McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 31

He woke--to die mid flame and smoke, And shout, and groan, and saber stroke, And death shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike--till the last armed foe expires; Strike--for your altars and your fires; Strike--for the green graves of your sires; G.o.d--and your native land!"

They fought--like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw His smile, when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won: Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!

Come to the mother, when she feels For the first time her firstborn's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song, and dance, and wine: And thou art terrible--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee--there is no prouder grave Even in her own proud clime.

We tell thy doom without a sigh, For thou art Freedom's, now, and Fame's.

One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die.

NOTES.--Marco Bozzaris (b. about 1790, d. 1823) was a famous Greek patriot. His family were Suliotes, a people inhabiting the Suli Mountains, and bitter enemies of the Turks. Bozzaris was engaged in war against the latter nearly all his life, and finally fell in a night attack upon their camp near Carp.e.n.i.si. This poem, a fitting tribute to his memory, has been translated into modern Greek.

Plataea was the scene of a great victory of the Greeks over the Persians in the year 479 B. C.

Moslem--The followers of Mohammed are called Moslems.

LI. SONG OF THE GREEK BARD. (205)

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron, 1788-1824. This gifted poet was the son of a profligate father and of a fickle and pa.s.sionate mother. He was afflicted with lameness from his birth; and, although he succeeded to his great-uncle's t.i.tle at ten years of age, he inherited financial embarra.s.sment with it. These may be some of the reasons for the morbid and wayward character of the youthful genius. It is certain that he was not lacking in affection, nor in generosity. In his college days, at Cambridge, he was willful and careless of his studies. "Hours of Idleness," his first book, appeared in 1807. It was severely treated by the "Edinburgh Review," which called forth his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in 1809. Soon after, he went abroad for two years; and, on his return, published the first two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pligrimage," a work that made him suddenly famous. He married in 1815, but separated from his wife after one year. Soured and bitter, he now left England, purposing never to return. He spent most of the next seven years in Italy, where most of his poems were written. The last year of his life was spent in Greece, aiding in her struggle for liberty against the Turks. He died at Missolonghi. As a man, Byron was impetuous, morbid and pa.s.sionate. He was undoubtedly dissipated and immoral, but perhaps to a less degree than has sometimes been a.s.serted. As a poet, he possessed n.o.ble powers, and he has written much that will last; in general, however, his poetry is not wholesome, and his fame is less than it once was.

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace,-- Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your sh.o.r.es refuse; Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below, And men in nations,--all were his!

He counted them at break of day,-- And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? And where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless sh.o.r.e The heroic lay is tuneless now,-- The heroic bosom beats no more!

And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine?

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?

Must we but blush? Our fathers bled.

Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead!

Of the three hundred, grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae!

What! silent still and silent all?

Ah! no;--the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, "Let one living head, But one, arise,--we come, we come!"

'Tis but the living who are dumb!

In vain--in vain!--strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine!

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine!

Hark! rising to the ign.o.ble call, How answers each bold Baccha.n.a.l!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?

Of two such lessons, why forget The n.o.bler and the manlier one?

You have the letters Cadmus gave; Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the howl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's song divine: He served, but served Polycrates, A tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, Our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Our virgins dance beneath the shade; I see their glorious, black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such b.r.e.a.s.t.s must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing save the waves and I May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swanlike, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine,-- Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

NOTES.--Sappho was a Greek poetess living on the island of Lesbos, about 600 B. C. Delos is one of the Grecian Archipelago, and is of volcanic origin. The ancient Greeks believed that it rose from the sea at a stroke from Neptune's trident, and was moored fast to the bottom by Jupiter. It was the supposed birthplace of Phoebus, or Apollo. The island of Chios, or Scios, is one of the places which claim to be the birthplace of Homer.

Teios, or Teos, a city in Ionia, is the birthplace of the Greek poet Anacreon. The Islands of the Blest, mentioned in ancient poetry, were imaginary islands in the west, where, it was believed, the favorites of the G.o.ds were conveyed without dying.

At Marathon. (490 B. C.), on the east coast, of Greece, 11,000 Greeks, under the generalship of Miltiades, routed 110,000 Persians. The island of Salamis lies very near the Greek coast: in the narrow channel between, the Greek fleet almost destroyed (480 B.C.) that of Xerxes, the Persian king, who witnessed the contest from a throne on the mountain side. Thermopylae is a narrow mountain pa.s.s in Greece, where Leonidas, with 300 Spartans and about 1,100 other Greeks, held the entire Persian army in check until every Spartan, except one, was slain. Samos is one of the Grecian Archipelago, noted for its cultivation of the vine and olive.

A Baccha.n.a.l was a disciple of Bacchus, the G.o.d of wine. Pyrrhus was a Greek, and one of the greatest generals of the world. The phalanx was an almost invincible arrangement of troops, ma.s.sed in close array, with their shields overlapping one another, and their spears projecting; this form of military tactics was peculiar to the Greeks.

Polycrates seized the island of Samos, and made himself tyrant: he was entrapped and crucified in 522 B. C. Chersonese is the ancient name for a peninsula. Sunium is the name of a promontory southeast of Athens.

LII. NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. (209)

Charles Sprague, 1791-1875, was born in Boston, and received his education in the public schools of that city. For sixteen years he was engaged in mercantile pursuits, as clerk and partner. In 1820 he became teller in a bank; and, from 1825, he filled the office of cashier of the Globe Bank for about forty years. In 1829 be gave his most famous poem, "Curiosity,"

before the Phi Beta Kappa society, in Cambridge. An active man of business all his days, he has written but little either in prose or poetry, but that little is excellent in quality, graceful, and pleasing.

The address from which this extract is taken, was delivered before the citizens of Boston, July 4th, 1825.

Not many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, and the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their n.o.ble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky sh.o.r.es. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the b.l.o.o.d.y grapple, the defying death song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the G.o.d of Revelation, but the G.o.d of the universe he acknowledged in everything around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent in humble though blind adoration.

And all this has pa.s.sed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamable progenitors. The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale is gone, and his degraded offspring crawls upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

As a race they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the sh.o.r.e, and their war cry is fast fading to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.