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POWERS' GREEK SLAVE.
POWERS' GREEK SLAVE.
A flash of sabres and of scymitars,Shouts, groans, then silence,—and the crescent wavesVictorious o'er the field where in their gravesThe vanquished dead will moulder. But such warsHave woes that stab the Grecian mother's heartDeeper than death. In far Byzantium's martShe sees her captive child, naked, forlorn,Gazed at by pitiless eyes,—a thing of scorn.
With face averted and with shackled hands,Clothed only with her chastity she stands.Her heart is full of tears, as any roseBending beneath a shower; but pride and scorn,And that fine feeling of endurance born,Have strung the delicate fibres of her frameTill not a tear can fall! Methinks such woesAs thine, pale sufferer, might rend in twainA heart of sterner stuff—and yet the flameOf thy pure spirit, like the sacred lightOn Hestia's hearth, burns steadily and bright,Unswayed by sorrow's gusts, unquenched by sorrow's rain.
Thou canst confront, dumb marble as thou art,And silence those whose lying lips declareThat virtue springs from circumstance, not God;The snow that falls whore never foot hath trod,On bleakest mountain-heights, is not more pureThan thy white soul, though thou stand'st naked there,Gazed at by those whose lustful passions startWith every heart-throb! Long may'st thou endure,To vanquish with thy calm, immaculate browThe unholy thoughts of men, as thou dost now!
