Albania

(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)

  LAND of Albania! where Iskander rose,

  Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,

  And he, his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes

  Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize:

  Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes

  On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!

  The cross descends, thy minarets arise,

  And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen,

Through many a cypress-grove within each city’s ken.