Page:Modern Greece.pdf/13

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MODERN GREECE.
11



XX.

What scenes, what sunbeams, are to him like thine?
(The all of thine no tyrant could destroy!)
E'en to the stranger's roving eye they shine,
Soft as a vision of remembered joy.
And he who comes, the pilgrim of a day,
A passing wanderer o'er each Attic hill,
Sighs as his footsteps turn from thy decay,
To laughing climes, where all is splendour still;
And views with fond regret thy lessening shore,

As he would watch a star that sets to rise no more.


XXI.

Realm of sad beauty! thou art as a shrine
That Fancy visits with Devotion's zeal,
To catch high thoughts and impulses divine,
And all the glow of soul enthusiasts feel
Amidst the tombs of heroes—for the brave
Whose dust, so many an age, hath been thy soil,
Foremost in honour's phalanx, died to save
The land redeem'd and hallow'd by their toil;
And there is language in thy lightest gale,

That o'er the plains they won seems murmuring yet their tale.