For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o’er days more blessed?
Must we but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! Render back from out thy breast
A remnant of the Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!”
He looked up. The crescents on the spires of the town were dazzling points of light in the gold-blue air, the morning full-blown, clean and fragrant with scents of sun and sea. In the midst of its warmth and beauty he shivered. An odd prescient sensation had come to him like a gelid breath from the upper ether. He started at a voice behind him:
“More poetry, I’ll lay a guinea!”