StoryTitle("caps", "Marco Bozzaris") ?>
Bozzaris," by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old
school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This
is another of the poems that was not born to die.
PoemStart() ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "At midnight, in his guarded tent,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The Turk was dreaming of the hour", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Should tremble at his power:", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "In dreams, through camp and court, he bore", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The trophies of a conqueror;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "In dreams his song of triumph heard;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Then wore his monarch's signet ring:", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "As Eden's garden bird.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "At midnight, in the forest shades,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "True as the steel of their tried blades,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Heroes in heart and hand.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "There had the Persian's thousands stood,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "There had the glad earth drunk their blood", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "On old Platæa's day;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And now there breathed that haunted air", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The sons of sires who conquered there,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "With arm to strike and soul to dare,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "As quick, as far as they.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "An hour passed on—the Turk awoke;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "That bright dream was his last;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "He woke—to hear his sentries shriek,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "\"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!\"", "") ?>
PagePoem(129, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "He woke—to die midst flame, and smoke,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And death-shots falling thick and fast", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Bozzaris cheer his band:", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "\"Strike—till the last armed foe expires;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Strike—for your altars and your fires;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Strike—for the green graves of your sires;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "God—and your native land!\"", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "They fought—like brave men, long and well;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "They piled that ground with Moslem slain,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "They conquered—but Bozzaris fell,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Bleeding at every vein.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "His few surviving comrades saw", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "His smile when rang their proud hurrah,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And the red field was won;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Then saw in death his eyelids close", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Calmly, as to a night's repose,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Like flowers at set of sun.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Come to the mother's, when she feels,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For the first time, her first-born's breath;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Come when the blessed seals", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That close the pestilence are broke,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And crowded cities wail its stroke;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Come in consumption's ghastly form,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Come when the heart beats high and warm", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And thou art terrible—the tear,", "") ?>
PagePoem(130, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And all we know, or dream, or fear", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Of agony, are thine.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "But to the hero, when his sword", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Has won the battle for the free,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And in its hollow tones are heard", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The thanks of millions yet to be.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Come, when his task of fame is wrought—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Come in her crowning hour—and then", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thy sunken eye's unearthly light", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "To him is welcome as the sight", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Of sky and stars to prisoned men;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thy grasp is welcome as the hand", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Of brother in a foreign land;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thy summons welcome as the cry", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That told the Indian isles were nigh", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "To the world-seeking Genoese,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "When the land wind, from woods of palm,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And orange-groves, and fields of balm,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Blew o'er the Haytian seas.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Bozzaris! with the storied brave", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Greece nurtured in her glory's time,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Even in her own proud clime.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Like torn branch from death's leafless tree", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The heartless luxury of the tomb;", "") ?>
PagePoem(131, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "But she remembers thee as one", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Long loved and for a season gone;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Her marble wrought, her music breathed;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For thee she rings the birthday bells;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Of thee her babe's first lisping tells;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For thine her evening prayer is said", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "At palace-couch and cottage-bed;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Her soldier, closing with the foe,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "His plighted maiden, when she fears", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For him the joy of her young years,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And she, the mother of thy boys,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Though in her eye and faded cheek", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Is read the grief she will not speak,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The memory of her buried joys,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And even she who gave thee birth,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Talk of thy doom without a sigh;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's:", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "One of the few, the immortal names,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "That were not born to die.", "") ?>
PoemAttribution("100", SmallCapsText("Fitz-greene Halleck.")) ?>
PoemEnd() ?>