The Isles of Greece by Lord Byron

Introduction:

The Isles of Greece is a classic of nationalist poetry. Lord Byron, drawn into the romantic Greek War for Independence in the early 1800s, fought in the war and wrote some of its most popular literature. This piece invokes classical Greek heritage to reincarnate the greatness of independent Greece. It is meant to stir up feelings of patriotism and a yearning for the celebrated days of ancient Greece. Written in Iambic Tetrameter, the subject of the poem is a number of Grecian poets, places, and battles. Byron weaves through them to call up the support of every part of Greece. It is included partway through the third canto of Byron’s unfinished classic Don Juan but is frequently printed separately from it.

The Isles of Greece:

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece

    Where burning Sappho* loved and sung,          *Sappho: Greek lyric poetess.

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.

The Scian and the Teian muse,*          *Anacreon, the poet. Scythia was in southern Russia
   
  The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute,                 and Teos was in Ionia.

Have found the fame your shores refuse:

    Their place of birth alone is mute

To sounds which echo further west

Than your sires’ ‘Islands of the Blest’.

The mountains look on Marathon*—          * Site of a battle where the Athenians beat 

    And Marathon looks on the sea;                  Persia in the First Persian War.

And musing there an hour alone,

    I dream’d that Greece might still be free;

For standing on the Persians’ grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow

    Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;*          * The naval battle of Salamis occurred 

And ships, by thousands, lay below,                  during the Second Persian invasion

    And men in nations;—all were his!

He counted them at break of day—

And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,

    My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay* is tuneless now—          * lay = song

    The heroic bosom beats no more!

And must thy lyre, so long divine,

Degenerate into hands like mine?

’Tis something in the dearth of fame,

    Though link’d among a fetter’d race,

To feel at least a patriot’s shame,

    Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o’er days more blest?

    Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled.*          * Does Greece have to remain under foreign control?

Earth! render back from out thy breast

    A remnant of our Spartan dead!

Of the three hundred grant but three,

To make a new Thermopylae!*          * Battle where the Spartans held off the Persian

What, silent still? and silent all?                    advance, but were killed to the man.

    Ah! no;—the voices of the dead

Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,

    And answer, ‘Let one living head,

But one, arise,—we come, we come!’

’Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain—in vain: strike other chords;

    Fill high the cup with Samian wine!*          * Samos: Greek island known for its wine.

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

    And shed the blood of Scio’s vine:*          * Chios, known as Scio in English, is an island off Turkey.

Hark! rising to the ignoble call—                     It would soon suffer an ethnic cleansing.

How answers each bold Bacchanal!*          * Possibly the Festival of Bacchus.

You have the Pyrrhic* dance as yet;          * Pyrrhus of Tyrantum helped repel Roman invasion.

    Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx* gone?          * A formation of Greek hoplite warriors.

Of two such lessons, why forget

    The nobler and the manlier one?

You have the letters Cadmus* gave—          * The first Greek hero and the greatest slayer

Think ye he meant them for a slave?                     of men and monsters before Hercules.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

    We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon’s song* divine:          * Part of the melody became "The Star Spangled Banner."

A tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese*          * Chersonea, today known as Kherson in the Crimea. 

    Was freedom’s best and bravest friend;

That tyrant was Miltiades!*          * A Greek tyrant with a mixed bag of accomplishments.

    O that the present hour would lend

Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

    On Suli’s rock,* and Parga’s shore,¥          * Fortlike villages in western Greece.

Exists the remnant of a line                                   ¥ City in Epirus, on the Aegean sea.

    Such as the Doric* mothers bore;          * The Dorians were the progenitors of the Grecian peoples.

And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,

The Heracleidan* blood might own.          * People descended from Hercules.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks—*        * Don't trust the French. Spoken like a true Englishman.

    They have a king who buys and sells;

In native swords and native ranks

    The only hope of courage dwells:

But Turkish force and Latin fraud

Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

    Our virgins dance beneath the shade—

I see their glorious black eyes shine;

    But gazing on each glowing maid,

My own the burning tear-drop laves,

To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium’s* marbled steep,          * The southernmost part of Attica was

    Where nothing, save the waves and I,                    fortified by the citizens of Athens.

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;

    There, swan-like, let me sing and die:

A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine—

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine

Background:

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron was the epitome of the Romantic-era celebrity in his short life. From 1788 to 1824, he lived to the fullest while writing Romantic poems that were and are considered among the best the era had to offer. This poem was originally published in Don Juan, one of Byron’s most famous works. It was probably written between 1819-20 while Byron was living in Venice with his lover, Marianna Segati. Byron was at this time very interested in Arminian independence from the Ottoman Empire, and probably gained some interested in the nascent Greek independence movement at the same time. Nationalistic energy was very high in Europe at this time and the Ottoman Empire, made up of a number of different ethnic and religious groups, was prime for a split. Thus enters the poem “The Isles of Greece” in the third canto of Don Juan. In the novel, the poem is sung by a turncoat poet- a man who will play nearly anything for money. On another note, this canto also includes a scathing rebuke of Byron’s rival poets of the time, including Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. At this point, “The Isles of Greece” seemed to have been a patriotic poem for the enjoyment of the characters, calling up the grand days of the heroes of Greece.

Thus, in 1823, his fame already secured, Byron found himself bored, still living in Genoa. Edward Blaquiere, a chief proponent of Greek independence, found and convinced Byron that the independence movement was a worthwhile romantic unddertaking. He chartered a ship, the Hercules, and sailed for Missolonghi, Greece. Once there, he used his great wealth (He was more than a millionaire in the 1800s) to support the politician Alexandros Mavrokordatos who was among the chief Greek leaders at the time. Byron spread his money into numerous humanitarian causes alongside supporting Greek independence fighters, but his fortune was spread thin among the destitute nation’s needs. Unfortunately, his time in Greece was cut short before he could participate in any revolutionary battles. Shortly before a planned attack on the Turkish fort at Lepanto, he fell ill. Illnesses piled up and eventually, exacerbated by copious bloodletting, caused his death in April of 1824. Byron spent less than nine healthy months supporting the revolution, but he still left an impact on the Grecian people, writing poems promoting nationalism and uplifting the people through his humanitarian efforts. “The Isles of Greece” is among these primarily because it fit so well as a call for nationalist uprising. Byron, ever the revolutionary romantic, even while writing fiction, could pull in poignant and timely feelings of pride in the ancient Greek world to stir up nationalist ambition in his poetry. Thus, “The Isles of Greece” is a forerunner of Byron’s other Grecian nationalist prosody and a necessary addition to his canon.

 

Bibliography:

REVICTO. “Byron’s the Isles of Greece Revisited in 1897,” December 20, 2021. https://revictoproject.com/byrons-the-isles-of-greece-revisited-in-1897/.

Fögen, Thorsten, and Richard Warren, eds. Graeco-Roman Antiquity and the Idea of Nationalism in the 19th Century: Case Studies. Berlin: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2016. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1243268&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Analysis of Lord Byron’s Don Juan.” Literary Theory and Criticism, February 16, 2021. https://literariness.org/2021/02/16/analysis-of-lord-byrons-don-juan/.

St. Clair, William. That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. Open Book Publishers, 2008. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjt7w.

Analysis of The Isles of Greece by a Greek Student. “THE ISLES of GREECE. | British Literature Wiki.” Accessed November 14, 2022. https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-isles-of-greece/.

Widger, David. “The Project Gutenberg EBook of Don Juan, by Lord Byron.” Gutenberg.org, 2012. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21700/21700-h/21700-h.htm.