Page:Hellas, a Lyrical Drama - Shelley (1822).djvu/69

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HELLAS.
49
Of all whose step wakes power lulled in her savage lair:
But Greece was as a hermit child,
Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,
She knew not pain or guilt;
And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire tremble
When ye desert the free—
If Greece must be
A wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
In a diviner clime,
To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.

Semichorus 1st.
Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!

Semichorus 2d.
Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,
Our adversity a dream to pass away—
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!

Voice without.
Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends
The keys of ocean to the Islamite.—