[An Eastern Tale]
Addressed to Mrs. S.C. Choate.
A Persian lady we’re informed—
This happened long, long years before
The Christian era ever dawned,
A thousand years, it may be more,
The date and narrative are so obscure,
I have to guess some things that should be sure.
I’m puzzled with this history,
And rue that I began the tale;
It seems a kind of mystery—
I’m very much afraid I’ll fail,
For want of facts of the sensation kind:
I therefore dwell upon the few I find.
I like voluminous writing best,
That gives the facts dress’d up in style.
A handsome woman when she’s dressed
Looks better than (repress that smile)
When she in plainer costume does appear;
The more it costs we know she is more dear.
The story is a Grecian one,
The author’s name I cannot tell;
Perhaps it was old Xenophon
Or Aristotle, I can’t dwell
On trifles; perhaps Plutarch wrote the story:
At any rate its years have made it hoary.
The Greeks were famous in those days
In arts, in letters and in arms;
Quite plain and simple in their ways;
With their own hands they tilled their farms;
Some dressed the vine, some plow’d the ocean’s wave;
Some wrote, were orators, or teachers grave.
They were Republicans, in fact;
The Persians might have called them “black
Republicans;” they never lacked
The power to beat a foeman back.
Thermopylæ, so famed in Grecian story
Is but another name for martial glory.
A busy hive to work or fight,
Like our New England bold and strong;
A little frantic for the right,
As sternly set against the wrong;
And when for right they drew the sword, we know,
Stopped not to count the number of the foe.
To me it is a painful sight
To see a nation great and good
Reduced to such a sorry plight,
And courtiers crawl where freemen stood,
And king and priests combine to seize the spoil,
While widows weep and beggar’d yeomen toil.