GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON,
LORD BYRON, OF ROCHDALE,
IN THE COUNTY OF LANCASTER,
THE AUTHOR OF "CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE."
HE WAS BORN IN LONDON ON THE
22D OF JANUARY, 1788.
HE DIED AT MISSOLONGHI, IN WESTERN GREECE, ON THE
19TH OF APRIL, 1824,
ENGAGED IN THE GLORIOUS ATTEMPT TO RESTORE THAT
COUNTRY TO HER ANCIENT FREEDOM AND RENOWN.
HIS SISTER, THE HONOURABLE
AUGUSTA MARIA LEIGH,
PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS MEMORY.
From among the tributes that have been offered, in prose and verse, and in almost every language of Europe, to his memory, I shall select two which appear to me worthy of peculiar notice, as being, one of them,—so far as my limited scholarship will allow me to judge,—a simple and happy imitation of those laudatory inscriptions with which the Greece of other times honoured the tombs of her heroes; and the other as being the production of a pen, once engaged controversially against Byron, but not the less ready, as these affecting verses prove, to offer the homage of a manly sorrow and admiration at his grave.
[Greek:
Eis
Ton en tê Helladi têleutêsanta
Poiêtên
Ou to zên tanaon biou euklees oud' enarithmein
Arxaiax progonôn eunxneôn aretas
Ton d' eudaimonias moir' amphepei, hosper apantôn
Aien aristeuôn gignetai athanatos.—
Eudeis oun su, teknon, xaritôn ear? ouk eti thallei
Akmaios meleôn hêdupnoôn stephanos?—
Alla teon, tripophête, moron penphousin Aphênê,
Mousai, patris, Arês, Ellas, eleupheria.[1]]
[Footnote 1: By John Williams, Esq.—The following translation of this inscription will not be unacceptable to my readers:—
"Not length of life—not an illustrious birth,
Rich with the noblest blood of all the earth;—
Nought can avail, save deeds of high emprize,
Our mortal being to immortalise.
"Sweet child of song, thou deepest!—ne'er again
Shall swell the notes of thy melodious strain:
Yet, with thy country wailing o'er thy urn,
Pallas, the Muse, Mars, Greece, and Freedom mourn."
H.H. JOY.]
