Such is the aspect of this shore,
   ’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
   So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
   We start, for soul is wanting there.
   Hers is the loveliness in death,
   That parts not quite with parting breath;
   But beauty with that fearful bloom,
   That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
   Expression’s last receding ray,
   A gilded halo hov’ring round decay,
   The farewell beam of feeling past away.
   Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
   Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish’d earth.

At that time Lord Byron, if he did pity the condition of the Greeks, evinced very little confidence in the resurrection of the nation, even although symptoms of change and reanimation were here and there perceptible, and could not have escaped his observation.  Greece had indeed been so long ruined, that even her desolation was then in a state of decay.  The new cycle in her fortunes had certainly not commenced, but it was manifest, by many a sign, that the course of the old was concluding, and that the whole country felt the assuring auguries of undivulged renovation.  The influence of that period did not, however, penetrate the bosom of the poet; and when he first quitted Athens, assuredly he cared as little about the destinies of the Greeks, as he did for those of the Portuguese and Spaniards, when he arrived at Gibraltar.