Page images
PDF
EPUB

strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sinks before him. The country is too poor for plunder, and too rough for valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barriers, on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition; and Switzerland remains, with her simple institutions, a military road to fairer climates, scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.

We stand the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the old world. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe.

Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products, and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary, than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created?

Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France, and the low lands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the north, and, moving onward to the south, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days.

Can it be that America, under such circumstances, can betray herself! that she is to be added to the catalogue of republics, the inscription upon whose ruins is, "They were, but they are not!" Forbid it, my countrymen! forbid it, Heaven!

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are and all you hope to be: resist every project of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction. I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in the love of your offspring; teach them, as they climb your knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never to forget or forsake her.

woman

I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are, whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your country.

I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and your prayers, and your benedictions. May not your gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave, with the recollection that you have lived in vain! May not your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of slaves!

No! I read in the destiny of my country far better hopes, far brighter visions. We, who are now assembled here, must soon be gathered to the congregation of other days. The time of our departure is at hand, to make way for our children upon the theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs! May he who, at the distance of another century, shall stand here, to celebrate this day, still look round upon a free, happy, and virtuous people! May he have reason to

exult as we do!

May he, with all the enthusiasm of truth, as

well as of poetry, exclaim that here is still his country.

"Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;

Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms."

CLVIII.-THE ISLES OF GREECE.

BYRON.

[ocr errors]

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho* loved and sung, -
Where the arts of war and peace,
grew
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 shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute

To sounds which echo farther west

Than

your sires' "Islands of the Blessed." §

The mountains look on Marathon, ||

And Marathon looks on the sea;

Sappho, a celebrated Greek poetess, was a native of the Island of Les bos. Her writings, of which very few fragments remain, were characterized by depth and fervor of feeling.

The Island of Delos is represented, in Greek legendary history, as having floated under the sea for a long period, and been called to the surface by the agency of Neptune. Apollo and Diana were born upon it.

The Scian and the Teian muse means the epic and lyric poetry of Greece. Homer, the great epic poet, was born at Scio, according to some accounts: Anacreon, the lyric poet, was born in the Island of Teos.

The Greeks supposed that there were certain islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where good men were carried after death, and lived in perpetual happiness. These were called the islands of the blessed.

|| Marathon is a village about twenty miles north-east of Athens. The Persians were defeated here by the Athenians, under the command of Miltiades.

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians' 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,

[ocr errors]

And men in nations; all were his!
He counted them at break of day,-
And when the sun set, where were they?

[ocr errors]

And where are they? And where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay is tuneless now

The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush - for Greece a tear.

[ocr errors]

Must we but weep o'er days more blessed?
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 Thermopyla. †

Salamis is an island off the coast of Attica, near which the Persian fleet, during the invasion of Xerxes, was defeated by that of the confederated Greeks.

+ Thermopyla was a narrow pass, leading from Thessaly into Locris and Southern Greece. The army of Xerxes was resisted here for some time by a band of three hundred Spartans, under Leonidas, who were at last all slain.

[blocks in formation]

*

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx* gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

[blocks in formation]

Fill high the bowl 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;

* The Pyrrhic dance is a sort of warlike dance, performed exclusively by men, which has come down from the ancient Greeks. The Pyrrhic phalanx was the phalanx of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, a celebrated general of antiquity.

+ Polycrates was king of the Island of Samos. He befriended and patronized the poet Anacreon.

Chersonese means peninsula, and here designates the Thracian Chersonese, now called the Peninsula of the Dardanelles, or of Gallipoli. Mil

« PreviousContinue »