JOSEPH ADDISON.
* * * * *
THE DEATH OF LEONIDAS.
It was the wild midnight,--
A storm was on the sky;
The lightning gave its light,
And the thunder echoed by.
The torrent swept the glen,
The ocean lashed the shore;
Then rose the Spartan men,
To make their bed in gore!
Swift from the deluge ground
Three hundred took the shield;
Then, silent, gathered round
The leader of the field!
He spake no warrior word,
He bade no trumpet blow,
But the signal thunder roared,
And they rushed upon the foe.
The fiery element
Showed, with one mighty gleam,
Rampart, and flag, and tent,
Like the spectres of a dream.
All up the mountain's side,
All down the woody vale,
All by the rolling tide
Waved the Persian banners pale.
And foremost from the pass,
Among the slumbering band,
Sprang King Leonidas,
Like the lightning's living brand.
Then double darkness fell,
And the forest ceased its moan;
But there came a clash of steel,
And a distant dying groan.
Anon, a trumpet blew,
And a fiery sheet burst high,
That o'er the midnight threw
A blood-red canopy.
A host glared on the hill;
A host glared by the bay;
But the Greeks rushed onward still,
Like leopards in their play.
The air was all a yell,
And the earth was all a flame,
Where the Spartan's bloody steel
On the silken turbans came;
And still the Greek rushed on
Where the fiery torrent rolled,
Till like a rising sun
Shone Xerxes' tent of gold.
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