--SCHILLER.

For ten long years the Greeks at Argos had watched nightly for
the beacon fires, lighted from point to point, that should announce
the doom of Troy. When, in the Agamemnon of AESCHYLUS, Clytemnes'tra
declares that Troy has fallen, and the chorus, half incredulous,
demands what messenger had brought the intelligence, she replies:

"A gleam--a gleam--from Ida's height
By the fire-god sent, it came;
From watch to watch it leaped, that light;
As a rider rode the flame!
It shot through the startled sky,
And the torch of that blazing glory
Old Lemnos caught on high
On its holy promontory,
And sent it on, the jocund sign,
To Athos, mount of Jove divine.
Wildly the while it rose from the isle,
So that the might of the journeying light
Skimmed over the back of the gleaming brine!
Farther and faster speeds it on,
Till the watch that keep Macis'tus steep
See it burst like a blazing sun!
Doth Macistus sleep
On his tower-clad steep?
No! rapid and red doth the wildfire sweep:
It flashes afar on the wayward stream
Of the wild Euri'pus, the rushing beam!
It rouses the light on Messa'pion's height,