No. cccxxvii. p. 130.
PHILHELLENIC DRINKING-SONG.
BY B. SIMMONS.
Come let us drink their memory,
Those glorious Greeks of old—
On shore and sea the Famed, the Free,
The Beautiful—the Bold!
The mind or mirth that lights each page,
Or bowl by which we sit,
Is sunfire pilfer'd from their age—
Gems splinter'd from their wit.
Then drink we to their memory,
Those glorious Greeks of yore;
Of great or true, we can but do
What they have done before!
We've had with THE GREAT KING to cope—
What if the scene he saw—
The modern Xerxes—from the slope
Of crimson Quatre-bras,
Was but the fruit we early won
From tales of Grecian fields
Such as the swords of Marathon
Carved on the Median shields
Oh, honour to those chainless Greeks,
We drink them one and all,
Who block'd that day Oppression's way
As with a brazen wall!
Theirs was the marble land where, woo'd
By love-born Taste, the Gods
Themselves the life of stone endured
In more divine abodes
Than blest their own Olympus bright;
Then in supreme repose,
Afar star glittering, high and white
Athenè's shrine arose.
So the days of Pericles
The votive goblet fill—
In fane or mart we but distort
His grand achievements still!