From the southward came a rumor,
Over sea and over land;
From the blue Ionian islands,
And the old Hellenic strand,
That the sons of Agamemnon,
To their faith no longer true,
Had confiscated the carpets
Of a black and bearded Jew!
Helen's rape, compared to this, was but an idle toy,
Deeper guilt was that of Athens than the crime of haughty Troy.
iii.
And the rumor, winged by Ate,
To the lofty chamber ran,
Where great Palmerston was sitting
In the midst of his Divan:
Like Saturnius triumphant,
In his high Olympian hall,
Unregarded by the mighty,
But detested by the small;
Overturning constitutions—setting nations by the ears,
With divers sapient plenipos, like Minto and his peers.
iv.
With his fist the proud dictator
Smote the table that it rang—
From the crystal vase before him
The blood-red wine upsprang!
"Is my sword a wreath of rushes,
Or an idle plume my pen,
That they dare to lay a finger
On the meanest of my men?
No amount of circumcision can annul the Briton's right—
Are they mad, these lords of Athens, for I know they can not fight?
v.
"Had the wrong been done by others,
By the cold and haughty Czar,
I had trembled ere I opened
All the thunders of my war.
But I care not for the yelping
Of these fangless curs of Greece—
Soon and sorely will I tax them
For the merchant's plundered Fleece.
From the earth his furniture for wrath and vengeance cries—
Ho, Eddisbury! take thy pen, and straightway write to Wyse!"
vi.
Joyfully the bells are ringing
In the old Athenian town,
Gayly to Piræus harbor
Stream the merry people down;
For they see the fleet of Britain
Proudly steering to their shore,
Underneath the Christian banner
That they knew so well of yore,
When the guns at Navarino thundered o'er the sea,
And the Angel of the North proclaimed that Greece again was free.