Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave ;
Say, is not this Thermopyla?
These waters blue that round you lave,

O servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise and make again your own ;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame;
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it, many a deathless age:
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Have swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'T were long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace :
Enough, no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.
What can he tell who treads thy shore
No legend of thine olden time,
No theme on which the muse might soar,
High as thine own in days of yore,

1.

CHARLES T. BROOKS.

II.

When we, as we rush to the strangling fight, | And stop her bloody lips, she takes no heed
Send home to our truc-loves a long "Good-night," How one clear word would draw an avalanche
Thou canst hie thee where love is sold,

Of living sons around her, to succeed
And buy thy pleasure with paltry gold.

The vanished generations. Can she count A graceless, worthless wight, etc.

These oil-eaters, with large, live, mobile mouths

Agape for macaroni, in the amount When lance and bullet come whistling by, Of consecrated heroes of her south's And death in a thousand shapes draws nigh,

Bright rosary ? The pitcher at the fount, Thou canst sit at thy cards, and kill

The gift of gods, being broken, she much loathes King, queen, and knave with thy spadille.

To let the ground-leaves of the place confer A graceless, worthless wight, etc.

A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem If on the red field our bell should toll,

No nation, but the poet's pensioner, Then welcome be death to the patriot's soul.

With alıns from every land of song and dream,

While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her, Thy pampered flesh shall quake at its doom,

Until their proper breaths, in that extreme And crawl in silk to a hopeless tomb.

Of sighing, split the reed on which they played ! A pitiful exit thine shall be ;

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. No German maid shall weep for thee, No German song shall they sing for thee, No German goblets shall ring for thee. Forth in the van,

A COURT LADY. Man for man, Swing the battle-sword who can ! Kürner. Translation of Her hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with

purple were dark,
Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and rest-

less spark.
ITALY.
FROM "CASA GUIDI WINDOWS."

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in “Less wretched if less fair.” Perhaps a truth Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face. Is so far plain in this, — that Italy,

Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's ripe activity,

Never was lady on earth more true as woman and Sits still upon her tombs, without death's ruth, wife, But also without life's brave energy.

Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in “Now tell us what is Italy ?” men ask :

manners and life. And others answer, “Virgil, Cicero,

Catullus, Cæsar." What beside ? to task The memory closer, "Why, Boccaccio,

She stood in the early morning, and said to her Dante, Petrarca," and if still the flask

maidens, “ Bring Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow,

That silken robe made ready to wear at the court

of the king. Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese," — all

v. Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again

“Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear The paints with fire of souls electrical,

of the mote, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then ? Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads small at the throat. fall

VI. In naming the last saintship within ken,

Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to And, after that, none prayeth in the land.

fasten the sleeves, Alas, this Italy has too long swept

Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand;

snow from the eaves." Of her own past, impassioned nympholept ! Consenting to be nailed here by the hand

VII. To the very bay-tree under which she stepped Gorgeous she entered the sunlight which gathA queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch.

ered her up in a flame, And, licensing the world too long indeed While, straight in her open carriage, she to the To use her broad phylacteries to stanch

hospital came.

race ;

III.

IV.

VIII.

In she went at the door, and gazing, from end to end,

"Many and low are the pallets, but each is the place of a friend."

X.

"Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!" she cried,

And smiled like Italy on him he dreamed in her face and died.

IX.

XIX.

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed:

"Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line,

Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a

of his head.

wrong not thine.

XI.

Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:

He was a grave, hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.

XVIII.

On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:

XII.

Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.

"Art thou a Romagnole ?" Her eyes drove light- But two great crystal tears were all that faltered nings before her.

and came.

Kneeling, . . "O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all?

XXII.

Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at

the name,