And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him- he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother, he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday, -

All this rushed with his blood.-Shall he expire, And unavenged?- Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

THE DEATH OF AJAX.

WINTHROP M. PRAED. FROM OVID'S "METAMORPHOSES.'

THE Kings were moved; conviction hung

On soft Persuasion's honeyed tongue;

And Victory to Wisdom gave

The weapons of the fallen brave.

That Chief, unshrinking, unsubdued,

Had grasped his spear in fire and feud,

And never dreamed of fear;

Had stemmed fierce Hector's wild alarm,

Had braved the Thunderer's red right arm,—

But Rage is Victor here.

By nothing could the hero fall

Save by the pangs that conquer all!
He snatched the falchion from his side;
And, "This at least is mine," he cried,
"This e'en Ulysses will not crave:
But let it dig its master's grave!

In many a glorious field of yore

This blade has blushed with Phrygian gore,
And when mine own shall glisten, mine
Shall well become its warlike shine.
Ajax shall fall by Ajax' hand,

A warrior by a warrior's brand."

He spoke, and smiling sternly, pressed
The weapon to his struggling breast.
Too feeble was the hero's strength
To force the weapon's chilling length
From out the reeking wound;
The blood upon its gory track
In rushing eddies bore it back;
And on the moistened ground
There bloomed (as poets love to tell),
Where'er the gushing dewdrops fell,
A melancholy Flower;

The same fair flower had wept beside
The turf where Hyacinthus died;

And, from that fatal hour,

It syllables on every leaf
The record of a double grief.

SONG OF THE GREEK POET.

LORD BYRON.

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 shores 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 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,

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 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.

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 Thermopyla.

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 battle to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call
How answers each bold Bacchanal!

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

The earlier, and the nobler one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think you he meant them for a slave?

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; 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!
On Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line.

Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there perhaps some seed is sown
That Heracleidan blood might own.