Marco Bozzaris At midnight, in his guarded tent, In dreams, through camp and court, he bore In dreams his song of triumph heard; At midnight, in the forest shades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood- And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike, and soul to dare, An hour passed on- -the Turk awoke: He woke to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" He woke to die midst flame, and smoke, And death-shots falling thick and fast "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; 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 Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! That close the pestilence are broke, Come when the heart beats high and warm, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, The thanks of millions yet to be. Of sky and stars to prisoned men: 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. Alnwick Castle Home of the Percys' high-born race, A gentle hill its side inclines, Lovely in England's fadeless green, To meet the quiet stream which winds Through this romantic scene As silently and sweetly still, As when, at evening, on that hill, While summer's wind blew soft and low, Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, His Katherine was a happy bride, A thousand years ago. Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile: Does not the succoring ivy, keeping Her watch around it, seem to smile, One solitary turret gray Still tells, in melancholy glory, |