May his eyes and mouth be filled with clay, And a winding-sheet be his enfolder, When he shall see with heedless eye yon glorious pennon flout the sky! It is her pennon, there she goes! The jewel of the world, behold her! Anonymous. Constantinople (Byzantium, Stamboul). THE GREEK AT CONSTANTINOPLE. THE cypresses of Scutari In stern magnificence look down Above the throng of rich kiosks, Where white and gold and brilliant hue So far, yet strikes the listening ear, Of millions calmly sleeping here? For here, whate'er his life's degree, That parts him from his people's past. From this funereal forest's edge I gave my sight full range below, Itself a grave, or seeming so: I thought of what one might have hoped By the true faith in Christ and Heaven. The finest webs of earthly fate Are soonest and most harshly torn; The wise could scarce discriminate That evening splendor from the morn: Though we, sad students of the past, That lies between the first and last, Who bore the name of Constantine. Such were my thoughts and such the scene, As if his spirit had communed With mine, while I had there reclined. "Stranger! whose soul has strength to soar Of us thy Christian brethren here! "Think of that age's awful birth, When Europe echoed, terror-riven, That a new foot was on the earth, And a new name come down from Heaven; When over Calpe's straits and steeps The Moor had bridged his royal road, And Othman's sons from Asia's deeps The conquests of the Cross o'erflowed. "Think, if the arm of Charles Martel France can from sire to son deliver? "Think with what passionate delight The tale was told in Christian halls, How Sobieski turned to flight The Muslim from Vienna's walls; The ancient words rose loud, — 'From God "Think not that time can ever give Prescription to such doom as ours, That Grecian hearts can ever live Contented serfs of barbarous powers; More than six hundred years had past, Since Moorish hosts could Spain o'erwhelm, Yet Boabdil was thrust at last, Lamenting, from Grenada's realm. "And if to his old Asian seat, From this usurped unnatural throne, The Turk is driven, 't is surely meet That we again should hold our own: Be but Byzantium's native sign Of Cross on Crescent once unfurled, And Greece shall guard by right divine The portals of the Eastern world. "Before the small Athenian band 66 Know ye the Romans of the North? Stretches its arms of conquest forth, To grasp the world in breadth and length? They cry, That ye and we are old, And worn with luxuries and cares, And they alone are fresh and bold, Time's latest and most honored heirs! "Alas for you! alas for us! Alas for men that think and feel, If once beside this Bosphorus Shall stamp Sclavonia's frozen heel! O, place us boldly in the van, And ere we yield this narrow sea, The past shall hold within its span At least one more Thermopyla." Lord Houghton. |