close

Calmly, as to a night's repose,

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

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,

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 poet's 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;

His plighted maiden, when she fears

For him, the joy of her young years,

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,

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,

That were not born to die.

Fitz-Greene Halleck

On the Death of J.R. Drake

GREEN be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee,

Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell, when thou wert dying,

From eyes unused to weep,

And long, where thou art lying,

Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts, whose truth was proven,

Like thine, are laid in earth,

There should a wreath be woven

To tell the world their worth,

And I, who woke each morrow

To clasp thy hand in mine,

Who shared thy joy and sorrow,

Whose weal and woe were thine;

It should be mine to braid it

Around thy faded brow,

But I've in vain essayed it,

And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee,

Nor thoughts nor words are free,

The grief is fixed too deeply

That mourns a man like thee.

Fitz-Greene Halleck

Connecticut

--STILL her gray rocks tower above the sea

That crouches at their feet, a conquered wave;

'Tis a rough land of earth, and stone, and tree,

Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave;

Where thoughts, and tongues, and hands, are bold and free,

And friends will find a welcome, foes a grave;

And where none kneel, save when to heaven they pray,

Nor even then, unless in their own way.

Theirs is a pure republic, wild, yet strong,

A "fierce democracie," where all are true

To what themselves have voted--right or wrong--

And to their laws denominated blue;

(If red, they might to Draco's code belong;)

A vestal state, which power could not subdue,

Nor promise win--like her own eagle's nest,

Sacred--the San Marino of the west.

A justice of the peace, for the time being,

They bow to, but may turn him out next year;

They reverence their priest, but disagreeing

In price or creed, dismiss him without fear;

They have a natural talent for foreseeing

And knowing all things;--and should Park appear

From his long tour in Africa, to show

The Niger's source, they'd meet him with--we know.

They love their land, because it is their own,

And scorn to give aught other reason why;

Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,

And think it kindness to his majesty;

A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none.

Such are they nurtured, such they live and die:

All--but a few apostates, who are meddling

With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence and peddling;

Or wandering through the southern countries, teaching

The A. B. C. from Webster's spelling-book;

Gallant and godly, making love and preaching,

And gaining, by what they call "hook and crook,"

And what the moralists call overreaching,

A decent living. The Virginians look

Upon them with as favourable eyes

As Gabriel on the devil in paradise.

But these are but their outcasts. View them near

At home, where all their worth and pride is placed;

And there their hospitable fires burn clear,

And there the lowliest farm-house hearth is graced

With manly hearts, in piety sincere,

Faithful in love, in honour stern and chaste,

In friendship warm and true, in danger brave,

Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave.

And minds have there been nurtured, whose control

Is felt even in their nation's destiny;

Men who swayed senates with a statesman's soul,

And looked on armies with a leader's eye;

Names that adorn and dignify the scroll,

Whose leaves contain their country's history,

And tales of love and war--listen to one,

Of the Green-Mountaineer--the Stark of Bennington.

When on that field his band the Hessians fought,

Briefly he spoke before the fight began--

"Soldiers! those German gentlemen are bought

For four pounds eight and seven pence per man,

By England's king--a bargain, as is thought.

Are we worth more? Let's prove it now we can--

For we must beat them, boys, ere set of sun,

Or Mary Stark's a widow."--It was done.

Hers are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's spring,

Nor the long summer of Cathayan vales,

The vines, the flowers, the air, the skies, that fling

Such wild enchantment o'er Boccaccio's tales

Of Florence and the Arno--yet the wing

Of life's best angel, Health, is on her gales

Through sun and snow--and in the autumn time

Earth has no purer and no lovelier clime.

Her clear, warm heaven at noon,--the mist that shrouds

Her twilight hills,--her cool and starry eves,

The glorious splendour of her sunset clouds,

The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves,

Come o'er the eye, in solitude and crowds,

Where'er his web of song her poet weaves;

And his mind's brightest vision but displays

The autumn scenery of his boyhood's days.

And when you dream of woman, and her love;

Her truth, her tenderness, her gentle power;

The maiden, listening in the moonlight grove,

The mother smiling in her infant's bower;

Forms, features, worshipped while we breathe or move,

Be by some spirit of your dreaming hour

Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air

To the green land I sing, then wake, you'll find them there.

Fitz-Greene Halleck