The Isles of Greece – Stanza 11

The Isles of Greece – Stanza 11

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's* song divine:

He served—but several Polycrates*—

A tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.



- Byron is expressing a roller coaster of emotion, one moment high and the next a low. He shows anguish and hope, one followed by the other.
Here again he is beautifully moving back to optimism from the hopelessness portrayed by him in the previous stanza.
He continues to take us up and down which is what I believe he is feeling as well.

He is ever hopeful in this stanza, thus:

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!

Anacreon's* song/ Polycrates*:

Anacreon of Teos in Ionia, B.C. 563-478, migrated with his countrymen to Abdera, now the city of Avdhira in Greece, on the capture of Teos by the Persians, B.C. 540.

He then lived for some years at the court of Polycrates of Samos (who died B.C. 522), and afterwards, at that of Hipparchus of Athens, finally returning to Teos, where he died at the age of eighty-five.

Of his genuine poetry only a few inconsiderable fragments are left; and his wide fame rests chiefly on the pseudo-Anacreontea, a collection of songs chiefly of a convivial and amatory nature.

So:

A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.


Here, besides talking about Polycrates of Samos, he is also laying the foundation for his following stanza which talks about more kings of Greece, who were all tyrant kings.