Richmond Enquirer

Selected Poetry.

Lines on the Fall of Missolonghi.

By Mrs. Hemans

Ah! Missolonghi, captured, lost,
Thy moan all murmuring Europe hears;
Thy heroes press that hallowed sod,
Embalmed in Arno's tears.

Tyrants may triumph o'er the tomb
Where many a glorious martyr sleeps,
Morality spurns the prey-grasp's mould
Hath Europe—Europe weeps:

Oh, Greece, sepulchre of the brave!
With monumental trophies spread.
When hast thou lent thy classic shroud
No more heroic deed?

Fallen City! long the thought of thee
Shall every grace of life destroy;
At thought of thee can Europe taste
One unembittered joy?

Nor deem along the Western Shores,
Midst the new rapture to be free,
That bending o'er the Atlantic wave,
No vow was breathed for thee!

Where does a mother clasp her child
Securely to her fostering breast,
Mindless of bosoms parched and cold,
By Grecian infants pressed!

Princes, who boast of Christian light,
Ye guardians of that holy flame!
In darkness shroud your crested heads
At Missolonghi's name.

Ye saw unmoved, while one long year
O'er Missolonghi held its course,
Her sons the unequal strife sustain
Of mortal with barbarian force.

Ye gods! ye can endure to see,
The impious Crescent raised on high
But Europe marks the Cross in dust
With fixed, indignant eye!

Soft music wakes along the Seine—
Those notes the woes of Greece inspire
Its modest beauty thrills the song,
And strikes the timid lyre:

For heroes of a Christian race,
The alms of pity weekly claims,
And asks the common gifts of earth
For consecrated names?

Ye turbaned tyrants, ye who dare
Refuse a soul to womankind,
That soaring soul, rejecting life,
Have ye the power to bind?

Your power the Grecian woman scorns—
In virtue firm, to freedom true,
Abhors the safety ye would give,
And flies to death from you!

Carry the worth of woman now—
The sympathies of passion prove—
Who spurn not beauty to be taught,
And call pollution love?

Jove, that in all earth's peopled space,
Chains but one aching heart alone;
As, 'midst ten thousand radiant stars,
The needle points to one.

The musketeered warrior urging a sail—
Do first-trim sails re-cover board
Hived on that mine is all he turns,
Lost duty of despair!

Bitter, these, trace the throes course feared
For England's proud illustrious name
Its purest trophy, when the scorned
Treasure imperial shame)

Refused to sign that fatal scroll,
The hostile league of Kings combined;
Spurned to future times, and formed
Illusions with mankind!

Ah! not for him—the first to hail
The young Republics of the West,
To fear in cruel Asia's chain,
Greece—fettered Greece oppressed!

England! may yet be thine the part
All that is left of Greece to save:
Or soon, too soon, her valiant sons
In general grave!

Others may plead their country's safety—
May breathe the traitor's fervent zeal:
Others alone for freedom fight,
But they for Freedom die!

Majestic Greece! from Sparta's blood
To Missolonghi's deathless date;
Scene of whate'er ennobles man,
Of all that makes him great.

Where the warm glow of antique deeds
Seen fresh through modern times to last,
And one long track of glory blends
The present with the past.

Where names that grace their lineage high
Shall live through each recording age,
If Monarchs haste to blot their shame
In thy memorial page!