Poetry
Marco Bozzaris
Fitz-Greene Halleck · 1825
Synopsis
At midnight, in his well-guarded tent, a Turkish chief dreams of Greece on its knees, of trophies and of a throne. At the same hour, in the shadow of the woods, Marco Bozzaris draws up his band of Souliotes on the very ground where the Persians fell at Plataea. An hour passes, and the Turk wakes to the cries of his sentries; Bozzaris launches his men, calling on them to strike for their altars, their hearths and the graves of their fathers. The poem then becomes a meditation on death and on the memory that Greece keeps of its heroes.
Context
The poem celebrates Markos Botsaris, a Souliote leader who fell at Karpenisi on the night of 21 August 1823 while leading the attack of a small force against the vanguard of a far more numerous Ottoman army. Published in 1825, it entered two years later its author's collection, Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems, and was immediately reprinted by many newspapers in the United States, England, Scotland and Ireland.
Who it is for
About a hundred lines, in stanzas of unequal length, with a martial movement; it helps to know who the Souliotes were. No French translation in the BnF catalogue.
Prizes and reception
One of its author's best-known poems, long chosen for classroom recitations.
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