The Greek Boy.

Gone are the glorious Greeks of old,     Glorious in mien and mind;     Their bones are mingled with the mould,     Their dust is on the wind;     The forms they hewed from living stone     Survive the waste of years, alone,     And, scattered with their ashes, show     What greatness perished long ago.     Yet fresh the myrtles there, the springs     Gush brightly as of yore;     Flowers blossom from the dust of kings,     As many an age before.     There nature moulds as nobly now,     As e'er of old, the human brow;     And copies still the martial form     That braved Plata's battle storm.     Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek     Their heaven in Hellas' skies:     Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek,     Her sunshine lit thine eyes;     Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains     Heard by old poets, and thy veins     Swell with the blood of demigods,     That slumber in thy country's sods.     Now is thy nation free, though late,     Thy elder brethren broke,     Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight,     The intolerable yoke.     And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see     Her youth renewed in such as thee:     A shoot of that old vine that made     The nations silent in its shade.