IRELAND. 1847.

THEY are dying! they are dying! where the golden corn is growing;

They are dying! they are dying! where the crowded herds are lowing;

They are gasping for existence where the streams of life are flowing,

And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing!

God of justice! God of power!
Do we dream? Can it be,
In this land, at this hour,

With the blossom on the tree,
In the gladsome month of May,
When the young lambs play,
When Nature looks around

On her waking children now,
The seed within the ground,

The bud upon the bough?
Is it right, is it fair,
That we perish of despair
In this land, on this soil,

Where our destiny is set, Which we cultured with our toil,

And watered with our sweat? We have ploughed, we have sown But the crop was not our own; We have reaped, but harpy hands Swept the harvest from our lands; We were perishing for food, When lo! in pitying mood, Our kindly rulers gave The fat fluid of the slave,

While our corn filled the manger Of the war-horse of the stranger!

GREECE.

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD," CANTO. II.

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 whilom did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait, O, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb ?

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, Couldst thou forebode 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.

In all save form alone, how changed! and who That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew With thy unquenched 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 mourn. ful page.

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

-

That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave;
Say, is not this Thermopyla?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame ;
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page;
Attest it, many a deathless age:
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
"T were long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace :
Enough, no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
What can he tell who treads thy shore?
No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the Muse might soar,
High as thine own in days of yore,

When man was worthy of thy clime. The hearts within thy valleys bred, The fiery souls that might have led Thy sons to deeds sublime,

Now crawl from cradle to the grave, Slaves - nay, the bondsmen of a slave, And callous save to crime.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

LORD BYRON.

[Marco Bozzaris, the Epaminondas of modern Greece, fell in a

aight attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the an

cient Plata, Aug. 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were: "To die for liberty is a pleasure, and not a pain."]

Ar midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power.

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!"

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 birthday 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 her 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

POLAND.

FROM "THE PLEASURES OF HOPE," PART I.

WARSAW's last champion from her height sur

veyed,

Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid; "O Heaven!" he cried, "my bleeding country

save!

Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep these lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her to live - with her to die!"
He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death, the watchword and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!-
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
Fram rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew :-
O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time!
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered

spear,