Classic Poem

Many the feet that filled
Thy halls and marble stairs
When the sun was used to gild
Thy white-robed worshippers;
These were forms too bright and fair,
Who were kneeling at thy shrine,
For their souls to feel the snare
Of homage — false as thine: —
There were shouts of revelry
From thy mount rose high and long,
And the dark and distant sea
Used to echo back the song! —
And the far off glorious clashing
Of thy cymbaled votary —
Came, through the soft air flashing,
Like the sounds of years gone by.
Aegina! — they are fled —
Thy fame hath perished! —

The moss is on thy walls —
Silence and deep despair; —
And the ruin as it falls
Gives the only echo there:
Thy music is not heard, —
Thy high raised roof is gone, —
And the solitary bird
Sits on the topmost stone: —
There are sunbeams ling'ring still,
Through thy far white pillars seen
But they only seem to tell
Of what thou once hast been! —
And oft in silence o'er thee,
The dark cloud passes on —
And it sheds a deeper glory
O'er thy wild oblivion! —
Aegina! — With the dead
Thy fame hath perished! —

Type of thy parent clime! —
In ages past away,
Greece was like thee sublime —
Like thee was bright and gay! —
And on thy mount wert thou
Shrined in thy orient sky,
A gem upon the brow
Of her fair liberty! —
But Greece has fallen, like thee, —
Desolate — wildly lone; —
Her sons — the brave and free,
Forgotten and unknown: —
The echo of her fountains
Seems her lost children's sigh, —
And on her lov'liest mountains
Sits dark captivity! —
Aegina! — Greece! — the dead,
And you have perished! —