 | Poems by Edward C. Pinkney |  |
37
PROLOGUE.
DELIVERED AT THE GREEK BENEFIT, IN BALTIMORE—1832.
“ILLE, NON EGO.”
I.
As one, who long upon his couch hath lainSubdued by sickness to a slave of pain,
When time and sudden health his strength repair,
Springs jocund to his feet, and walks the air;
So Greece, through centuries a prostrate land,
At length starts up—forever may she stand—
II.
Since smiling Liberty, the sun thrice blest,That had its rising in our happy west,
Extends its radiance, eastward, to that shore,
The place of Gods whom yet our hearts adore;
And, hailed by loud acclaim of thousands, hath
Been worshipped with a more than Magian faith,
With slain Barbarian hosts for sacrifice,
And burning fleets for holocausts of price:
38
Fail to assist the magnanimity,
With which, regardless of much pressing want,
They greet their fair and heavenly visitant?
Forbid it, Justice! we detest the state,
Which, knowing that mortality must rate
By mere comparison things dark or bright,—
Would make its fame as painters form a light,
By circumjacent blackness—we are free,
And so could wish the total earth to be.
Greece shall,—Greece is,—each old, heroic shade,
Draws, with her living sons, his spectral blade,
And combats, proud of times so like his own,
Like Theseus' ghost at storied Marathon.
III.
“The Last of Grecians,”—is become a phrase,Improper in these new triumphant days:
The swords well wielded against Turkish bands,
Are not unworthy of those mighty hands,
Which overthrew the haughty Persian, when
Pausanias and Leonidas were men.
IV.
To-night, the useful and the pleasing claim,Still more than commonly, to seem the same;
For, pleasing you, we aid, “in our degree,”
A struggling nation's strife for liberty,—
The strife whose voice from this great world demands,
What mine of you beseeches—“clap your hands!”
| Poems by Edward C. Pinkney | |