5

With all the Lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;

icate,

'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";

My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,

To keep one creed's a task grown quite
Herculean:

Is it not so, my Tory, Ultra-Julian?

From CANTO III

THE ISLES OF GREECE

The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!

135

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 ignoble callHow answers each bold Bacchanal!

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

The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gaveThink ye he meant them for a slave?

730

735

740

745

That tyrant was Miltiades!

And feeling, in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all colors, like the hands of dyers.

But words are things, and a small drop of

ink

Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;

795

'Tis strange, the shortest letter which

man uses

Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind. 760

Of ages; to what straits old Time re

duces