The Poems of Felicia Hemans
There science droops, the Muses hush their lyres
And o’er the blooms of fancy and of taste
Spreads the chill blight;--as in that orient isle
Where the dark upas taints the gale around,[22]
Within its precincts not a flower may smile,
Nor dew nor sunshine fertilise the ground;
Nor wild birds’ music float on zephyr’s breath,
But all is silence round, and solitude, and death.
XXXIII.
Far other influence pour’d the Crescent’s light
O’er conquer’d realms, in ages pass’d away;
Full and alone it beam’d, intensely bright,
While distant climes in midnight darkness lay.
Then rose th’ Alhambra, with its founts and shades,
Fair marble halls, alcoves, and orange bowers:
Its sculptured lions,[23] richly wrought arcades,
Aërial pillars, and enchanted towers;
Light, splendid, wild, as some Arabian tale
Would picture fairy domes that fleet before the gale.
XXXIV.
Then foster’d genius lent each caliph’s throne
Lustre barbaric pomp could ne’er attain;
And stars unnumber’d o’er the orient shone,
Bright as that Pleïad, sphered in Mecca’s fane.[24]
From Bagdat’s palaces the choral strains
Rose and re-echoed to the desert’s bound,
And Science, woo’d on Egypt’s burning plains,
Rear’d her majestic head with glory crown’d;
And the wild Muses breathed romantic lore
From Syria’s palmy groves to Andalusia’s shore.
XXXV.
Those years have past in radiance--they have past,
As sinks the daystar in the tropic main;
His parting beams no soft reflection cast,
They burn--are quench’d--and deepest shadows reign.
And Fame and Science have not left a trace
In the vast regions of the Moslem’s power,--
Regions, to intellect a desert space,
A wild without a fountain or a flower,
Where towers Oppression midst the deepening glooms,
As dark and lone ascends the cypress midst the tombs.
XXXVI.
Alas for thee, fair Greece! when Asia pour’d
Her fierce fanatics to Byzantium’s wall;
When Europe sheath’d, in apathy, her sword,
And heard unmoved the fated city’s call.
No bold crusaders ranged their serried line
Of spears and banners round a falling throne;
And thou, O last and noblest Constantine![25]
Didst meet the storm unshrinking and alone.
Oh! blest to die in freedom, though in vain--
Thine empire’s proud exchange the grave, and not the chain!
XXXVII.
Hush’d is Byzantium--’tis the dead of night--
The closing night of that imperial race![26]
And all is vigil--but the eye of light
Shall soon unfold, a wilder scene to trace:
There is a murmuring stillness on the train
Thronging the midnight streets, at morn to die;
And to the cross, in fair Sophia’s fane,
For the last time is raised Devotion’s eye;
And, in his heart while faith’s bright visions rise,
There kneels the high-soul’d prince, the summon’d of the skies.
XXXVIII.
Day breaks in light and glory--’tis the hour
Of conflict and of fate--the war-note calls--
Despair hath lent a stern, delirious power
To the brave few that guard the rampart walls.
Far over Marmora’s waves th’ artillery’s peal
Proclaims an empire’s doom in every note;
Tambour and trumpet swell the clash of steel,
Round spire and dome the clouds of battle float;
From camp and wave rush on the Crescent’s host,
And the Seven Towers[27] are scaled, and all is won and lost.
XXXIX.
Then, Greece! the tempest rose that burst on thee,
Land of the bard, the warrior, and the sage!
Oh! where were then thy sons, the great, the free,
Whose deeds are guiding stars from age to age?
Though firm thy battlements of crags and snows,
And bright the memory of thy days of pride,
In mountain might though Corinth’s fortress rose,
On, unresisted, roll’d th’ invading tide!
Oh! vain the rock, the rampart, and the tower,
If Freedom guard them not with Mind’s unconquer’d power.
XL.
Where were th’ avengers then, whose viewless might
Preserved inviolate their awful fane,[28]
When through the steep defiles, to Delphi’s height,
In martial splendour pour’d the Persian’s train?
Then did those mighty and mysterious Powers,
Arm’d with the elements, to vengeance wake,
Call the dread storms to darken round their towers,
Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break;
Till far around, with deep and fearful clang,
Sounds of unearthly war through wild Parnassus rang.
XLI.
Where was the spirit of the victor-throng
Whose tombs are glorious by Scamander’s tide,
Whose names are bright in everlasting song,
The lords of war, the praised, the deified?
Where he, the hero of a thousand lays,
Who from the dead at Marathon arose[29]
All arm’d; and beaming on the Athenians’ gaze,
A battle-meteor, guided to their foes?
Or they whose forms to Alaric’s awe-struck eye,[30]
Hovering o’er Athens, blazed in airy panoply?
XLII.
Ye slept, O heroes! chief ones of the earth![31]
High demigods of ancient days! ye slept:
There lived no spark of your ascendant worth
When o’er your land the victor Moslem swept.
No patriot then the sons of freedom led,
In mountain pass devotedly to die;
The martyr-spirit of resolve was fled,
And the high soul’s unconquer’d buoyancy;
And by your graves, and on your battle-plains,
Warriors! your children knelt to wear the stranger’s chains.
XLIII.
Now have your trophies vanish’d, and your homes
Are moulder’d from the earth, while scarce remain
E’en the faint traces of the ancient tombs
That mark where sleep the slayers or the slain.
Your deeds are with the days of glory flown,
The lyres are hush’d that swell’d your fame afar,
The halls that echo’d to their sounds are gone,
Perish’d the conquering weapons of your war;[32]
And if a mossy stone your names retain,
’Tis but to tell your sons, for them ye died in vain.
XLIV.
Yet, where some lone sepulchral relic stands,
That with those names tradition hallows yet,
Oft shall the wandering son of other lands
Linger in solemn thought and hush’d regret.
And still have legends mark’d the lonely spot
Where low the dust of Agamemnon lies;
And shades of kings and leaders unforgot,
Hovering around, to fancy’s vision rise.
Souls of the heroes! seek your rest again,
Nor mark how changed the realms that saw your glory’s reign.
XLV.
Lo, where th’ Albanian spreads his despot sway
O’er Thessaly’s rich vales and glowing plains,
Whose sons in sullen abjectness obey,
Nor lift the hand indignant at its chains:
Oh! doth the land that gave Achilles birth,
And many a chief of old illustrious line,
Yield not one spirit of unconquer’d worth
To kindle those that now in bondage pine?
No! on its mountain-air is slavery’s breath,
And terror chills the hearts whose utter’d plaints were death.
XLVI.
Yet if thy light, fair Freedom, rested there,
How rich in charms were that romantic clime,
With streams, and woods, and pastoral valleys fair,
And wall’d with mountains, haughtily sublime!
Heights that might well be deem’d the Muses’ reign,
Since, claiming proud alliance with the skies,
They lose in loftier spheres their wild domain--
Meet home for those retired divinities
That love, where nought of earth may e’er intrude,
Brightly to dwell on high, in lonely sanctitude.
XLVII.
There in rude grandeur daringly ascends
Stern Pindus, rearing many a pine-clad height;
He with the clouds his bleak dominion blends,
Frowning o’er vales in woodland verdure bright.
Wild and august in consecrated pride,
There through the deep-blue heaven Olympus towers,
Girdled with mists, light-floating as to hide
The rock-built palace of immortal powers;
Where far on high the sunbeam finds repose,
Amidst th’ eternal pomp of forests and of snows.
XLVIII.
Those savage cliffs and solitudes might seem
The chosen haunts where Freedom’s foot would roam;
She loves to dwell by glen and torrent-stream,
And make the rocky fastnesses her home.
And in the rushing of the mountain flood,
In the wild eagle’s solitary cry,
In sweeping winds that peal through cave and wood,
There is a voice of stern sublimity,
That swells her spirit to a loftier mood
Of solemn joy severe, of power, of fortitude.
XLIX.
But from those hills the radiance of her smile
Hath vanish’d long, her step hath fled afar;
O’er Suli’s frowning rocks she paused a while,[33]
Kindling the watch-fires of the mountain war.
And brightly glow’d her ardent spirit there,
Still brightest midst privation: o’er distress
It cast romantic splendour, and despair
But fann’d that beacon of the wilderness;
And rude ravine, and precipice, and dell
Sent their deep echoes forth, her rallying voice to swell.
L.
Dark children of the hills! ’twas then ye wrought
Deeds of fierce daring, rudely, sternly grand;
As midst your craggy citadels ye fought,
And women mingled with your warrior band.
Then on the cliff the frantic mother stood[34]
High o’er the river’s darkly-rolling wave,
And hurl’d, in dread delirium, to the flood
Her free-born infant, ne’er to be a slave.
For all was lost--all, save the power to die
The wild indignant death of savage liberty.
LI.
Now is that strife a tale of vanish’d days,
With mightier things forgotten soon to lie;
Yet oft hath minstrel sung, in lofty lays,
Deeds less adventurous, energies less high.
And the dread struggle’s fearful memory still
O’er each wild rock a wilder aspect throws;
Sheds darker shadows o’er the frowning hill,
More solemn quiet o’er the glen’s repose;
Lends to the rustling pines a deeper moan,
And the hoarse river’s voice a murmur not its own.
LII.
For stillness now--the stillness of the dead--
Hath wrapt that conflict’s lone and awful scene;
And man’s forsaken homes, in ruin spread,
Tell where the storming of the cliffs hath been.
And there, o’er wastes magnificently rude,
What race may rove, unconscious of the chain?
Those realms have now no desert unsubdued,
Where Freedom’s banner may be rear’d again:
Sunk are the ancient dwellings of her fame,
The children of her sons inherit but their name.
LIII.
Go, seek proud Sparta’s monuments and fanes!
In scatter’d fragments o’er the vale they lie;
Of all they were not e’en enough remains
To lend their fall a mournful majesty.[35]
Birth-place of those whose names we first revered
In song and story--temple of the free!
O thou, the stern, the haughty, and the fear’d,
Are such thy relics, and can this be thee?
Thou shouldst have left a giant wreck behind,
And e’en in ruin claim’d the wonder of mankind.
LIV.
For thine were spirits cast in other mould
Than all beside--and proved by ruder test;
They stood alone--the proud, the firm, the bold,
With the same seal indelibly imprest.