Thy voice sounds like a prophet's And even she who gave thee birth, word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Come, when his task of fame is wrought Come with her laurel-leaf, bloodbought Come in her crowning hour and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land-wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytien seas. 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. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb: But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone. For thee her poets' lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed: For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells: For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch, and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, |