THE ISLES OF GREECE

Taranaki Daily News, 1 August 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ISLES OF GREECE

THEIR TIE WITH BRITAIN

(By

“Animus.")

British Wireless. Rugby, July 17. The Prime Minister of Greece, M. Venizelos, yesterday took part in the ceremonies at Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of Lord Byron, which hjs been moved to the City of Nottingham to be maintained in perpetuity in memory of the poet. M. Venizelos said he brought the deep and since homage, gratitude and remembrance of the whole Greek nation. Modern Greek history had been enriched with the magic, of the English poet, and nobody could think of free Greece without thinking at the same time of Byron and his death for the freedom of Greece.

Reflection upon the bewildering continuity of world news —flickers and echoes that mostly fade quickly but sometimes linger—-yield varying fruit. We, in 1931, are hurrying onwards, and most news items are lost in the stagnant back reaches never to be resurrected. Yet there are some fragments, nurtured by reflection, which can yield unusual profit, lifting perspective beyond parochialism. This is largely due to the fact that human qualities, however old", are ever refreshing. About 100 years ago an Englishman lived who, contemporary Englishmen mistakenly said, was not English in spirit, and unworthy of the name 'because of his immorality. He lived 36 years and three months; did nothing materialistic to merit fame; knew many bitters; possibly spread as many; tasted anguish in many, guises; fled from his England, far from hid old loves, never to return in the flesh, and wandered, lonely in soul, the length of Europe; plunged himself into an immoral round in hopeless remprse, seeking oblivion from his gnawing aches; yet singing all the while in strong, clear tones that can move men yet, just as those tones and their significance moved decadent to strike for freedom from Turkish thrall. Those songs have never died away; they never shall be merely echoes. 'Something about the man and the poet in Byron has endured; and even the darker aspect of the man is more Understandable to-day, in an age of realism and psychological plumbing, than was the case when Byron lived. The dark and the degrading in Byron are not separable, a century after him, from the male majesty of his music. But the decadent must not be allowed to besmirch the bright -and beautiful. Everywhere are blemishes, no less in the observer than in the observed; and everywhere is Beauty. If we admire grand spirit, the spirit of Englishmen, we can be impressed with a beauty in Byron that M. Vfenize'los spoke about — the beauty seen by the Greek in London!

Byron! The soured genius, estranged Englishman, who, singing like a swan, rose from a bed of debauchery in Italy and turned his pen into an active sword striking for the freedom of a degenerate Greece. On July 13, 1823, he sailed for Greece to take part in the Greek campaign, and an active part he took. Nine months later, on April 19, 1824, he died of fever at Missolonghi. A monument there blazons forth the part he played upon the 'battle-field.

The isles of Greece! The, isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho lo.ved 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 nun, is set. The mountains look on Marathon—And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free: For standing on the Persians’ grave, I could not deem myself a slave. ’Tis something in the dearth of fame. Though link’d among a fetter’d race, To feel at least a patriots shame — Even as I sing—suffui.e my face; For what is left the poet here ? For Greeks a blush —for Greece a tear. t 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 now on Sunium’s steep. Where nothing, save the waves and I, 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 cf Samian wine! And, knowing all, one can fly safely lo the conclusion tha t in this case, in the web of this message springing upon the air from British Official Wireless, there existed a depth, of genuine feeling ■behind the cryptic message of -M. Venizelos. It was Byron who forged some bonds of European 'sentiment slowly to open from the seed stage into peeping buds of future fruit.

A prophet has spoken. Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian patriot, who was another of those who assisted, thanks to the vicissitudes of fate, to weld cosmopolitan spirit, wrote about .Byron: —“The day will come when Democracy will remem-, her all that it oq-es to Byron. Englandtoo will, I hope, one day remember the mission—'so entirely English, yet hitherto overlooked by her—which Byron fulfilled on the continent; the European role given by him to English literature, and the appreciation and sympathy for England which he a wakened am'ongst us. Before he came, all that was known of English literature- was the French translation of Shakespeare, and the anathema hurled by Voltaire against the ‘intoxicated barbarian.’ It is since Byron that we Continentalists have learned to study Shakespeare and other English writers. From him dates the sympathy of all the truehearted amongst us for this land of liberty.-He led the •genius of Britain on. a pilgrimage throughout all Europe.” Byron sang with a .flame fierce and bright; and in that intensity flickering with yellow tongues for Greece, there lay at the original base a red, deep flame for England—his English endearments, his heredity and his own child, whom he had not seen, during the seven years exile, nor saw at his death on a foreign battlefield. It is not the heart of an Englishman that does not beat a little faster when, understanding as much as has been revealed, it pictures Byron seven years overdue from England, and from his child, overdue in an effort to rescue his honour and to balance the debts of his spirit—and listens to him sing on his 36th 'birthday on the 'battlefield of Missolonghi, where he died three months later; —. My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are Kone; The worm, the canker and the grief Are mine alone! Tread those reviving ' passions down. Unworthy manhood !—unto thee " Indifferent should the smile or frown Of Beauty be. If thou regrett'st. thy youth, why live? The land of honourable death Is hereup to the field and give Away thy breath ! Seek out—less often sought than found— A soldier’s grave, for thee the best: Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest. And —in 1931 —in the hurry-scurry — what is a poet? Who is Rupert Brooke? Not dust, but England, laid away in ■a Greek isle. Who is Byron? Not dust on Missolonghi, nor immorality in Italy; but immortality in Europe. A , century has fled; Umi poet Uvea.