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For stillness now—the stillness of the dead,
Hath wrapt that conflict's lone and awful scene,
And man's forsaken homes, in ruin spread,
Tell where the storming of the cliffs hath been.
And there, o'er wastes magnificently rude,
What race may rove, unconscious of the chain?
Those realms have now no desert unsubdued,
Where Freedom's banner may be rear'd again:
Sunk are the ancient dwellings of her fame,

Go, seek proud Sparta's monuments and fanes!
In scatter'd fragments o'er the vale they lie;
Of all they were not e'en enough remains
To lend their fall a mournful majesty.²⁴
Birth-place of those whose names we first revered
In song and story—temple of the free!
Oh thou, the stem, the haughty, and the fear'd,
Are such thy relics, and can this be thee?
Thou shouldst have left a giant-wreck behind,