"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set."
Byron's statue stands in the square, surrounded by evergreens; his
picture is in the Ecole Polytechnique, and his memory and his songs
are revered throughout all Greece. How her beauty tore at his soul!
How her love for freedom met with an echo in his own heart! No wonder
he sang, with such a theme! It was enough to give a stone song and the
very rocks utterance.
It was Sunday, and as we drove through the clean, white streets,
feeling absolutely hushed with the beauty which assailed us on every
side, suddenly we heard the sound of music, mournful as a dirge--a
martial dirge. And presently we saw approaching us the saddest, most
touching yet awful procession I ever beheld. It was a military
funeral. First came the band; then came two men bearing aloft the
cover to the casket, wreathed in flowers and streaming with crape.
Then, borne in an open coffin by four young officers of his staff,
with bands of crape on their arms and knots of crape on their swords,
was the dead officer, an old, gray-haired general, dressed in the full
uniform of the Greek army, with his browned, wrinkled, deep-lined
hands crossed over his sword.
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