gour to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts?-No;-you have judged, as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea by which these bold invaders would delude you. Your generous spirit has compared, as mine has, the motives which, in a war like this, can animate their minds and ours.-They, by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and extended rule:-we, for our country, our altars, and our homes:-They follow an adventurer whom they fear, and obey a power which they hate;-we serve a monarch whom we love,--a God whom we adore. Whenever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress!-Wherever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship. They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error!-Yesthey--they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride! They offer us their protection.-Yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs-covering and devouring them:-They call on us to barter all of good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better which they promise. -Be our plain answer this: the throne we honour is the people's choice-the laws we reverence are our brave fathers' legacy-the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with the hope of bliss beyond the grave.-Tell your invaders this, and tell them too, we seek no change; and least of all, such change as they would bring us.
It must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after Immortality
Or, whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?-
Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;
"Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates Eternity to man.
Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
The wide, the unbounded prospect, lies before me;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it.
Here will I hold. If there's a Power above-
And that there is, all nature cries aloud
Through all her works-He must delight in virtue;
And that which He delights in, must be happy.
But when? or where? This world was made for
Cæsar.
I'm weary of conjectures this must end them.
[Laying his hand on his sword.]
Thus am I doubly arm'd. My death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me.
This in a moment, brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die!
The soul, secur'd in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.-
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds!
HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.
To be or not to be?—that is the question.-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?-To die-to sleep-
No more! and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die-to sleep-
To sleep?-perchance to dream!-ay, there's the rub!
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.-There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes-
When he himself might his quietus make,
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
Το
and sweat under a weary life,
groan
But that the dread of something after death—
That undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns!-puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all:
And thus, the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action!
Marco Bozzarris, the Epaminondas of Modern Greece.
[He fell in an attack upon the Turkish Camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platae, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were "To die for liberty is a pleasure and not a pain."]
At midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour,
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power;
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring,
Then pressed that monarch's throne,-a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
An hour passed on-the Turk awoke:
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentry's shriek,
"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
He woke to die midst flame and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre stroke,
And death shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band;
"Strike-till the last armed foe expires,
Strike-for your altars and your fires,
Strike-for the green graves of your sires,
God-and your native land!"
They fought-like brave men, long and well,
They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath;-
Come when the blessed seals
Which close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;—
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine,
And thou art terrible: the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word,
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee-there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
We tell thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's-
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smil'd deceitful on her birth;
For, in her helpless years depriv'd of all-
Of every stay-save innocence and Heaven,
She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,
And poor, lived in a cottage, far retir'd
Among the windings of a woody vale:
By solitude and deep surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty conceal'd.
Together thus they shunn'd the cruel scorn
Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet
From giddy passion, and low-minded pride;
Almost on Nature's common bounty fed;
Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.
Her form was fresher than the morning rose,
When the dew wets its leaves; unstain'd and pure,
As is the lily, or the mountain snow:
The modest virtues mingled in her eyes,
Still, on the ground dejected, darting all
Their humid beams into the blooming flowers:
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