by F.
Originally published in Sharpe's London Magazine: A Journal (T.B. Sharpe) vol.6 #29 (Mar 1848).
The fair-haired morn is waking
In beauty from on high,
And the mountains are partaking
Tn the radiance of the sky:
Her smile, from Phocia's rugged pass,
Caught by the azure sea,
Is glowing on its breast of glass,
And owned by every tree
That bears upon its mournful cheek
The tear of pearly dew,
And weeps to think that rocky peak,
That blushes now with rosy streak,
Shall with devoted life-blood reek
Of the noble and the true.
For steel-clad troops of Persia's king
Are gathering round the glen,
Ax hunters, ranged in deadly ring,
Beset the lion's den.
But as the forest monarch's spouse,
With beating breast and frenzied eye,
And cries that mountain echoes rouse,
And move the rocks to sympathy,
Dies fighting in her craggy den,
Because she loves her young too well
To yield to the fierce hunter's ken
Where hidden in the rocks they dwell;
So fights, his injured land to save
From the disgrace of slavery,
The Spartan chief,—and dares to brave
The countless hosts of armed men,
That like an ocean, wave on wave,
Are entering now thy narrow glen,
Thou long-loved hill of Thessaly!
Flashes the chieftain's eye of fire,
And quivers now his lip with ire;—
"Rather than live the Persian's slave,
Mountain! be thou our bloody grave—
Our long last home—Thermopylae!"
Alas! alas! they perish
Within that rocky pass,
But Greece shall ever cherish
Thy name, Leonidas!
While transient years their shadows fling,
As long as time rolls round,
Thy name shall like trumpet ring,
With spirit-stirring sound!
And cold and dead his heart must be
Who fires not at the thought
How upon red Thermopylae
Bravely and well they fought.
The very winds that fan his grave,
Sing the Spartan's funeral dirge,
And the sad sea, with rolling wave,
Throws on the pebbles his foam-crested surge.
The mournful music of the trees
Gently sounds the warrior's knell,
And their dewy tears, as they wave in the breeze,
Moisten the spot where Leonidas fell.