In more modern times the long struggle for Greek independence produced a crop of poets who, if they could not emulate the dignity and linguistic elegance of their predecessors, were none the less able to express their national aspirations in rugged but withal very tuneful verse which went straight to the hearts of their countrymen. The Klephtic ballads played a very important part in rousing the Greek spirit during the Graeco-Turkish war at the beginning of the last century. The fine ode of the Zantiote Solomos has been adopted as the national anthem, whilst the poetry of another Ionian, Aristotle Valaorites, and of numerous others glows with genuine and perfervid patriotism. But perhaps the greatest nationalist poet that modern Greece has produced was Rhigas Pheraios, who, as proto-martyr in the Greek cause, was executed by the Turks in 1798, with the prophecy on his dying lips that he had "sown a rich seed, and that the hour was coming when his country would reap its glorious fruits." His Greek Marseillaise (Δεύτε παῖδες τῶν Ἑλλήνων) is known to Englishmen through Byron's translation, "Sons of the Greeks, arise, etc." But the glorious lilt and swing of his Polemisterion, though probably familiar to every child in Greece, is less known in this country. The lines,
καλλίτερα μιᾶς ὥρας ἐλευθέρη ζωή,
παρὰ σαράντα χρόνων σκλαβιὰ καὶ φυλακή,
recall to the mind Tennyson's
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
XXIX
SONGS, NAVAL AND MILITARY
"The Spectator," September 20, 1913
A British Aeschylus, were such a person conceivable, might very fitly tell his countrymen, in the words addressed to Prometheus some twenty-three centuries ago, that they would find no friend more staunch than Oceanus: