[Power’s Greek Slave was on exhibition in Lexington, Ky., where I lived when these lines were published in the Lexington Observer and Reporter.]
Soft as the silver songs which breathed
Over the Lesbian Sappho’s shell,
When the white-handed Paphians wreathed
Garlands for her who sang so well,
Is the low murmur of the waves
Which swell along Zacynthus’ caves
And in melodious echoes fall
Within the mermaids’ ocean hall.
There many a grove salutes the sea
With song-birds’ ceaseless harmony
Innumerable blossoms fling
Rich odors on the dewy wing
Of every breeze which wanders free
Over the blue Ægean Sea;
In golden splendor of the day
Reflected from the burnished bay,
Or spangled with the countless lights
Which gem those skies on cloudless nights,
And land and sea and sky above
Breathe only peace and joy and love.
A maiden in her grape-vine bower
Sat sorrowful at twilight’s hour,
And as her fingers sweep the strings
Of her guitar she softly sings,
“O, for the Greeks of olden time
Worthy our blest and sunny clime;
Men who would rather die than brook
That Turkish chain or Persian yoke
Should strangle like a serpent’s coil
One neck on freedom’s native soil.
Never, O never, ye Spartan dead,
Till you arise from your gory bed,
Will the Sultan cease to bear away
The flower of Greece for his harem’s prey.
The sun is up; his rising ray
Shoots brightly o’er the swelling bay,
And richly mottled shells which strew
The beach with many a dazzling hue.
With tapered masts in sunshine gleaming
And pennons in the breezes streaming
And snowy sails yon shallop glides
Gracefully over the heaving tides.
And see a captive maiden stands
Upon its deck with fettered hands.
Her song is changed to a wail of pain
For plundered home and parents slain.
Harsh is the clanging of the chains
Which bind her lithe and shapely limbs
Keen are their deep and cankering pains
But not for this her dark eye swims
In agonizing tears, whose flow
Betokens bitter shame and woe.
Sorer are tears for freedom fled
Than those affection gives the dead.
The sorest pangs that fate can send
Like arrows to the captive’s heart
Are not from outward griefs; these end,
Theirs is a transitory smart;
But musing on her island home,
The home of purity and bliss,
And then the thought of days to come—
The hopeless harem, it is this
Which fills her soul with deeper anguish
Than makes the dying martyr languish.
But Power’s hand shall carve the tale
Of sorrow in that Grecian vale.
His cunning chisel shall relate
The sorrow of a fallen State,
And the incomparable Slave,
Repeat o’er many a distant wave
The legend of the hapless maid
To Turkish lust and shame betrayed.
ODE TO IMPUDENCE
Goddess of Impudence,
Whose tinsel-crowned pretense
And shameless eye and cheek of polished brass
Rule Young America
With all-triumphant sway,
The forward school-boy and precocious lass,
Whose unweaned mouths smell of their nurses’ milk
And others of that ilk—
Inspire my pen,
Queen of the groundlings and the Upper Ten,
For to thy empire both belong
And both deserve a song.
What protean power
Is thy mysterious dower?
Thy wonder-working wand
Transmutes all things to gold like Midas’ hand—
All save the metal of thy followers’ face,
And that is brass, we know in every place;
Thy favors, where thou dost dispense,
Make up for lack of decency and sense;
Thy harlot tread
Crushes the modest violet in its bed;
Truth, wit, and merit are proclaimed a bore,
And kicked sans ceremonie from the door;
And power, wealth, and fame
Are given unto them who know no shame.
Thy trophies first are seen
In youths and maidens tender, young, and green,
Who stalk the streets about
Before their doting mothers know they’re out;
See how these infant swells
Gallant their baby belles,
Who know much more
Than their mammas found out at twenty-four;
They feel the early flame at seven;
At nine
They languish, sigh, and pine;
Till, dying to be wedded at thirteen,
A moonlight runaway concludes the scene.
The mincing maid,
Let loose from school,
Hooped, bustled, high-heeled, stayed,
Pert as a jay and stubborn as a mule,
Proves to the world that she has learned to faint
To dip, to lily-white, and paint,
And lift her skirts so high
That the unwilling eye
May see the neatness of her garter’s tie
Oh, Impudence; thou hast removed
The childish innocence we loved;
No more we see
The native blush of modesty;
Saucy and malapert,
The girl a coquette and the boy a flirt;
Forward and bold,
They honor not the old—
Not even the sire,
Who sits unhonored by his cheerless fire—
Too fondly dreaming of the sweet repose
Under the grape-vine shadows of Melrose.
Nor her who bore the brood,
The hissing vipers of ingratitude;
But dark and ominous fate
Sits like a raven o’er the gate
Whence modesty has fled,
And Impudence lifts up her brazen head,
For Folly’s breath pollutes the air,
And Wisdom will not linger there,
And all within
Bows to the iron rule of ignorance and sin.