University of Virginia Library

Athenia's wrongs, O heavenly Muse rehearse,
And sing the Gods of Greece in English verse!—
Athenia, fairest of the mural fair,
Whose fuming altars fed the savoury air,
Dejected saw beneath th' oppressor's sway,
Her trophies perish and her stones decay.
No joy she knew, but only grief refined,
When far-come travellers paused or look'd behind.
Paused to indulge the sigh for glories past,
Or wondering look'd that stones so long should last.
But this sad solace Fate decreed must cease,
And Mercury flies to end the pride of Greece.

On earth arrived, the form divine obscured,
He seems a mortal man to arts inured;
Cadaverous, crafty, skilled in tints and lines,
A lean Italian master of designs.
He sought Brucides, and Brucides found,
“O Lord,” he cries, “my Lord for taste renown'd,
What fame awaits you, were your Lordship wise,
And who that knows your lordship that denies.
Th' Athenian temples long deserted stand,
Their sculptures crumbling in the Turk's rude hand.
Haste, save the relics, bear them to your home,
The lights of art for ages yet to come.
Grudge not the cost, the marbles, countless price
Would buy the profits of rich embassies.”

Fired by the scheme, his way Brucides took,
And public tasks, and trusts of state forsook;
With ready gold he calls men, carts, and cords,
Cords, carts, and men, rise at the baited words.
The ropes asunder rive the wedded stone,
The mortals labour, and the axles groan,
Hymettus echoes to the tumbling fane,
And shook th' Acropolis,—shakes all the plain.

From high Olympus gazed the Gods afar,
Indignant gazed that man their wrath should dare,
“Fate,” they exclaimed, “that guides the course of things,
And from whose cave, the streams of action springs,
Has justly shown in every age and time,
That Retribution sternly follows crime.
Shall we then tamely see our temples torn,
And o'er the seas the Grecian relics borne;
See that Brucides glorious become,
Like the bold youth that fired th' Ephesian dome?
No, by the Styx,” with raised right hands they cried.
Jove nodded, and the oath was ratified.
Appall'd the Heavens, and Earth received the sign,
The sun in clouds conceal'd his face divine;
The winds lamented, and the rain in tears,
Filled the lone traveller on the waste with fears;
Thieves of the dead, though grasping at the urn,
Scar'd by the shower, the scafiers return,
And their abortive toil, the antiquaries mourn.

On war resolv'd, the heavenly powers prepare,
And eager all the work of vengeance share;
To each the part that best befits is given,
So Heaven appoints,—can kings appoint like Heaven?

Lo! smoothly wafted by the breathing gales,
A ship with sacrilegious plunder sails,—
The busy creek of rocky Hydra past,
And o'er the starboard far Le specia cast,
Cerigo nears, while on the distant view,
The hills of Maina rise serene and blue;
Those rugged mountains, where in savage pride,
Still unsubdued the Spartan race reside.
Deprived of all, they independence vaunt,
And glorious live in liberty and want.

True to his trust, and wakeful on the steep,
Æolus scann'd aftar the rippling deep;
And by the sapience of his state divine,
Knew the curs'd bark that stirr'd the azure brine;—
Recall'd the gales that gently urged her on,
And bade the winds attend his misty throne.
The winds obeyed. Scirocco came the first,
Pluto's dire son, by Airia desert-nurst;
Languid his eyes, and fleecy white his hair,
He breathes contagion and inspires despair.
At his approach the gay flowers sickly bend,
And birds dejected own the present fiend;
Sicilian youths invoke the god of sleep,
And women weeping, wonder why they weep.
Next Tramontan beneath whose breezy sway
The tides of life in brisker eddies play.
From his bright brow and clear blue cheerful eyes,
Dejection spreads her mothlike wings and flies.
Him fair Hygea to rude Boreas bore,
And left with Fortune on the Lapland shore.
The fickle nymph grew careless of the charge,
And the bold boy ran wand'ring wild at large.
This heard the mother, who in anxious haste,
With stretched hands pursued him o'er the waste:
Still unembrac'd he shuns her stretched hands,
And roves a Libertine in foreign lands—
With him Favonius, but the subject Muse,
By Phœbus order'd, now her tale renews;
Else would she sing what airy tasks perform,
The fire-eyed tempest and the howling storm,
The cool wing'd zephyr of the mountain's brow;
The gales that chace the gossamer below;
The sighs that haunt the rip'ning virgins breast,
Th' exploits of flatulence, th' unwelcome guest.
These she should, pleas'd in lofty strains, relate,
But Gods controul the verse and will another fate.

The winds instructed rush to raise the war—
Æolus fiercely mounts his winged car,
And gaining Neptune's crystal portal cries,
“Lord of the sounding seas, awake, arise.
Mortals profane, th' Athenian temples rend,
And o'er thy wide domain the fragments send.
Deep charged with spoil a ship presumptuous moves,
And vain alone his hate Æolus proves.”
Æolus paus'd, the God of ocean heard,
Rais'd his rough front, and shook his hoary beard.
“Why chides the sovereign of the winds,” he cried,
And seized the trident resting at his side.
Blow murmurer, blow, squeeze all your bags and blow,
And let the vessel to perdition go.”
Æolus fetched his breath, low-bending, blew,
And Neptune rising the dread trident, threw—
It strikes—The vessel founders in the waves,
And aw'd Cerigo mourns from all her caves.

Meanwhile Minerva, who of all the powers
That mourned indignantly their ravish'd towers,
Suffered the most—advanced with keenest rage,
To aim the vengeance, and the war to wage;
Against Brucides' self she urged her plans,
And deeds the goddess did, appear the man's—
Revenge she seeks by various means and ways,
Inspires his pen, and strikes his brain with craze.
Delirious fancies that were never thought,
Helpless Brucides innocently wrote.
From the charm'd pen a strange perversion springs,
He thinks of statues and it writes down kings;
Basso relievos occupy his brain,
While towns and armies fill the paper plain:
His doom at length the froward pen provokes,
For British statesmen, writing marble blocks.
At home the sages, struck with sad surprise,
Gaze on the page with nostrils, mouth, and eyes—
With mouth apert and nostrils wide and round,
The senseless slaves of wonder still are found.
Thrice and again his paper all peruse,
Thrice and again each sage his neighbour views:
Thrice and again each sage essay'd to speak,
And tears, as statesmen weep, run down each cheek.
“Calls he us marble blocks,” at once they cry,
“Yes, marble blocks,” the Treasury vaults reply.
“Then let the wretch,” they all again exclaim,
“No longer bear a diplomatic name.”
With canvas wings the fiat leaves the shore—
The man exists, the minister's no more.

Dejected, homeward now he winds his way,
With slow, reluctant, amorous delay.
Him fair Italia's pictured domes detain,
Nor trophied France invites to stay in vain;
Gay France, that boasts the two best sculptured stones,
Bought with the blood of thousands of her sons.

With fervent ire that though of power bereft,
Brucides still had sprightly pleasures left;
The blue-eyed goddess for her chariot calls,
Proudly the steeds come neighing from their stalls.
The conscious car exults in all its springs,
And o'er the steeds the glittering harness flings.
Minerva mounts, and through th'empyrean drawn,
(Her progress brightening like the solar dawn,)
Down the steep slope of Heaven directs her course
Steers the prone chariot and restrains the horse.
She drives to Paris. In their swift career
The golden wheels like whirling fires appear.
A sage, with astronomic tube afar,
A fore-one sees, and hails the new found star;
Describes its motions, calculates its speed,
And gains, like Herschel, an immortal meed.
So move the gods to man's imperfect glance—
And who could think a goddess drove to France.

Arrived, her chariot in the clouds she leaves,
And in the form of Talleyrand deceives.—
Inspires the Consul, and with skill divine,
Makes her stern purpose politic design.
She bids before his eager fancy stand,
The British throng throughout his subject land—
That idle throng of every kind, who sped
To learn new luxuries of board and bed,
When France in peace and antient nicknames dealt,
And gained repose to plan new modes of guilt.
These she array'd in all the charms that grace
The best and bravest of the British race,
With wisdom, valour, riches, beauty, all
That wins in council, camp, or court, or ball.
“But these,” she cries, “O Heaven-sent chief detain,
And soon Britannia must resign the main.
Possessing these, her genius you controul,
For wanting them she wants her life and soul.
Behold Brucides! well his face peruse;
What signs of sense, and long prospective views,
Denotes that moon of flesh, so round and full,
And see that dungeon vault of wit his scull.
Oh! all ye deities addressed in song,
Inspire our chief to keep this precious throng;
But prime o'er all, may he Brucides hold;
A prize more precious than the Greeks of old
From Ilion stole, before the heavenly powers
Resigned to Fate the long beleaguered towers.
So shall Britannia, her palladium lost,
Receive the conqueror and enrich his host.”

The hero smiled, that Talleyrand in zeal,
Should still the force of former habits feel,
And pray; but more because the council shrewd,
Shewed an appearance of renown renewed.
Forth flies th' arrête, and every British guest,
With helpless passion bans the dire arrest.
Thus heavenly causes take effect on earth,
And statesmen gossiping proclaim the birth.

Meanwhile refulgent Mars commissioned comes,
With ringing cymbals and resounding drums.
His fervid influence fires the madding world,
Arms scoured shine bright and standards wave unfurled.
St. Stephen's windows, at the dead of night,
Glare on the Thames a dull portentous light.
But fierce o'er Athens' consecrated walls,
The zenith fervor of the Godhead falls.
Oh, Muse divine! rehearse with kindred zeal
What happened there—the battle of the wheel.

In olden times, ere on the banks of Nile
The Gallic warriors fed the crocodile—
Ere Atheist antiquaries banded there,
Discovered temples older than the air,
And proved, by hieroglyphic beasts and birds,
(The patriarchal ancestors of words;)
That earth was never made, nor mortal man,
And time's great clock, ay, without maker ran;
From famed Byzantium to old Athens came,
A four-wheeled waggon of stupendous frame,
With what intent Discord alone can tell;
Discord it was that sent it to Fouvelle.
While yet the axles with the journey glowed,
And the wheels' tracts shone recent on the road,
Spread wond'rous tidings, that th' unwarning French
With blood and water ravished Egypt drench—
Alarmed Fouvelle, the Turkish sabre flies,
And in his shed the cart abandoned lies;
The Turks, exulting at so rare a pledge,
For royal Egypt seized the four-wheeled sledge.
And when Britannia, with triumphant arms,
Restored the land to rapine and alarms,
The Turks to recompense, with generous heart,
Gave to her dragoman the fatal cart.
He, Greek-like, hoping thrice its price to gain,
Informs Dontitos, and bestows the wain.
Dontitos, chieftain of the cords and crew,
That from their frames the sacred sculptures drew.
Hence sprung the occasion, why tremendous Mars
Came down below, and filled the world with wars.
Wars that expelled the Cæzar from his throne,
Made pious Spain three powerless kings bemoan;
And stirring strong, in stomachs proud and high,
Forced Castlereagh at Canning to let fly.

What time Minerva, as the Muse has sung,
Seem'd Talleyrand with shrewd persuasive tongue;
Fouvelle to his Athenian home returned,
But Discord's four-wheeled gift long lost he mourned.
Pensive he walked Ilyssus' sedgy brink,
Ilyssus' stream, that a young drake might drink.
Scans the great columns of Olympian Jove,
And wistful eyes th' Acropolis above.
Reflects on noble enterprises crost,
And his Byzantian cart untimely lost.

One fatal morn, by chance or fortune led,
The wretched chief had left his sleepless bed,
And sadly passing Hadrian's stately arch,
Faced to the right and westward chose to march.
Eventful march! two oxen there he saw,
Driven by a Greek, a loaded waggon draw.
The unusual sight like magic charms his eyes,
Till captive in the nearing wain he spies
An orphan wheel of his lamented cart.
Surprise with quick electric roused his heart;
Courageous grasping firm his stick, he ran,
Stopped the two oxen, and menaced the man;
The man retreating in amazement, flew
And told Dontitos, for the oxen drew
Relics of Greece and fragments of her skill,
The worshipp'd offspring of Pentele's hill,
Pentele's hill, within whose quarried cave
The travellers ponder and their names engrave.
Dontitos started, seized his hat and cane,
White beaver hat with black cockade so plain,
Which Turks admiring called the moon of power,
And strode majestic from his lofty tower.
Th' approaching chief Fouvelle descries afar,
And bravely meets him half way from the car;
“That wheel is mine!” he points his stick and cries;
Dontitos strove to frown with both his eyes.
“That wheel is mine, I say,” Fouvelle repeats;
Dontitos answers—and his bosom beats—
“Your wheel!” “Yes, mine.” Dontitos cries, “It may,
But I will write my Lord,”—and turning, walked away.

As pleased the Muse the theme of strife would yield,
As the tired warrior quits the well-fought field
To join his friends and rural home again,
No more a tenant of the tented plain,
Could thoughts like his be mingled with the lay;
Spring's cheerful morn, or summer's jocund day,
Th' autumnal eve, when jibes sarcastic please,
And the long winter nights of tales and ease.

O, gentle Venus! at whose glowing shrine
The bard oft kneeling owns thy power divine,
For once thy triumphs he reluctant sings,
Her face the loth muse veiling with her wings;
But Juno comes,—with interdictions strong,
Forbids the thought, and cramps the sprightly song.

Apollo's wrath alone unsung remains;—
His was to celebrate in epic strains
These great achievements and success sublime,
Things unattempted or in prose or rhyme;
For this he chose th' heroic British verse,
Balanced the lines, and bade the bard rehearse.
Thus wrought the gods in old Athenia's cause,
Avenged their fanes, and will'd the world's applause.