The Spartans’ March. [249]
[“The Spartans used not the trumpet in their march into battle, says Thucydides, because they wished not to excite the rage of their warriors. Their charging-step was made to the ‘Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders.’ The valour of a Spartan was too highly tempered to require a stunning or a rousing impulse. His spirit was like a steed too proud for the spur.”—Campbell, On the Elegiac Poetry of the Greeks.]
’Twas morn upon the Grecian hills,
Where peasants dress’d the vines;
Sunlight was on Cithæron’s rills,
Arcadia’s rocks and pines.
And brightly, through his reeds and flowers,
Eurotas wander’d by,
When a sound arose from Sparta’s towers
Of solemn harmony.
Was it the hunters’ choral strain
To the woodland-goddess pour’d?
Did virgin hands in Pallas’ fane
Strike the full-sounding chord?
But helms were glancing on the stream,
Spears ranged in close array,
And shields flung back a glorious beam
To the morn of a fearful day!
And the mountain-echoes of the land
Swell’d through the deep blue sky;
While to soft strains moved forth a band
Of men that moved to die.
They march’d not with the trumpet’s blast,
Nor bade the horn peal out;
And the laurel groves, as on they pass’d,
Rang with no battle-shout!
They ask’d no clarion’s voice to fire
Their souls with an impulse high;
But the Dorian reed and the Spartan lyre
For the sons of liberty!
And still sweet flutes their path around
Sent forth Æolian breath;
They needed not a sterner sound
To marshal them for death!
So moved they calmly to their field,
Thence never to return,
Save bearing back the Spartan shield,
Or on it proudly borne!
[249] Originally published in the Edinburgh Magazine.