Act Iv. Sc. 3 (_ivan_, 1816, P. 64).

According to Moore, this passage in The Corsair, as Byron seemed to fear, was included by "some scribblers"--i.e. the "lumbering Goth" (see John Bull's Letter), A. A. Watts, in the Literary Gazette, February and March, 1821--among his supposed plagiarisms. Sotheby informed Moore that his lines had been written, though not published, before the appearance of the Corsair. The Confession, and Orestes, reappeared with three hitherto unpublished tragedies, Ivan, The Death of Darnley, and Zamorin and Zama, under the general title, Five Unpublished Tragedies, in 1814.

The story of the critic John Dennis (1657-1734) and the "thunder" is related in Cibber's Lives, iv. 234. Dennis was, or feigned to be, the inventor of a new method of producing stage-thunder, by troughs of wood and stops. Shortly after a play (Appius and Virginia) which he had put upon the stage had been withdrawn, he was present at a performance of Macbeth, at which the new "thunder" was inaugurated. "That is my thunder, by God!" exclaimed Dennis. "The villains will play my thunder, but not my plays."--Dict. Nat. Biog., art. "Dennis."]

{282} But speak not now--on thine and on my head O'erhangs the sabre----.--[MS.]

{284} Night wears apace--and I have need of rest.--[MS.]

{286} A variant of lines 1596, 1597 first appeared in MS. in a revise numbering 1780 lines--

Blood he had viewed, could view unmoved--but then It reddened on the scarfs and swords of men.

In a later revise line 1597 was altered to--

It flowed a token of the deeds of men.

{287} His silent thoughts the present, past review.--[MS. erased.]

Fell quenched in tears of more than misery.--[MS.]

{288} They count the Dragon-teeth around her tier.--[MS.]

{289} Whom blood appalled not, their rude eyes perplex.--[MS. erased.]

"And I the cause--for whom were given Her peace on earth, her hopes in heaven." Marmion, Canto III. stanza xvii. lines 9, 10.]

{290} "Gulnare"--she answered not again--"Gulnare" She raised her glance--her sole reply was there.--[M.S.]

That sought from form so fair no more than this That kiss--the first that Frailty wrung from Faith That last--on lips so warm with rosy breath.--[MS. erased.]

As he had fanned them with his rosy wing.--[MS.]

{291} Oh! none so prophesy the joys of home As they who hail it from the Ocean-foam.--[MS.] Oh--what can sanctify the joys of home Like the first glance from Ocean's troubled foam.--[Revise.]

{292} In the Levant it is the custom to strew flowers on the bodies of the dead, and in the hands of young persons to place a nosegay.

{293} [Compare--"And--but for that sad shrouded eye," etc. and the whole of the famous passage in the Giaour (line 68, sq., vide ante, p. 88), beginning--"He who hath bent him o'er the dead."]

Escaped the idle braid that could not bind.--[MS.]

By the first glance on that cold soulless brow.--[MS.]

{294} And the night cometh--'tis the same to him.--[M.S.]

{295} [Byron had, perhaps, explored the famous stalactite cavern in the island of Anti-Paros, which is described by Tournefort, Clarke, Choiseul-Gouffier, and other travellers.]

{296} That the point of honour which is represented in one instance of Conrad's character has not been carried beyond the bounds of probability, may perhaps be in some degree confirmed by the following anecdote of a brother buccaneer in the year 1814:--"Our readers have all seen the account of the enterprise against the pirates of Barataria; but few, we believe, were informed of the situation, history, or nature of that establishment. For the information of such as were unacquainted with it, we have procured from a friend the following interesting narrative of the main facts, of which he has personal knowledge, and which cannot fail to interest some of our readers:--Barataria is a bayou, or a narrow arm of the Gulf of Mexico; it runs through a rich but very flat country, until it reaches within a mile of the Mississippi river, fifteen miles below the city of New Orleans. This bayou has branches almost innumerable, in which persons can lie concealed from the severest scrutiny. It communicates with three lakes which lie on the south-west side, and these, with the lake of the same name, and which lies contiguous to the sea, where there is an island formed by the two arms of this lake and the sea. The east and west points of this island were fortified, in the year 1811, by a band of pirates, under the command of one Monsieur La Fitte. A large majority of these outlaws are of that class of the population of the state of Louisiana who fled from the island of St. Domingo during the troubles there, and took refuge in the island of Cuba; and when the last war between France and Spain commenced, they were compelled to leave that island with the short notice of a few days. Without ceremony they entered the United States, the most of them the state of Louisiana, with all the negroes they had possessed in Cuba. They were notified by the Governor of that State of the clause in the constitution which forbade the importation of slaves; but, at the same time, received the assurance of the Governor that he would obtain, if possible, the approbation of the General Government for their retaining this property.--The island of Barataria is situated about lat. 29 deg. 15 min., lon. 92. 30.; and is as remarkable for its health as for the superior scale and shell fish with which its waters abound. The chief of this horde, like Charles de Moor, had, mixed with his many vices, some transcendant virtues. In the year 1813, this party had, from its turpitude and boldness, claimed the attention of the Governor of Louisiana; and to break up the establishment he thought proper to strike at the head. He therefore, offered a reward of 500 dollars for the head of Monsieur La Fitte, who was well known to the inhabitants of the city of New Orleans, from his immediate connection, and his once having been a fencing-master in that city of great reputation, which art he learnt in Buonaparte's army, where he was a captain. The reward which was offered by the Governor for the head of La Fitte was answered by the offer of a reward from the latter of 15,000 for the head of the Governor. The Governor ordered out a company to march from the city to La Fitte's island, and to burn and destroy all the property, and to bring to the city of New Orleans all his banditti. This company, under the command of a man who had been the intimate associate of this bold Captain, approached very near to the fortified island, before he saw a man, or heard a sound, until he heard a whistle, not unlike a boatswain's call. Then it was he found himself surrounded by armed men who had emerged from the secret avenues which led to this bayou. Here it was that this modern Charles de Moor developed his few noble traits; for to this man, who had come to destroy his life and all that was dear to him, he not only spared his life, but offered him that which would have made the honest soldier easy for the remainder of his days, which was indignantly refused. He then, with the approbation of his captor, returned to the city. This circumstance, and some concomitant events, proved that this band of pirates was not to be taken by land. Our naval force having always been small in that quarter, exertions for the destruction of this illicit establishment could not be expected from them until augmented; for an officer of the navy, with most of the gun-boats on that station, had to retreat from an overwhelming force of La Fitte's. So soon as the augmentation of the navy authorised an attack, one was made; the overthrow of this banditti has been the result: and now this almost invulnerable point and key to New Orleans is clear of an enemy, it is to be hoped the government will hold it by a strong military force."--American Newspaper.

In [the Rev. Mark] Noble's continuation of "Granger's Biographical History" [of England, 1806, iii. 68], there is a singular passage in his account of Archbishop Blackbourne [1658-1743]; and as in some measure connected with the profession of the hero of the foregoing poem, I cannot resist the temptation of extracting it.--"There is something mysterious in the history and character of Dr. Blackbourne. The former is but imperfectly known; and report has even asserted he was a buccaneer; and that one of his brethren in that profession having asked, on his arrival in England, what had become of his old chum, Blackbourne, was answered, he is Archbishop of York. We are informed, that Blackbourne was installed sub-dean of Exeter in 1694, which office he resigned in 1702; but after his successor Lewis Barnet's death, in 1704, he regained it. In the following year he became dean; and in 1714 held with it the archdeanery [i.e. archdeaconry] of Cornwall. He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, February 24, 1716; and translated to York, November 28, 1724, as a reward, according to court scandal, for uniting George I. to the Duchess of Munster. This, however, appears to have been an unfounded calumny. As archbishop he behaved with great prudence, and was equally respectable as the guardian of the revenues of the see. Rumour whispered he retained the vices of his youth, and that a passion for the fair sex formed an item in the list of his weaknesses; but so far from being convicted by seventy witnesses, he does not appear to have been directly criminated by one. In short, I look upon these aspersions as the effects of mere malice. How is it possible a buccaneer should have been so good a scholar as Blackbourne certainly was? He who had so perfect a knowledge of the classics (particularly of the Greek tragedians), as to be able to read them with the same ease as he could Shakespeare, must have taken great pains to acquire the learned languages; and have had both leisure and good masters. But he was undoubtedly educated at Christ-church College, Oxford. He is allowed to have been a pleasant man; this, however, was turned against him, by its being said, 'he gained more hearts than souls.'"

* * * * *

"The only voice that could soothe the passions of the savage (Alphonso III.) was that of an amiable and virtuous wife, the sole object of his love; the voice of Donna Isabella, the daughter of the Duke of Savoy, and the grand-daughter of Philip II. King of Spain. Her dying words sunk deep into his memory [A.D. 1626, August 22]; his fierce spirit melted into tears; and, after the last embrace, Alphonso retired into his chamber to bewail his irreparable loss, and to meditate on the vanity of human life."--Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works [1837, p. 831].

ODE TO NAPOLEON

BUONAPARTE.

"Expende Annibalem:--quot libras in duce summo Invenies?" Juvenal, [Lib. iv.] Sat. x. line 147.

"The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians, and by the Provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of the public felicity. * * By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life about five years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an Exile, till!!!"--Gibbon's Decline and Fall, two vols. notes by Milman, i. 979.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

The dedication of the Corsair, dated January 2, 1814, contains one of Byron's periodical announcements that he is about, for a time, to have done with authorship--some years are to elapse before he will again "trespass on public patience."

Three months later he was, or believed himself to be, in the same mind. In a letter to Moore, dated April 9, 1814 (Letters, 1899, iii. 64), he writes, "No more rhyme for--or rather, from--me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." He had already--Journal, April 8 (Letters, 1898, ii. 408)--heard a rumour "that his poor little pagod, Napoleon" was "pushed off his pedestal," and before or after he began his letter to Moore he must have read an announcement in the Gazette Extraordinary (April 9, 1814--the abdication was signed April 11) that Napoleon had abdicated the "throne of the world," and declined upon the kingdom of Elba. On the next day, April 10, he wrote two notes to Murray, to inform him that he had written an "ode on the fall of Napoleon," that Murray could print it or not as he pleased; but that if it appeared by itself, it was to be published anonymously. A first edition consisting of fifteen stanzas, and numbering fourteen pages, was issued on the 16th of April, 1814. A second edition followed immediately, but as publications of less than a sheet were liable to the stamp tax on newspapers, at Murray's request, another stanza, the fifth, was inserted in a later (between the second and the twelfth) edition, and, by this means, the pamphlet was extended to seventeen pages. The concluding stanzas xvii., xviii., xix., which Moore gives in a note (Life, p. 249), were not printed in Byron's lifetime, but were first included, in a separate poem, in Murray's edition of 1831, and first appended to the Ode in the seventeen-volume edition of 1832.

Although he had stipulated that the Ode should be published anonymously, Byron had no objection to "its being said to be mine." There was, in short, no secret about it, and notices on the whole favourable appeared in the Morning Chronicle, April 21, in the Examiner, April 24 (in which Leigh Hunt combated Byron's condemnation of Buonaparte for not "dying as honour dies"), and in the Anti-Jacobin for May, 1814 (Letters, 1899, iii. 73, note 3).

Byron's repeated resolutions and promises to cease writing and publishing, which sound as if they were only made to be broken, are somewhat exasperating, and if, as he pleaded in his own behalf, the occasion (of Napoleon's abdication) was physically irresistible, it is to be regretted that he did not swerve from his self-denying ordinance to better purpose. The note of disillusionment and disappointment in the Ode is but an echo of the sentiments of the "general." Napoleon on his own "fall" is more original and more interesting: "Il ceda," writes Leonard Gallois (Histoire de Napoleon d'apres lui-meme, 1825, pp. 546, 547), "non sans de grands combats interieurs, et la dicta en ces termes.

'Les puissances alliees ayant proclame que l'empereur Napoleon etait le seul obstacle au retablissement, de la paix en Europe, l'empereur Napoleon fidele a son serment, declare qu'il renonce, pour lui et ses heritiers, aux trones de France et d'Italie, parce qu'il n'est aucun sacrifice personnel, meme celui de la vie, qu'il ne soit pret a faire a l'interet de la France.

Napoleon.'"

ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

'Tis done--but yesterday a King! And armed with Kings to strive-- And now thou art a nameless thing: So abject--yet alive! Is this the man of thousand thrones, Who strewed our earth with hostile bones, And can he thus survive? Since he, miscalled the Morning Star, Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

II.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind Who bowed so low the knee? By gazing on thyself grown blind, Thou taught'st the rest to see. With might unquestioned,--power to save,-- Thine only gift hath been the grave To those that worshipped thee; Nor till thy fall could mortals guess Ambition's less than littleness!

III.

Thanks for that lesson--it will teach To after-warriors more Than high Philosophy can preach, And vainly preached before. That spell upon the minds of men Breaks never to unite again, That led them to adore Those Pagod things of sabre-sway, With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.

IV.

The triumph, and the vanity, The rapture of the strife-- The earthquake-voice of Victory, To thee the breath of life; The sword, the sceptre, and that sway Which man seemed made but to obey, Wherewith renown was rife-- All quelled!--Dark Spirit! what must be The madness of thy memory!

The Desolator desolate! The Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A Suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a Prince--or live a slave-- Thy choice is most ignobly brave!

VI.

He who of old would rend the oak, Dreamed not of the rebound; Chained by the trunk he vainly broke-- Alone--how looked he round? Thou, in the sternness of thy strength, An equal deed hast done at length. And darker fate hast found: He fell, the forest prowlers' prey; But thou must eat thy heart away!

VII.

The Roman, when his burning heart Was slaked with blood of Rome, Threw down the dagger--dared depart, In savage grandeur, home.-- He dared depart in utter scorn Of men that such a yoke had borne, Yet left him such a doom! His only glory was that hour Of self-upheld abandoned power.

VIII.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway Had lost its quickening spell, Cast crowns for rosaries away, An empire for a cell; A strict accountant of his beads, A subtle disputant on creeds, His dotage trifled well: Yet better had he neither known A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.

IX.

But thou--from thy reluctant hand The thunderbolt is wrung-- Too late thou leav'st the high command To which thy weakness clung; All Evil Spirit as thou art, It is enough to grieve the heart To see thine own unstrung; To think that God's fair world hath been The footstool of a thing so mean;

And Earth hath spilt her blood for him, Who thus can hoard his own! And Monarchs bowed the trembling limb, And thanked him for a throne! Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear, When thus thy mightiest foes their fear In humblest guise have shown. Oh! ne'er may tyrant leave behind A brighter name to lure mankind!

XI.

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore, Nor written thus in vain-- Thy triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain: If thou hadst died as Honour dies, Some new Napoleon might arise, To shame the world again-- But who would soar the solar height, To set in such a starless night?

XII.

Weigh'd in the balance, hero dust Is vile as vulgar clay; Thy scales, Mortality! are just To all that pass away: But yet methought the living great Some higher sparks should animate, To dazzle and dismay: Nor deem'd Contempt could thus make mirth Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.

XIII.

And she, proud Austria's mournful flower, Thy still imperial bride; How bears her breast the torturing hour? Still clings she to thy side? Must she too bend, must she too share Thy late repentance, long despair, Thou throneless Homicide? If still she loves thee, hoard that gem,-- 'Tis worth thy vanished diadem!

XIV.

Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle, And gaze upon the sea; That element may meet thy smile-- It ne'er was ruled by thee! Or trace with thine all idle hand In loitering mood upon the sand That Earth is now as free! That Corinth's pedagogue hath now Transferred his by-word to thy brow.

XV.

Thou Timour! in his captive's cage What thoughts will there be thine, While brooding in thy prisoned rage? But one--"The world was mine!" Unless, like he of Babylon, All sense is with thy sceptre gone, Life will not long confine That spirit poured so widely forth-- So long obeyed--so little worth!

XVI.

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven, Wilt thou withstand the shock? And share with him, the unforgiven, His vulture and his rock! Foredoomed by God--by man accurst, And that last act, though not thy worst, The very Fiend's arch mock; He in his fall preserved his pride, And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!

XVII.

There was a day--there was an hour, While earth was Gaul's--Gaul thine-- When that immeasurable power Unsated to resign Had been an act of purer fame Than gathers round Marengo's name And gilded thy decline, Through the long twilight of all time, Despite some passing clouds of crime.

XVIII.

But thou forsooth must be a King And don the purple vest, As if that foolish robe could wring Remembrance from thy breast. Where is that faded garment? where The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear, The star, the string, the crest? Vain froward child of Empire! say, Are all thy playthings snatched away?

XIX.

Where may the wearied eye repose When gazing on the Great; Where neither guilty glory glows, Nor despicable state? Yes--One--the first--the last--the best-- The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom Envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make man blush there was but one!

FOOTNOTES:

{301} [ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. By----London: Printed for J. Murray, Albemarle Street, By W. Bulmer and Co. Cleveland-Row, St. James's, 1814.--First Proof, title-page.]

"Produce the urn that Hannibal contains, And weigh the mighty dust which yet remains; And is This All!"

"I know not that this was ever done in the old world; at least with regard to Hannibal: but in the statistical account of Scotland, I find that Sir John Paterson had the curiosity to collect and weigh the ashes of a person discovered a few years since in the parish of Eccles.... Wonderful to relate, he found the whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! And is This All? Alas! the quot libras itself is a satirical exaggeration."--Gifford's Translation of Juvenal (ed. 1817), ii. 26, 27.

The motto, "Expende--Quot Libras In Duce Summo Invenies," was inscribed on one side of the silver urn presented by Byron to Walter Scott in April, 1815. (See Letters, 1899, iii. 414, Appendix IV.)]

{305} ["I don't know--but I think I, even I (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende--quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil;--the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'"--Journal, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 409.]

{306} [Stanzas ii. and iii. were added in Proof iv.]

"Certaminis gaudia"--the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus. ["Nisi ad certaminis hujus gaudia praeparasset."--Attilae Oratio ad Hunnos, caput xxxix., Appendix ad Opera Cassiodori, Migne, lxix. 1279.]

{307} [Added in Proof v.]

{308} Sylla. [We find the germ of this stanza in the Diary of the evening before it was written: "I mark this day! Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. 'Excellent well.' Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged, and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes--the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too--Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise--Charles the Fifth but so so; but Napoleon worst of all."--Journal, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 409.]

{309} [Charles V. resigned the kingdom to his son Philip, circ. October, 1555, and the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, August 27, 1556, and entered the Jeronymite Monastery of St. Justus at Placencia in Estremadura. Before his death (September 21, 1558) he dressed himself in his shroud, was laid in his coffin, "joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral."--Robertson's Charles V., 1798, iv. 180, 205, 254.]

{310} But who would rise in brightest day To set without one parting ray?--[MS.]

----common clay.--[First Proof.]

{311} [Count Albert Adam de Neipperg, born 1774, an officer in the Austrian Army, and, 1811, Austrian envoy to the Court of Stockholm, was presented to Marie Louise a few days after Napoleon's abdication, became her chamberlain; and, according to the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, "plus tard il l'epousa." The count, who is said to have been remarkably plain (he had lost an eye in a scrimmage with the French), died April 12, 1829.]

And look along the sea; That element may meet thy smile, For Albion kept it free. But gaze not on the land for there Walks crownless Power with temples bare And shakes the head at thee And Corinth's Pedagogue hath now.--[Proof ii.]

Or sit thee down upon the sand And trace with thine all idle hand.-- [A final correction made in Proof ii.]

{312} The cage of Bajazet, by order of Tamerlane.

There Timour in his captive cage.--[First Proof.]

Prometheus.

He suffered for kind acts to men Who have not seen his like again, At least of kingly stock Since he was good, and thou but great Thou canst not quarrel with thy fate.--[First Proof, stanza x.]

{313} "O! 'tis the spite of hell, the fiend's arch-mock, To lip a wanton in a secure couch, And to suppose her chaste!" Othello, act iv. sc. 1, lines 69-71.

A consultation of numerous lives and memoirs of Napoleon has not revealed the particulars of this "unworthy amour." It is possible that Murray may have discovered the source of Byron's allusion among the papers "in the possession of one of Napoleon's generals, a friend of Miss Waldie," which were offered him "for purchase and publication," in 1815.--See Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 279.]

And--were he mortal had as proudly died,--[Alteration in First Proof.]

"Unlike the offence, though like would be the fate-- His to give life, but thine to desolate; He stole from Heaven the flame for which he fell, Whilst thine be stolen from thy native Hell."

--Attached to Proof v., April 25.]

While earth was Gallia's, Gallia thine.--[MS.]

{314} Where is that tattered----.--[MS.]

----the laurel-circled crest.--[MS.]

Where may the eye of man repose.--[MS.]

Alas! and must there be but one!--[MS.]

"Your obedient servant,

"J. R."

"Yes! better to have stood the storm, A Monarch to the last! Although that heartless fireless form Had crumbled in the blast: Than stoop to drag out Life's last years, The nights of terror, days of tears For all the splendour past; Then,--after ages would have read Thy awful death with more than dread.

"A lion in the conquering hour! In wild defeat a hare! Thy mind hath vanished with thy power, For Danger brought despair. The dreams of sceptres now depart, And leave thy desolated heart The Capitol of care! Dark Corsican, 'tis strange to trace Thy long deceit and last disgrace." Morning Chronicle, April 27, 1814.]

LARA:

A TALE.

INTRODUCTION TO LARA

The MS. of Lara is dated May 14, 1814. The opening lines, which were not prefixed to the published poem, and were first printed in Murray's Magazine (January, 1887), are of the nature of a Dedication. They were probably written a few days after the well-known song, "I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name," which was enclosed to Moore in a letter dated May 4, 1814. There can be little doubt that both song and dedication were addressed to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, and that Lara, like the Corsair and the Bride of Abydos, was written con amore, and because the poet was "eating his heart away."

By the 14th of June Byron was able to announce to Moore that "Lara was finished, and that he had begun copying." It was written, owing to the length of the London season, "amidst balls and fooleries, and after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the sovereigns" (Letter to Moore, June 8, 1822, Life, p. 561).

By way of keeping his engagement--already broken by the publication of the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte--not to "trespass on public patience," Byron began by protesting (June 14) that Lara was not to be published separately, but "might be included in a third volume now collecting." A fortnight later (June 27) an interchange of unpublished poems between himself and Rogers, "two cantos of darkness and dismay" in return for a privately printed copy of Jacqueline, who is "all grace and softness and poetry" (Letter to Rogers, Letters, 1899, iii. 101), suggested another and happier solution of the difficulty, a coalescing with Rogers, and, if possible, Moore (Life, 1892, p. 257, note 2), "into a joint invasion of the public" (Letter to Moore, July 8, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 102). But Rogers hesitated, and Moore refused to embark on so doubtful a venture, with the result that, as late as the 3rd of August, Byron thought fit to remonstrate with Murray for "advertising Lara and Jacqueline," and confessed to Moore that he was "still demurring and delaying and in a fuss" (Letters, 1899, iii. 115, 119). Murray knew his man, and, though he waited for Byron's formal and ostensibly reluctant word of command, "Out with Lara, since it must be" (August 5, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 122), he admitted (August 6, Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 230) that he had "anticipated his consent," and "had done everything but actually deliver the copies of Lara." "The moment," he adds, "I received your letter, for for it I waited, I cut the last cord of my aerial work, and at this instant 6000 copies are sold." Lara, a Tale; Jacqueline, a Tale, was published on Saturday, August 6, 1814.

Jacqueline is a somewhat insipid pastoral, betraying the influence of the Lake School, more especially Coleridge, on a belated and irresponsive disciple, and wholly out of place as contrast or foil to the melodramatic Lara.

No sooner had the "lady," as Byron was pleased to call her, played her part as decoy, than she was discharged as emerita. A week after publication (August 12, 1814, Letters, iii. 125) Byron told Moore that "Murray talks of divorcing Larry and Jacky--a bad sign for the authors, who will, I suppose, be divorced too.... Seriously, I don't care a cigar about it." The divorce was soon pronounced, and, contrary to Byron's advice (September 2, 1814, Letters, iii. 131), at least four separate editions of Lara were published during the autumn of 1814.

The "advertisement" to Lara and Jacqueline contains the plain statement that "the reader ... may probably regard it [Lara] as a sequel to the Corsair"--an admission on the author's part which forestalls and renders nugatory any prolonged discussion on the subject. It is evident that Lara is Conrad, and that Kaled, the "darkly delicate" and mysterious page, whose "hand is femininely white," is Gulnare in a transparent and temporary disguise.

If the facts which the "English Gentleman in the Greek Military Service" (Life, Writings, etc., of Lord Byron, 1825, i. 191-201) gives in detail with regard to the sources of the Corsair are not wholly imaginary, it is possible that the original Conrad's determination to "quit so horrible a mode of life" and return to civilization may have suggested to Byron the possible adventures and fate of a grand seigneur who had played the pirate in his time, and resumed his ancestral dignities only to be detected and exposed by some rival or victim of his wild and lawless youth.

Lara was reviewed together with the Corsair, by George Agar Ellis in the Quarterly Review for July, 1814, vol. xi. p. 428; and in the Portfolio, vol. xiv. p. 33.

LARA.

CANTO THE FIRST.

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain, And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain; He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord, The long self-exiled Chieftain, is restored: There be bright faces in the busy hall, Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze; And gay retainers gather round the hearth, With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 10

II.

The Chief of Lara is returned again: And why had Lara crossed the bounding main? Left by his Sire, too young such loss to know, Lord of himself,--that heritage of woe, That fearful empire which the human breast But holds to rob the heart within of rest!-- With none to check, and few to point in time The thousand paths that slope the way to crime; Then, when he most required commandment, then Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men. 20 It skills not, boots not step by step to trace His youth through all the mazes of its race; Short was the course his restlessness had run, But long enough to leave him half undone.

III.

And Lara left in youth his father-land; But from the hour he waved his parting hand Each trace waxed fainter of his course, till all Had nearly ceased his memory to recall. His sire was dust, his vassals could declare, 'Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there; 30 Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew Cold in the many, anxious in the few. His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name, His portrait darkens in its fading frame, Another chief consoled his destined bride, The young forgot him, and the old had died; "Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir, And sighs for sables which he must not wear. A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place; 40 But one is absent from the mouldering file, That now were welcome in that Gothic pile.

IV.

He comes at last in sudden loneliness, And whence they know not, why they need not guess; They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er Not that he came, but came not long before: No train is his beyond a single page, Of foreign aspect, and of tender age. Years had rolled on, and fast they speed away To those that wander as to those that stay; 50 But lack of tidings from another clime Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time. They see, they recognise, yet almost deem The present dubious, or the past a dream.

He lives, nor yet is past his Manhood's prime, Though seared by toil, and something touched by Time; His faults, whate'er they were, if scarce forgot, Might be untaught him by his varied lot; Nor good nor ill of late were known, his name Might yet uphold his patrimonial fame: 60 His soul in youth was haughty, but his sins No more than pleasure from the stripling wins; And such, if not yet hardened in their course, Might be redeemed, nor ask a long remorse.

And they indeed were changed--'tis quickly seen, Whate'er he be, 'twas not what he had been: That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last, And spake of passions, but of passion past: The pride, but not the fire, of early days, Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise; 70 A high demeanour, and a glance that took Their thoughts from others by a single look; And that sarcastic levity of tongue, The stinging of a heart the world hath stung, That darts in seeming playfulness around, And makes those feel that will not own the wound; All these seemed his, and something more beneath Than glance could well reveal, or accent breathe. Ambition, Glory, Love, the common aim, That some can conquer, and that all would claim, 80 Within his breast appeared no more to strive, Yet seemed as lately they had been alive; And some deep feeling it were vain to trace At moments lightened o'er his livid face.

VI.

Not much he loved long question of the past, Nor told of wondrous wilds, and deserts vast, In those far lands where he had wandered lone, And--as himself would have it seem--unknown: Yet these in vain his eye could scarcely scan, Nor glean experience from his fellow man; 90 But what he had beheld he shunned to show, As hardly worth a stranger's care to know; If still more prying such inquiry grew, His brow fell darker, and his words more few.

VII.

Not unrejoiced to see him once again, Warm was his welcome to the haunts of men; Born of high lineage, linked in high command, He mingled with the Magnates of his land; Joined the carousals of the great and gay, And saw them smile or sigh their hours away; 100 But still he only saw, and did not share, The common pleasure or the general care; He did not follow what they all pursued With hope still baffled still to be renewed; Nor shadowy Honour, nor substantial Gain, Nor Beauty's preference, and the rival's pain: Around him some mysterious circle thrown Repelled approach, and showed him still alone; Upon his eye sat something of reproof, That kept at least Frivolity aloof; 110 And things more timid that beheld him near In silence gazed, or whispered mutual fear; And they the wiser, friendlier few confessed They deemed him better than his air expressed.

VIII.

Twas strange--in youth all action and all life, Burning for pleasure, not averse from strife; Woman--the Field--the Ocean, all that gave Promise of gladness, peril of a grave, In turn he tried--he ransacked all below, And found his recompense in joy or woe, 120 No tame, trite medium; for his feelings sought In that intenseness an escape from thought: The Tempest of his Heart in scorn had gazed On that the feebler Elements hath raised; The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high, And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky: Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme, How woke he from the wildness of that dream! Alas! he told not--but he did awake To curse the withered heart that would not break. 130

IX.

Books, for his volume heretofore was Man, With eye more curious he appeared to scan, And oft in sudden mood, for many a day, From all communion he would start away: And then, his rarely called attendants said, Through night's long hours would sound his hurried tread O'er the dark gallery, where his fathers frowned In rude but antique portraiture around: They heard, but whispered--"that must not be known-- The sound of words less earthly than his own. 140 Yes, they who chose might smile, but some had seen They scarce knew what, but more than should have been. Why gazed he so upon the ghastly head Which hands profane had gathered from the dead, That still beside his opened volume lay, As if to startle all save him away? Why slept he not when others were at rest? Why heard no music, and received no guest? All was not well, they deemed--but where the wrong? Some knew perchance--but 'twere a tale too long; 150 And such besides were too discreetly wise, To more than hint their knowledge in surmise; But if they would--they could"--around the board Thus Lara's vassals prattled of their lord.

It was the night--and Lara's glassy stream The stars are studding, each with imaged beam; So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray, And yet they glide like Happiness away; Reflecting far and fairy-like from high The immortal lights that live along the sky: 160 Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree, And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee; Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove, And Innocence would offer to her love. These deck the shore; the waves their channel make In windings bright and mazy like the snake. All was so still, so soft in earth and air, You scarce would start to meet a spirit there; Secure that nought of evil could delight To walk in such a scene, on such a night! 170 It was a moment only for the good: So Lara deemed, nor longer there he stood, But turned in silence to his castle-gate; Such scene his soul no more could contemplate: Such scene reminded him of other days, Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze, Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now-- No--no--the storm may beat upon his brow, Unfelt, unsparing--but a night like this, A night of Beauty, mocked such breast as his. 180

XI.

He turned within his solitary hall, And his high shadow shot along the wall: There were the painted forms of other times, 'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes, Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults; And half a column of the pompous page, That speeds the specious tale from age to age; Where History's pen its praise or blame supplies, And lies like Truth, and still most truly lies. 190 He wandering mused, and as the moonbeam shone Through the dim lattice, o'er the floor of stone, And the high fretted roof, and saints, that there O'er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer, Reflected in fantastic figures grew, Like life, but not like mortal life, to view; His bristling locks of sable, brow of gloom, And the wide waving of his shaken plume, Glanced like a spectre's attributes--and gave His aspect all that terror gives the grave. 200

XII.

'Twas midnight--all was slumber; the lone light Dimmed in the lamp, as both to break the night. Hark! there be murmurs heard in Lara's hall-- A sound--a voice--a shriek--a fearful call! A long, loud shriek--and silence--did they hear That frantic echo burst the sleeping ear? They heard and rose, and, tremulously brave, Rush where the sound invoked their aid to save; They come with half-lit tapers in their hands, And snatched in startled haste unbelted brands. 210

XIII.

Cold as the marble where his length was laid, Pale as the beam that o'er his features played, Was Lara stretched; his half-drawn sabre near, Dropped it should seem in more than Nature's fear; Yet he was firm, or had been firm till now, And still Defiance knit his gathered brow; Though mixed with terror, senseless as he lay, There lived upon his lip the wish to slay; Some half formed threat in utterance there had died, Some imprecation of despairing Pride; 220 His eye was almost sealed, but not forsook, Even in its trance, the gladiator's look, That oft awake his aspect could disclose, And now was fixed in horrible repose. They raise him--bear him;--hush! he breathes, he speaks, The swarthy blush recolours in his cheeks, His lip resumes its red, his eye, though dim, Rolls wide and wild, each slowly quivering limb Recalls its function, but his words are strung In terms that seem not of his native tongue; 230 Distinct but strange, enough they understand To deem them accents of another land; And such they were, and meant to meet an ear That hears him not--alas! that cannot hear!

XIV.

His page approached, and he alone appeared To know the import of the words they heard; And, by the changes of his cheek and brow, They were not such as Lara should avow, Nor he interpret,--yet with less surprise Than those around their Chieftain's state he eyes, 240 But Lara's prostrate form he bent beside, And in that tongue which seemed his own replied; And Lara heeds those tones that gently seem To soothe away the horrors of his dream-- If dream it were, that thus could overthrow A breast that needed not ideal woe.

XV.

Whate'er his frenzy dreamed or eye beheld,-- If yet remembered ne'er to be revealed,-- Rests at his heart: the customed morning came, And breathed new vigour in his shaken frame; 250 And solace sought he none from priest nor leech, And soon the same in movement and in speech, As heretofore he filled the passing hours, Nor less he smiles, nor more his forehead lowers, Than these were wont; and if the coming night Appeared less welcome now to Lara's sight, He to his marvelling vassals showed it not, Whose shuddering proved their fear was less forgot. In trembling pairs (alone they dared not) crawl The astonished slaves, and shun the fated hall; 260 The waving banner, and the clapping door, The rustling tapestry, and the echoing floor; The long dim shadows of surrounding trees, The flapping bat, the night song of the breeze; Aught they behold or hear their thought appals, As evening saddens o'er the dark grey walls.

XVI.

Vain thought! that hour of ne'er unravelled gloom Came not again, or Lara could assume A seeming of forgetfulness, that made His vassals more amazed nor less afraid. 270 Had Memory vanished then with sense restored? Since word, nor look, nor gesture of their lord Betrayed a feeling that recalled to these That fevered moment of his mind's disease. Was it a dream? was his the voice that spoke Those strange wild accents; his the cry that broke Their slumber? his the oppressed, o'erlaboured heart That ceased to beat, the look that made them start? Could he who thus had suffered so forget, When such as saw that suffering shudder yet? 280 Or did that silence prove his memory fixed Too deep for words, indelible, unmixed In that corroding secrecy which gnaws The heart to show the effect, but not the cause? Not so in him; his breast had buried both, Nor common gazers could discern the growth Of thoughts that mortal lips must leave half told; They choke the feeble words that would unfold.

XVII.

In him inexplicably mixed appeared Much to be loved and hated, sought and feared; 290 Opinion varying o'er his hidden lot, In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot: His silence formed a theme for others' prate-- They guessed--they gazed--they fain would know his fate. What had he been? what was he, thus unknown, Who walked their world, his lineage only known? A hater of his kind? yet some would say, With them he could seem gay amidst the gay; But owned that smile, if oft observed and near, Waned in its mirth, and withered to a sneer; 300 That smile might reach his lip, but passed not by, Nor e'er could trace its laughter to his eye: Yet there was softness too in his regard, At times, a heart as not by nature hard, But once perceived, his Spirit seemed to chide Such weakness, as unworthy of its pride, And steeled itself, as scorning to redeem One doubt from others' half withheld esteem; In self-inflicted penance of a breast Which Tenderness might once have wrung from Rest; 310 In vigilance of Grief that would compel The soul to hate for having loved too well.

XVIII.

There was in him a vital scorn of all: As if the worst had fallen which could befall, He stood a stranger in this breathing world, An erring Spirit from another hurled; A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped By choice the perils he by chance escaped; But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet His mind would half exult and half regret: 320 With more capacity for love than Earth Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth. His early dreams of good outstripped the truth, And troubled Manhood followed baffled Youth; With thought of years in phantom chase misspent, And wasted powers for better purpose lent; And fiery passions that had poured their wrath In hurried desolation o'er his path, And left the better feelings all at strife In wild reflection o'er his stormy life; 330 But haughty still, and loth himself to blame, He called on Nature's self to share the shame, And charged all faults upon the fleshly form She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm: Till he at last confounded good and ill, And half mistook for fate the acts of will: Too high for common selfishness, he could At times resign his own for others' good, But not in pity--not because he ought, But in some strange perversity of thought, 340 That swayed him onward with a secret pride To do what few or none would do beside; And this same impulse would, in tempting time, Mislead his spirit equally to crime; So much he soared beyond, or sunk beneath, The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe, And longed by good or ill to separate Himself from all who shared his mortal state; His mind abhorring this had fixed her throne Far from the world, in regions of her own: 350 Thus coldly passing all that passed below, His blood in temperate seeming now would flow: Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glowed, But ever in that icy smoothness flowed! 'Tis true, with other men their path he walked, And like the rest in seeming did and talked, Nor outraged Reason's rules by flaw nor start, His Madness was not of the head, but heart; And rarely wandered in his speech, or drew His thoughts so forth as to offend the view. 360

XIX.

With all that chilling mystery of mien, And seeming gladness to remain unseen, He had (if 'twere not nature's boon) an art Of fixing memory on another's heart: It was not love perchance--nor hate--nor aught That words can image to express the thought; But they who saw him did not see in vain, And once beheld--would ask of him again: And those to whom he spake remembered well, And on the words, however light, would dwell: 370 None knew, nor how, nor why, but he entwined Himself perforce around the hearer's mind; There he was stamped, in liking, or in hate, If greeted once; however brief the date That friendship, pity, or aversion knew, Still there within the inmost thought he grew. You could not penetrate his soul, but found, Despite your wonder, to your own he wound; His presence haunted still; and from the breast He forced an all unwilling interest: 380 Vain was the struggle in that mental net-- His Spirit seemed to dare you to forget!

XX.

There is a festival, where knights and dames, And aught that wealth or lofty lineage claims, Appear--a high-born and a welcome guest To Otho's hall came Lara with the rest. The long carousal shakes the illumined hall, Well speeds alike the banquet and the ball; And the gay dance of bounding Beauty's train Links grace and harmony in happiest chain: 390 Blest are the early hearts and gentle hands That mingle there in well according bands; It is a sight the careful brow might smooth, And make Age smile, and dream itself to youth, And Youth forget such hour was past on earth, So springs the exulting bosom to that mirth!

XXI.

And Lara gazed on these, sedately glad, His brow belied him if his soul was sad; And his glance followed fast each fluttering fair, Whose steps of lightness woke no echo there: 400 He leaned against the lofty pillar nigh, With folded arms and long attentive eye, Nor marked a glance so sternly fixed on his-- Ill brooked high Lara scrutiny like this: At length he caught it--'tis a face unknown, But seems as searching his, and his alone; Prying and dark, a stranger's by his mien, Who still till now had gazed on him unseen: At length encountering meets the mutual gaze Of keen enquiry, and of mute amaze; 410 On Lara's glance emotion gathering grew, As if distrusting that the stranger threw; Along the stranger's aspect, fixed and stern, Flashed more than thence the vulgar eye could learn.

XXII.

"'Tis he!" the stranger cried, and those that heard Re-echoed fast and far the whispered word. "'Tis he!"--"'Tis who?" they question far and near, Till louder accents rung on Lara's ear; So widely spread, few bosoms well could brook The general marvel, or that single look: 420 But Lara stirred not, changed not, the surprise That sprung at first to his arrested eyes Seemed now subsided--neither sunk nor raised Glanced his eye round, though still the stranger gazed; And drawing nigh, exclaimed, with haughty sneer, "'Tis he!--how came he thence?--what doth he here?"

XXIII.

It were too much for Lara to pass by Such questions, so repeated fierce and high; With look collected, but with accent cold, More mildly firm than petulantly bold, 430 He turned, and met the inquisitorial tone-- "My name is Lara--when thine own is known, Doubt not my fitting answer to requite The unlooked for courtesy of such a knight. 'Tis Lara!--further wouldst thou mark or ask? I shun no question, and I wear no mask."

"Thou shunn'st no question! Ponder--is there none Thy heart must answer, though thine ear would shun? And deem'st thou me unknown too? Gaze again! At least thy memory was not given in vain. 440 Oh! never canst thou cancel half her debt-- Eternity forbids thee to forget." With slow and searching glance upon his face Grew Lara's eyes, but nothing there could trace They knew, or chose to know--with dubious look He deigned no answer, but his head he shook, And half contemptuous turned to pass away; But the stern stranger motioned him to stay.

"A word!--I charge thee stay, and answer here To one, who, wert thou noble, were thy peer, 450 But as thou wast and art--nay, frown not, Lord, If false, 'tis easy to disprove the word-- But as thou wast and art, on thee looks down, Distrusts thy smiles, but shakes not at thy frown. Art thou not he? whose deeds----" "Whate'er I be, Words wild as these, accusers like to thee, I list no further; those with whom they weigh May hear the rest, nor venture to gainsay The wondrous tale no doubt thy tongue can tell, Which thus begins so courteously and well. 460 Let Otho cherish here his polished guest, To him my thanks and thoughts shall be expressed." And here their wondering host hath interposed-- "Whate'er there be between you undisclosed, This is no time nor fitting place to mar The mirthful meeting with a wordy war. If thou, Sir Ezzelin, hast aught to show Which it befits Count Lara's ear to know, To-morrow, here, or elsewhere, as may best Beseem your mutual judgment, speak the rest; 470 I pledge myself for thee, as not unknown, Though, like Count Lara, now returned alone From other lands, almost a stranger grown; And if from Lara's blood and gentle birth I augur right of courage and of worth, He will not that untainted line belie, Nor aught that Knighthood may accord, deny."

"To-morrow be it," Ezzelin replied, "And here our several worth and truth be tried; I gage my life, my falchion to attest 480 My words, so may I mingle with the blest!" What answers Lara? to its centre shrunk His soul, in deep abstraction sudden sunk; The words of many, and the eyes of all That there were gathered, seemed on him to fall; But his were silent, his appeared to stray In far forgetfulness away--away-- Alas! that heedlessness of all around Bespoke remembrance only too profound.

XXIV.

"To-morrow!--aye, to-morrow!" further word 490 Than those repeated none from Lara heard; Upon his brow no outward passion spoke; From his large eye no flashing anger broke; Yet there was something fixed in that low tone, Which showed resolve, determined, though unknown. He seized his cloak--his head he slightly bowed, And passing Ezzelin, he left the crowd; And, as he passed him, smiling met the frown With which that Chieftain's brow would bear him down: It was nor smile of mirth, nor struggling pride 500 That curbs to scorn the wrath it cannot hide; But that of one in his own heart secure Of all that he would do, or could endure. Could this mean peace? the calmness of the good? Or guilt grown old in desperate hardihood? Alas! too like in confidence are each, For man to trust to mortal look or speech; From deeds, and deeds alone, may he discern Truths which it wrings the unpractised heart to learn.

XXV.

And Lara called his page, and went his way-- 510 Well could that stripling word or sign obey: His only follower from those climes afar, Where the Soul glows beneath a brighter star: For Lara left the shore from whence he sprung, In duty patient, and sedate though young; Silent as him he served, his faith appears Above his station, and beyond his years. Though not unknown the tongue of Lara's land, In such from him he rarely heard command; But fleet his step, and clear his tones would come, 520 When Lara's lip breathed forth the words of home: Those accents, as his native mountains dear, Awake their absent echoes in his ear, Friends'--kindred's--parents'--wonted voice recall, Now lost, abjured, for one--his friend, his all: For him earth now disclosed no other guide; What marvel then he rarely left his side?

XXVI.

Light was his form, and darkly delicate That brow whereon his native sun had sate, But had not marred, though in his beams he grew, 530 The cheek where oft the unbidden blush shone through; Yet not such blush as mounts when health would show All the heart's hue in that delighted glow; But 'twas a hectic tint of secret care That for a burning moment fevered there; And the wild sparkle of his eye seemed caught From high, and lightened with electric thought, Though its black orb those long low lashes' fringe Had tempered with a melancholy tinge; Yet less of sorrow than of pride was there, 540 Or, if 'twere grief, a grief that none should share: And pleased not him the sports that please his age, The tricks of Youth, the frolics of the Page; For hours on Lara he would fix his glance, As all-forgotten in that watchful trance; And from his chief withdrawn, he wandered lone, Brief were his answers, and his questions none; His walk the wood, his sport some foreign book; His resting-place the bank that curbs the brook: He seemed, like him he served, to live apart 550 From all that lures the eye, and fills the heart; To know no brotherhood, and take from earth No gift beyond that bitter boon--our birth.

XXVII.

If aught he loved, 'twas Lara; but was shown His faith in reverence and in deeds alone; In mute attention; and his care, which guessed Each wish, fulfilled it ere the tongue expressed. Still there was haughtiness in all he did, A spirit deep that brooked not to be chid; His zeal, though more than that of servile hands, 560 In act alone obeys, his air commands; As if 'twas Lara's less than his desire That thus he served, but surely not for hire. Slight were the tasks enjoined him by his Lord, To hold the stirrup, or to bear the sword; To tune his lute, or, if he willed it more, On tomes of other times and tongues to pore; But ne'er to mingle with the menial train, To whom he showed nor deference nor disdain, But that well-worn reserve which proved he knew 570 No sympathy with that familiar crew: His soul, whate'er his station or his stem, Could bow to Lara, not descend to them. Of higher birth he seemed, and better days, Nor mark of vulgar toil that hand betrays, So femininely white it might bespeak Another sex, when matched with that smooth cheek, But for his garb, and something in his gaze, More wild and high than Woman's eye betrays; A latent fierceness that far more became 580 His fiery climate than his tender frame: True, in his words it broke not from his breast, But from his aspect might be more than guessed. Kaled his name, though rumour said he bore Another ere he left his mountain-shore; For sometimes he would hear, however nigh, That name repeated loud without reply, As unfamiliar--or, if roused again, Start to the sound, as but remembered then; Unless 'twas Lara's wonted voice that spake, 590 For then--ear--eyes--and heart would all awake.

XXVIII.

He had looked down upon the festive hall, And mark'd that sudden strife so marked of all: And when the crowd around and near him told Their wonder at the calmness of the bold, Their marvel how the high-born Lara bore Such insult from a stranger, doubly sore, The colour of young Kaled went and came, The lip of ashes, and the cheek of flame; And o'er his brow the dampening heart-drops threw 600 The sickening iciness of that cold dew, That rises as the busy bosom sinks With heavy thoughts from which Reflection shrinks. Yes--there be things which we must dream and dare, And execute ere thought be half aware: Whate'er might Kaled's be, it was enow To seal his lip, but agonise his brow. He gazed on Ezzelin till Lara cast That sidelong smile upon the knight he past; When Kaled saw that smile his visage fell, 610 As if on something recognised right well: His memory read in such a meaning more Than Lara's aspect unto others wore: Forward he sprung--a moment, both were gone, And all within that hall seemed left alone; Each had so fixed his eye on Lara's mien, All had so mixed their feelings with that scene, That when his long dark shadow through the porch No more relieves the glare of yon high torch, Each pulse beats quicker, and all bosoms seem 620 To bound as doubting from too black a dream, Such as we know is false, yet dread in sooth, Because the worst is ever nearest truth. And they are gone--but Ezzelin is there, With thoughtful visage and imperious air; But long remained not; ere an hour expired He waved his hand to Otho, and retired.

XXIX.

The crowd are gone, the revellers at rest; The courteous host, and all-approving guest, Again to that accustomed couch must creep 630 Where Joy subsides, and Sorrow sighs to sleep, And Man, o'erlaboured with his Being's strife, Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life: There lie Love's feverish hope, and Cunning's guile, Hate's working brain, and lulled Ambition's wile; O'er each vain eye Oblivion's pinions wave, And quenched Existence crouches in a grave. What better name may Slumber's bed become? Night's sepulchre, the universal home, Where Weakness--Strength--Vice--Virtue--sunk supine, 640 Alike in naked helplessness recline; Glad for a while to heave unconscious breath, Yet wake to wrestle with the dread of Death, And shun--though Day but dawn on ills increased-- That sleep,--the loveliest, since it dreams the least.

CANTO THE SECOND.

Night wanes--the vapours round the mountains curled Melt into morn, and Light awakes the world, Man has another day to swell the past, And lead him near to little, but his last; But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth, 650 The Sun is in the heavens, and Life on earth; Flowers in the valley, splendour in the beam, Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream. Immortal Man! behold her glories shine, And cry, exulting inly, "They are thine!" Gaze on, while yet thy gladdened eye may see: A morrow comes when they are not for thee: And grieve what may above thy senseless bier, Nor earth nor sky will yield a single tear; Nor cloud shall gather more, nor leaf shall fall, 660 Nor gale breathe forth one sigh for thee, for all; But creeping things shall revel in their spoil, And fit thy clay to fertilise the soil.

II.

'Tis morn--'tis noon--assembled in the hall, The gathered Chieftains come to Otho's call; 'Tis now the promised hour, that must proclaim The life or death of Lara's future fame; And Ezzelin his charge may here unfold, And whatsoe'er the tale, it must be told. His faith was pledged, and Lara's promise given, 670 To meet it in the eye of Man and Heaven. Why comes he not? Such truths to be divulged, Methinks the accuser's rest is long indulged.

III.

The hour is past, and Lara too is there, With self-confiding, coldly patient air; Why comes not Ezzelin? The hour is past, And murmurs rise, and Otho's brow's o'ercast. "I know my friend! his faith I cannot fear, If yet he be on earth, expect him here; The roof that held him in the valley stands 680 Between my own and noble Lara's lands; My halls from such a guest had honour gained, Nor had Sir Ezzelin his host disdained, But that some previous proof forbade his stay, And urged him to prepare against to-day; The word I pledged for his I pledge again, Or will myself redeem his knighthood's stain." He ceased--and Lara answered, "I am here To lend at thy demand a listening ear To tales of evil from a stranger's tongue, 690 Whose words already might my heart have wrung, But that I deemed him scarcely less than mad, Or, at the worst, a foe ignobly bad. I know him not--but me it seems he knew In lands where--but I must not trifle too: Produce this babbler--or redeem the pledge; Here in thy hold, and with thy falchion's edge."

Proud Otho on the instant, reddening, threw His glove on earth, and forth his sabre flew. "The last alternative befits me best, 700 And thus I answer for mine absent guest."

With cheek unchanging from its sallow gloom, However near his own or other's tomb; With hand, whose almost careless coolness spoke Its grasp well-used to deal the sabre-stroke; With eye, though calm, determined not to spare, Did Lara too his willing weapon bare. In vain the circling Chieftains round them closed, For Otho's frenzy would not be opposed; And from his lip those words of insult fell-- 710 His sword is good who can maintain them well.

IV.

Short was the conflict; furious, blindly rash, Vain Otho gave his bosom to the gash: He bled, and fell; but not with deadly wound, Stretched by a dextrous sleight along the ground. "Demand thy life!" He answered not: and then From that red floor he ne'er had risen again, For Lara's brow upon the moment grew Almost to blackness in its demon hue; And fiercer shook his angry falchion now 720 Than when his foe's was levelled at his brow; Then all was stern collectedness and art, Now rose the unleavened hatred of his heart; So little sparing to the foe he felled, That when the approaching crowd his arm withheld, He almost turned the thirsty point on those Who thus for mercy dared to interpose; But to a moment's thought that purpose bent; Yet looked he on him still with eye intent, As if he loathed the ineffectual strife 730 That left a foe, howe'er o'erthrown, with life; As if to search how far the wound he gave Had sent its victim onward to his grave.

They raised the bleeding Otho, and the Leech Forbade all present question, sign, and speech; The others met within a neighbouring hall, And he, incensed, and heedless of them all, The cause and conqueror in this sudden fray, In haughty silence slowly strode away; He backed his steed, his homeward path he took, 740 Nor cast on Otho's towers a single look.

VI.

But where was he? that meteor of a night, Who menaced but to disappear with light. Where was this Ezzelin? who came and went, To leave no other trace of his intent. He left the dome of Otho long ere morn, In darkness, yet so well the path was worn He could not miss it: near his dwelling lay; But there he was not, and with coming day Came fast inquiry, which unfolded nought, 750 Except the absence of the Chief it sought. A chamber tenantless, a steed at rest, His host alarmed, his murmuring squires distressed: Their search extends along, around the path, In dread to meet the marks of prowlers' wrath: But none are there, and not a brake hath borne Nor gout of blood, nor shred of mantle torn; Nor fall nor struggle hath defaced the grass, Which still retains a mark where Murder was; Nor dabbling fingers left to tell the tale, 760 The bitter print of each convulsive nail, When agonised hands that cease to guard, Wound in that pang the smoothness of the sward. Some such had been, if here a life was reft, But these were not; and doubting Hope is left; And strange Suspicion, whispering Lara's name, Now daily mutters o'er his blackened fame; Then sudden silent when his form appeared, Awaits the absence of the thing it feared Again its wonted wondering to renew, 770 And dye conjecture with a darker hue.

VII.

Days roll along, and Otho's wounds are healed, But not his pride; and hate no more concealed: He was a man of power, and Lara's foe, The friend of all who sought to work him woe, And from his country's justice now demands Account of Ezzelin at Lara's hands. Who else than Lara could have cause to fear His presence? who had made him disappear, If not the man on whom his menaced charge 780 Had sate too deeply were he left at large? The general rumour ignorantly loud, The mystery dearest to the curious crowd; The seeming friendliness of him who strove To win no confidence, and wake no love; The sweeping fierceness which his soul betrayed, The skill with which he wielded his keen blade; Where had his arm unwarlike caught that art? Where had that fierceness grown upon his heart? For it was not the blind capricious rage 790 A word can kindle and a word assuage; But the deep working of a soul unmixed With aught of pity where its wrath had fixed; Such as long power and overgorged success Concentrates into all that's merciless: These, linked with that desire which ever sways Mankind, the rather to condemn than praise, 'Gainst Lara gathering raised at length a storm, Such as himself might fear, and foes would form, And he must answer for the absent head 800 Of one that haunts him still, alive or dead.

VIII.

Within that land was many a malcontent, Who cursed the tyranny to which he bent; That soil full many a wringing despot saw, Who worked his wantonness in form of law; Long war without and frequent broil within Had made a path for blood and giant sin, That waited but a signal to begin New havoc, such as civil discord blends, Which knows no neuter, owns but foes or friends; 810 Fixed in his feudal fortress each was lord, In word and deed obeyed, in soul abhorred. Thus Lara had inherited his lands, And with them pining hearts and sluggish hands; But that long absence from his native clime Had left him stainless of Oppression's crime, And now, diverted by his milder sway, All dread by slow degrees had worn away. The menials felt their usual awe alone, But more for him than them that fear was grown; 820 They deemed him now unhappy, though at first Their evil judgment augured of the worst, And each long restless night, and silent mood, Was traced to sickness, fed by solitude: And though his lonely habits threw of late Gloom o'er his chamber, cheerful was his gate; For thence the wretched ne'er unsoothed withdrew, For them, at least, his soul compassion knew. Cold to the great, contemptuous to the high, The humble passed not his unheeding eye; 830 Much he would speak not, but beneath his roof They found asylum oft, and ne'er reproof. And they who watched might mark that, day by day, Some new retainers gathered to his sway; But most of late, since Ezzelin was lost, He played the courteous lord and bounteous host: Perchance his strife with Otho made him dread Some snare prepared for his obnoxious head; Whate'er his view, his favour more obtains With these, the people, than his fellow thanes. 840 If this were policy, so far 'twas sound, The million judged but of him as they found; From him by sterner chiefs to exile driven They but required a shelter, and 'twas given. By him no peasant mourned his rifled cot, And scarce the Serf could murmur o'er his lot; With him old Avarice found its hoard secure, With him contempt forbore to mock the poor; Youth present cheer and promised recompense Detained, till all too late to part from thence: 850 To Hate he offered, with the coming change, The deep reversion of delayed revenge; To Love, long baffled by the unequal match, The well-won charms success was sure to snatch. All now was ripe, he waits but to proclaim That slavery nothing which was still a name. The moment came, the hour when Otho thought Secure at last the vengeance which he sought: His summons found the destined criminal Begirt by thousands in his swarming hall; 860 Fresh from their feudal fetters newly riven, Defying earth, and confident of heaven. That morning he had freed the soil-bound slaves, Who dig no land for tyrants but their graves! Such is their cry--some watchword for the fight Must vindicate the wrong, and warp the right; Religion--Freedom--Vengeance--what you will, A word's enough to raise Mankind to kill; Some factious phrase by cunning caught and spread, That Guilt may reign-and wolves and worms be fed! 870

IX.

Throughout that clime the feudal Chiefs had gained Such sway, their infant monarch hardly reigned; Now was the hour for Faction's rebel growth, The Serfs contemned the one, and hated both: They waited but a leader, and they found One to their cause inseparably bound; By circumstance compelled to plunge again, In self-defence, amidst the strife of men. Cut off by some mysterious fate from those Whom Birth and Nature meant not for his foes, 880 Had Lara from that night, to him accurst, Prepared to meet, but not alone, the worst: Some reason urged, whate'er it was, to shun Inquiry into deeds at distance done; By mingling with his own the cause of all, E'en if he failed, he still delayed his fall. The sullen calm that long his bosom kept, The storm that once had spent itself and slept, Roused by events that seemed foredoomed to urge His gloomy fortunes to their utmost verge, 890 Burst forth, and made him all he once had been, And is again; he only changed the scene. Light care had he for life, and less for fame, But not less fitted for the desperate game: He deemed himself marked out for others' hate, And mocked at Ruin so they shared his fate. And cared he for the freedom of the crowd? He raised the humble but to bend the proud. He had hoped quiet in his sullen lair, But Man and Destiny beset him there: 900 Inured to hunters, he was found at bay; And they must kill, they cannot snare the prey. Stern, unambitious, silent, he had been Henceforth a calm spectator of Life's scene; But dragged again upon the arena, stood A leader not unequal to the feud; In voice--mien--gesture--savage nature spoke, And from his eye the gladiator broke.

What boots the oft-repeated tale of strife, The feast of vultures, and the waste of life? 910 The varying fortune of each separate field, The fierce that vanquish, and the faint that yield? The smoking ruin, and the crumbled wall? In this the struggle was the same with all; Save that distempered passions lent their force In bitterness that banished all remorse. None sued, for Mercy knew her cry was vain, The captive died upon the battle-plain: In either cause, one rage alone possessed The empire of the alternate victor's breast; 920 And they that smote for freedom or for sway, Deemed few were slain, while more remained to slay. It was too late to check the wasting brand, And Desolation reaped the famished land; The torch was lighted, and the flame was spread, And Carnage smiled upon her daily dead.

XI.

Fresh with the nerve the new-born impulse strung, The first success to Lara's numbers clung: But that vain victory hath ruined all; They form no longer to their leader's call: 930 In blind confusion on the foe they press, And think to snatch is to secure success. The lust of booty, and the thirst of hate, Lure on the broken brigands to their fate: In vain he doth whate'er a chief may do, To check the headlong fury of that crew; In vain their stubborn ardour he would tame, The hand that kindles cannot quench the flame; The wary foe alone hath turned their mood, And shown their rashness to that erring brood: 940 The feigned retreat, the nightly ambuscade, The daily harass, and the fight delayed, The long privation of the hoped supply, The tentless rest beneath the humid sky, The stubborn wall that mocks the leaguer's art, And palls the patience of his baffled art, Of these they had not deemed: the battle-day They could encounter as a veteran may; But more preferred the fury of the strife, And present death, to hourly suffering life: 950 And Famine wrings, and Fever sweeps away His numbers melting fast from their array; Intemperate triumph fades to discontent, And Lara's soul alone seems still unbent; But few remain to aid his voice and hand, And thousands dwindled to a scanty band: Desperate, though few, the last and best remained To mourn the discipline they late disdained. One hope survives, the frontier is not far, And thence they may escape from native war: 960 And bear within them to the neighbouring state An exile's sorrows, or an outlaw's hate: Hard is the task their father-land to quit, But harder still to perish or submit.

XII.

It is resolved--they march--consenting Night Guides with her star their dim and torchless flight; Already they perceive its tranquil beam Sleep on the surface of the barrier stream; Already they descry--Is yon the bank? Away! 'tis lined with many a hostile rank. 970 Return or fly!--What glitters in the rear? 'Tis Otho's banner--the pursuer's spear! Are those the shepherds' fires upon the height? Alas! they blaze too widely for the flight: Cut off from hope, and compassed in the toil, Less blood perchance hath bought a richer spoil!

XIII.

A moment's pause--'tis but to breathe their band, Or shall they onward press, or here withstand? It matters little--if they charge the foes Who by their border-stream their march oppose, 980 Some few, perchance, may break and pass the line, However linked to baffle such design. "The charge be ours! to wait for their assault Were fate well worthy of a coward's halt." Forth flies each sabre, reined is every steed, And the next word shall scarce outstrip the deed: In the next tone of Lara's gathering breath How many shall but hear the voice of Death!

XIV.

His blade is bared,--in him there is an air As deep, but far too tranquil for despair; 990 A something of indifference more than then Becomes the bravest, if they feel for men-- He turned his eye on Kaled, ever near, And still too faithful to betray one fear; Perchance 'twas but the moon's dim twilight threw Along his aspect an unwonted hue Of mournful paleness, whose deep tint expressed The truth, and not the terror of his breast. This Lara marked, and laid his hand on his: It trembled not in such an hour as this; 1000 His lip was silent, scarcely beat his heart, His eye alone proclaimed, "We will not part! Thy band may perish, or thy friends may flee, Farewell to Life--but not Adieu to thee!"

The word hath passed his lips, and onward driven, Pours the linked band through ranks asunder riven: Well has each steed obeyed the armed heel, And flash the scimitars, and rings the steel; Outnumbered, not outbraved, they still oppose Despair to daring, and a front to foes; 1010 And blood is mingled with the dashing stream, Which runs all redly till the morning beam.

XV.

Commanding--aiding--animating all, Where foe appeared to press, or friend to fall, Cheers Lara's voice, and waves or strikes his steel, Inspiring hope, himself had ceased to feel. None fled, for well they knew that flight were vain; But those that waver turn to smite again, While yet they find the firmest of the foe Recoil before their leader's look and blow: 1020 Now girt with numbers, now almost alone, He foils their ranks, or re-unites his own; Himself he spared not--once they seemed to fly-- Now was the time, he waved his hand on high, And shook--Why sudden droops that plumed crest? The shaft is sped--the arrow's in his breast! That fatal gesture left the unguarded side, And Death has stricken down yon arm of pride. The word of triumph fainted from his tongue; That hand, so raised, how droopingly it hung! 1030 But yet the sword instinctively retains, Though from its fellow shrink the falling reins; These Kaled snatches: dizzy with the blow, And senseless bending o'er his saddle-bow, Perceives not Lara that his anxious page Beguiles his charger from the combat's rage: Meantime his followers charge, and charge again; Too mixed the slayers now to heed the slain!

XVI.

Day glimmers on the dying and the dead, The cloven cuirass, and the helmless head; 1040 The war-horse masterless is on the earth, And that last gasp hath burst his bloody girth; And near, yet quivering with what life remained, The heel that urged him and the hand that reined; And some too near that rolling torrent lie, Whose waters mock the lip of those that die; That panting thirst which scorches in the breath Of those that die the soldier's fiery death, In vain impels the burning mouth to crave One drop--the last--to cool it for the grave; 1050 With feeble and convulsive effort swept, Their limbs along the crimsoned turf have crept; The faint remains of life such struggles waste, But yet they reach the stream, and bend to taste: They feel its freshness, and almost partake-- Why pause? No further thirst have they to slake-- It is unquenched, and yet they feel it not; It was an agony--but now forgot!

XVII.

Beneath a lime, remoter from the scene, Where but for him that strife had never been, 1060 A breathing but devoted warrior lay: 'Twas Lara bleeding fast from life away. His follower once, and now his only guide, Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side, And with his scarf would staunch the tides that rush, With each convulsion, in a blacker gush; And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, In feebler, not less fatal tricklings flow: He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain, And merely adds another throb to pain. 1070 He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage, And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page, Who nothing fears--nor feels--nor heeds--nor sees-- Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees; Save that pale aspect, where the eye, though dim, Held all the light that shone on earth for him.

XVIII.

The foe arrives, who long had searched the field, Their triumph nought till Lara too should yield: They would remove him, but they see 'twere vain, And he regards them with a calm disdain, 1080 That rose to reconcile him with his fate, And that escape to death from living hate: And Otho comes, and leaping from his steed, Looks on the bleeding foe that made him bleed, And questions of his state; he answers not, Scarce glances on him as on one forgot, And turns to Kaled:--each remaining word They understood not, if distinctly heard; His dying tones are in that other tongue, To which some strange remembrance wildly clung. 1090 They spake of other scenes, but what--is known To Kaled, whom their meaning reached alone; And he replied, though faintly, to their sound, While gazed the rest in dumb amazement round: They seemed even then--that twain--unto the last To half forget the present in the past; To share between themselves some separate fate, Whose darkness none beside should penetrate.

XIX.

Their words though faint were many--from the tone Their import those who heard could judge alone; 1100 From this, you might have deemed young Kaled's death More near than Lara's by his voice and breath, So sad--so deep--and hesitating broke The accents his scarce-moving pale lips spoke; But Lara's voice, though low, at first was clear And calm, till murmuring Death gasped hoarsely near; But from his visage little could we guess, So unrepentant--dark--and passionless, Save that when struggling nearer to his last, Upon that page his eye was kindly cast; 1110 And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased, Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East: Whether (as then the breaking Sun from high Rolled back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye, Or that 'twas chance--or some remembered scene, That raised his arm to point where such had been, Scarce Kaled seemed to know, but turned away, As if his heart abhorred that coming day, And shrunk his glance before that morning light, To look on Lara's brow--where all grew night. 1120 Yet sense seemed left, though better were its loss; For when one near displayed the absolving Cross, And proffered to his touch the holy bead, Of which his parting soul might own the need, He looked upon it with an eye profane, And smiled--Heaven pardon! if 'twere with disdain: And Kaled, though he spoke not, nor withdrew From Lara's face his fixed despairing view, With brow repulsive, and with gesture swift, Flung back the hand which held the sacred gift, 1130 As if such but disturbed the expiring man, Nor seemed to know his life but then began-- That Life of Immortality, secure To none, save them whose faith in Christ is sure.

XX.

But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew, And dull the film along his dim eye grew; His limbs stretched fluttering, and his head drooped o'er The weak yet still untiring knee that bore; He pressed the hand he held upon his heart-- It beats no more, but Kaled will not part 1140 With the cold grasp, but feels, and feels in vain, For that faint throb which answers not again. "It beats!"--Away, thou dreamer! he is gone-- It once was Lara which thou look'st upon.

XXI.

He gazed, as if not yet had passed away The haughty spirit of that humbled clay; And those around have roused him from his trance, But cannot tear from thence his fixed glance; And when, in raising him from where he bore Within his arms the form that felt no more, 1150 He saw the head his breast would still sustain, Roll down like earth to earth upon the plain; He did not dash himself thereby, nor tear The glossy tendrils of his raven hair, But strove to stand and gaze, but reeled and fell, Scarce breathing more than that he loved so well. Than that he loved! Oh! never yet beneath The breast of man such trusty love may breathe! That trying moment hath at once revealed The secret long and yet but half concealed; 1160 In baring to revive that lifeless breast, Its grief seemed ended, but the sex confessed; And life returned, and Kaled felt no shame-- What now to her was Womanhood or Fame?

XXII.

And Lara sleeps not where his fathers sleep, But where he died his grave was dug as deep; Nor is his mortal slumber less profound, Though priest nor blessed nor marble decked the mound, And he was mourned by one whose quiet grief, Less loud, outlasts a people's for their Chief. 1170 Vain was all question asked her of the past, And vain e'en menace--silent to the last; She told nor whence, nor why she left behind Her all for one who seemed but little kind. Why did she love him? Curious fool!--be still-- Is human love the growth of human will? To her he might be gentleness; the stern Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern, And when they love, your smilers guess not how Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow. 1180 They were not common links, that formed the chain That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and brain; But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold, And sealed is now each lip that could have told.

XXIII.

They laid him in the earth, and on his breast, Besides the wound that sent his soul to rest, They found the scattered dints of many a scar, Which were not planted there in recent war; Where'er had passed his summer years of life, It seems they vanished in a land of strife; 1190 But all unknown his Glory or his Guilt, These only told that somewhere blood was spilt, And Ezzelin, who might have spoke the past, Returned no more--that night appeared his last.

XXIV.

Upon that night (a peasant's is the tale) A Serf that crossed the intervening vale, When Cynthia's light almost gave way to morn, And nearly veiled in mist her waning horn; A Serf, that rose betimes to thread the wood, And hew the bough that bought his children's food, 1200 Passed by the river that divides the plain Of Otho's lands and Lara's broad domain: He heard a tramp--a horse and horseman broke From out the wood--before him was a cloak Wrapt round some burthen at his saddle-bow, Bent was his head, and hidden was his brow. Roused by the sudden sight at such a time, And some foreboding that it might be crime, Himself unheeded watched the stranger's course, Who reached the river, bounded from his horse, 1210 And lifting thence the burthen which he bore, Heaved up the bank, and dashed it from the shore, Then paused--and looked--and turned--and seemed to watch, And still another hurried glance would snatch, And follow with his step the stream that flowed, As if even yet too much its surface showed; At once he started--stooped--around him strown The winter floods had scattered heaps of stone: Of these the heaviest thence he gathered there, And slung them with a more than common care. 1220 Meantime the Serf had crept to where unseen Himself might safely mark what this might mean; He caught a glimpse, as of a floating breast, And something glittered starlike on the vest; But ere he well could mark the buoyant trunk, A massy fragment smote it, and it sunk: It rose again, but indistinct to view, And left the waters of a purple hue, Then deeply disappeared: the horseman gazed Till ebbed the latest eddy it had raised; 1230 Then turning, vaulted on his pawing steed, And instant spurred him into panting speed. His face was masked--the features of the dead, If dead it were, escaped the observer's dread; But if in sooth a Star its bosom bore, Such is the badge that Knighthood ever wore, And such 'tis known Sir Ezzelin had worn Upon the night that led to such a morn. If thus he perished, Heaven receive his soul! His undiscovered limbs to ocean roll; 1240 And charity upon the hope would dwell It was not Lara's hand by which he fell.

XXV.

And Kaled--Lara--Ezzelin, are gone, Alike without their monumental stone! The first, all efforts vainly strove to wean From lingering where her Chieftain's blood had been: Grief had so tamed a spirit once too proud, Her tears were few, her wailing never loud; But furious would you tear her from the spot Where yet she scarce believed that he was not, 1250 Her eye shot forth with all the living fire That haunts the tigress in her whelpless ire; But left to waste her weary moments there, She talked all idly unto shapes of air, Such as the busy brain of Sorrow paints, And woos to listen to her fond complaints: And she would sit beneath the very tree Where lay his drooping head upon her knee; And in that posture where she saw him fall, His words, his looks, his dying grasp recall; 1260 And she had shorn, but saved her raven hair, And oft would snatch it from her bosom there, And fold, and press it gently to the ground, As if she staunched anew some phantom's wound. Herself would question, and for him reply; Then rising, start, and beckon him to fly From some imagined Spectre in pursuit; Then seat her down upon some linden's root, And hide her visage with her meagre hand, Or trace strange characters along the sand-- 1270 This could not last--she lies by him she loved; Her tale untold--her truth too dearly proved.

FOOTNOTES:

{323} Lara the sequel of "the Corsair."--[MS. erased.]

"The Reader--if the tale of Lara has the fortune to meet with one--may probably regard it as a sequel to the Corsair;--the colouring is of a similar cast, and although the situations of the characters are changed, the stories are in some measure connected. The countenance is nearly the same--but with a different expression. To the readers' conjecture are left the name of the writer and the failure or success of his attempt--the latter are the only points upon which the author or his judges can feel interested.

"The Poem of Jaqueline is the production of a different author and is added at the request of the writer of the former tale, whose wish and entreaty it was that it should occupy the first pages of the following volume, and he regrets that the tenacious courtesy of his friend would not permit him to place it where the judgement of the reader concurring with his own will suggest its more appropriate station."]

The reader is apprised, that the name of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local and natural description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word "Serf," which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain.

{324} [For the opening lines to Lara, see Murray's Magazine, January, 1887, vol. i. p. 3.]

"Can Rank, or e'en a Guardian's name supply The love, which glistens in a Father's eye? For this, can Wealth, or Title's sound atone, Made, by a Parent's early loss, my own?"

Compare, too, English Bards, etc., lines 689-694, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 95, 352.]

First in each folly--nor the last in vice.--[MS. erased]

{325} Short was the course the beardless wanderer run.--[MS.]

Another chief had won----.--[MS. erased.]

His friends forgot him--and his dog had died.--[MS.]

Without one rumour to relieve his care.--[MS. erased.]

That most might decorate that gloomy pile.--[MS. erased.]

{326} [The construction is harsh and obscure, but the meaning is, perhaps, that, though Lara's soul was haughty, his sins were due to nothing worse than pleasure, that they were the natural sins of youth.]

{328} Their refuge in intensity of thought.--[MS.]

{329} The sound of other voices than his own.--[MS.]

"His train but deemed the favourite page Was left behind to spare his age, Or other if they deemed, none dared To mutter what he thought or heard." Marmion, Canto III. stanza xv. lines 19-22.]

"Sweetly shining on the eye, A rivulet gliding smoothly by; Which shows with what an easy tide The moments of the happy glide."

Dyer's Country Walk (Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green, 1858, p. 221).]

{331} ["He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths."--Life, p. 27.]

----knelt in painted prayer.--[MS.]

His aspect all that best becomes the grave.--[MS.]

{333} ----along the gallery crawl.--[MS.]

{334} Opinion various as his varying eye In praise or railing--never passed him by.--[MS.]

{335} ----gayest of the gay.--[MS.]

----an inward scorn of all.--[MS.]

{336} [Compare Coleridge's Lines to a Gentleman [William Wordsworth] (written in 1807, but not published till 1817), lines 69, 70--

"Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain."]

And left Reflection: loth himself to blame, He called on Nature's self to share the shame.--[MS.]

And half mistook for fate his wayward will.--[MS.]

{337} ----around another's mind; There he was fixed----.--[MS.]

{338} That friendship, interest, aversion knew But there within your inmost----.--[MS.]

Yes you might hate abhor, but from the breast He wrung an all unwilling interest-- Vain was the struggle, in that sightless net.--[MS.]

So springs the exulting spirit--.--[MS.]

{339} That question thus repeated--Thrice and high.--[MS.]

{340} Art thou not he who----" "Whatso'eer I be.--[MS.]

{342} "Tomorrow!--aye--tomorrow" these were all The words from Lara's answering lip that fall.--[MS.]

{343} That brought their native echoes to his ear.--[MS.]

From high and quickened into life and thought.--[MS.]

{344} Though no reluctance checked his willing hand, He still obeyed as others would command.--[MS.]

To tune his lute and, if none else were there, To fill the cup in which himself might share.--[MS.]

{345} Yet still existed there though still supprest.--

And when the slaves and pages round him told.--

{346} [Compare--

"Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, Which must be acted, ere they may be scanned." Macbeth, act iii. sc. 4, lines 139, 140.]

{347} There lie the lover's hope--the watcher's toil.--[MS.]

And half-Existence melts within a grave.--[MS.]

{348} [Compare--

"Now slowly melting into day, Vapour and mist dissolved away."

Sotheby's Constance de Castile, Canto III. stanza v. lines 17, 18.]

{349} When Ezzelin----.--[Ed. 1831.]

Here in thy hall----.--[MS.]

{351} [Compare Mysteries of Udolpho, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 279: "The Count then fell back into the arms of his servants, while Montoni held his sword over him and bade him ask his life ... his complexion changed almost to blackness as he looked upon his fallen adversary."]

And turned to smite a foe already felled.--[MS.]

And he less calm--yet calmer than them all.--[MS.]

{353} ----the blind and headlong rage.--[MS.]

{354} The first impressions with his milder sway Of dread----.--[MS.]

Mysterious gloom around his hall and state.--[MS.]

{355} The Beauty--which the first success would snatch.--[MS.]

{356} A word's enough to rouse mankind to kill Some factions phrase by cunning raised and spread.--[MS.]

{357} ----upon the battle slain.--[Ed. 1831.]

{358} But not endure the long protracted strife.--[MS. erased.]

{360} And raged the combat till----.--[MS.]

{361} [Stanza XV. was added after the completion of the first draft of the poem.]

{362} The stiffening steed is on the dinted earth.--[MS.]

----that glassy river lie.--[MS.]

{364} [Stanza xix. was added after the completion of the poem. The MS. is extant.]

----white lips spoke.--[MS.]

----pale--and passionless.--[MS.]

{365} That Life--immortal--infinite secure To All for whom that Cross hath made it sure.-- [MS. First ed. 1814.] or, That life immortal, infinite and sure To all whose faith the eternal boon secure.--[MS.]

But faint the dying Lara's accents grew.--[MS.]

He gazed as doubtful that the thing he saw Had something more to ask from Lone or awe.--[MS.]

{367} But all unknown the blood he lost or spilt These only told his Glory or his Guilt.--[MS.]

The event in this section was suggested by the description of the death or rather burial of the Duke of Gandia. "The most interesting and particular account of it is given by Burchard, and is in substance as follows:--'On the eighth day of June, the Cardinal of Valenza and the Duke of Gandia, sons of the pope, supped with their mother, Vanozza, near the church of S. Pietro ad vincula: several other persons being present at the entertainment. A late hour approaching, and the cardinal having reminded his brother that it was time to return to the apostolic palace, they mounted their horses or mules, with only a few attendants, and proceeded together as far as the palace of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, when the duke informed the cardinal that, before he returned home, he had to pay a visit of pleasure. Dismissing therefore all his attendants, excepting his staffiero, or footman, and a person in a mask, who had paid him a visit whilst at supper, and who, during the space of a month or thereabouts, previous to this time, had called upon him almost daily at the apostolic palace, he took this person behind him on his mule, and proceeded to the street of the Jews, where he quitted his servant, directing him to remain there until a certain hour; when, if he did not return, he might repair to the palace. The duke then seated the person in the mask behind him, and rode I know not whither; but in that night he was assassinated, and thrown into the river. The servant, after having been dismissed, was also assaulted and mortally wounded; and although he was attended with great care, yet such was his situation, that he could give no intelligible account of what had befallen his master. In the morning, the duke not having returned to the palace, his servants began to be alarmed; and one of them informed the pontiff of the evening excursion of his sons, and that the duke had not yet made his appearance. This gave the pope no small anxiety; but he conjectured that the duke had been attracted by some courtesan to pass the night with her, and, not choosing to quit the house in open day, had waited till the following evening to return home. When, however, the evening arrived, and he found himself disappointed in his expectations, he became deeply afflicted, and began to make inquiries from different persons, whom he ordered to attend him for that purpose. Amongst these was a man named Giorgio Schiavoni, who, having discharged some timber from a bark in the river, had remained on board the vessel to watch it; and being interrogated whether he had seen any one thrown into the river on the night preceding, he replied, that he saw two men on foot, who came down the street, and looked diligently about to observe whether any person was passing. That seeing no one, they returned, and a short time afterwards two others came, and looked around in the same manner as the former: no person still appearing, they gave a sign to their companions, when a man came, mounted on a white horse, having behind him a dead body, the head and arms of which hung on one side, and the feet on the other side of the horse; the two persons on foot supporting the body, to prevent its falling. They thus proceeded towards that part where the filth of the city is usually discharged into the river, and turning the horse, with his tail towards the water, the two persons took the dead body by the arms and feet, and with all their strength flung it into the river. The person on horseback then asked if they had thrown it in; to which they replied, Signor, si (yes, Sir). He then looked towards the river, and seeing a mantle floating on the stream, he enquired what it was that appeared black, to which they answered, it was a mantle; and one of them threw stones upon it, in consequence of which it sunk. The attendants of the pontiff then enquired from Giorgio, why he had not revealed this to the governor of the city; to which he replied, that he had seen in his time a hundred dead bodies thrown into the river at the same place, without any inquiry being made respecting them; and that he had not, therefore, considered it as a matter of any importance. The fishermen and seamen were then collected, and ordered to search the river, where, on the following evening, they found the body of the duke, with his habit entire, and thirty ducats in his purse. He was pierced with nine wounds, one of which was in his throat, the others in his head, body, and limbs. No sooner was the pontiff informed of the death of his son, and that he had been thrown, like filth, into the river, than, giving way to his grief, he shut himself up in a chamber, and wept bitterly. The Cardinal of Segovia, and other attendants on the pope, went to the door, and after many hours spent in persuasions and exhortations, prevailed upon him to admit them. From the evening of Wednesday till the following Saturday the pope took no food; nor did he sleep from Thursday morning till the same hour on the ensuing day. At length, however, giving way to the entreaties of his attendants, he began to restrain his sorrow, and to consider the injury which his own health might sustain by the further indulgence of his grief.'"--Roscoe's Life and Pontificate of Leo Tenth, 1805, i. 265. [See, too, for the original in Burchard Diar, in Gordon's Life of Alex. VI., Append., "De Caede Ducis Gandiae," Append. No. xlviii., ib., pp. 90, 91.]

{370} A mighty pebble----.--[MS.]

That not unarmed in combat fair he fell.--[MS. erased.]

{371} ----some phantom wound.--[MS.]

HEBREW MELODIES

INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW MELODIES

According to the "Advertisement" prefixed to Murray's First Edition of the Hebrew Melodies, London, 1815 (the date, January, 1815, was appended in 1832), the "poems were written at the request of the author's friend, the Hon. D. Kinnaird, for a selection of Hebrew Melodies, and have been published, with the music, arranged by Mr. Braham and Mr. Nathan."

Byron's engagement to Miss Milbanke took place in September, 1814, and the remainder of the year was passed in London, at his chambers in the Albany. The so-called Hebrew Melodies were, probably, begun in the late autumn of that year, and were certainly finished at Seaham, after his marriage had taken place, in January-February, 1815. It is a natural and pardonable conjecture that Byron took to writing sacred or, at any rate, scriptural verses by way of giving pleasure and doing honour to his future wife, "the girl who gave to song What gold could never buy." They were, so to speak, the first-fruits of a seemlier muse.

It is probable that the greater number of these poems were in MS. before it occurred to Byron's friend and banker, the Honble. Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788-1830), to make him known to Isaac Nathan (1792-1864), a youthful composer of "musical farces and operatic works," who had been destined by his parents for the Hebrew priesthood, but had broken away, and, after some struggles, succeeded in qualifying himself as a musician.

Byron took a fancy to Nathan, and presented him with the copyright of his "poetical effusions," on the understanding that they were to be set to music and sung in public by John Braham. "Professional occupations" prevented Braham from fulfilling his part of the engagement, but a guinea folio (Part. I.) ("Selections of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern, with appropriate symphonies and accompaniments, by I. Braham and I. Nathan, the poetry written expressly for the work by the Right Honourable Lord Byron")--with an ornamental title-page designed by the architect Edward Blore (1789-1879), and dedicated to the Princess Charlotte of Wales--was published in April, 1815. A second part was issued in 1816.

The preface, part of which was reprinted (p. vi.) by Nathan, in his Fugitive Pieces and Reminiscences of Lord Byron, London, 1829, is not without interest--

"The Hebrew Melodies are a selection from the favourite airs which are still sung in the religious ceremonies of the Jews. Some of these have, in common with all their Sacred airs, been preserved by memory and tradition alone, without the assistance of written characters. Their age and originality, therefore, must be left to conjecture. But the latitude given to the taste and genius of their performers has been the means of engrafting on the original Melodies a certain wildness and pathos, which have at length become the chief characteristics of the sacred songs of the Jews....

"Of the poetry it is necessary to speak, in order thus publicly to acknowledge the kindness with which Lord Byron has condescended to furnish the most valuable part of the work. It has been our endeavour to select such melodies as would best suit the style and sentiment of the poetry."

Moore, for whose benefit the Melodies had been rehearsed, was by no means impressed by their "wildness and pathos," and seems to have twitted Byron on the subject, or, as he puts it (Life, p. 276), to have taken the liberty of "laughing a little at the manner in which some of the Hebrew Melodies had been set to music." The author of Sacred Songs (1814) set to airs by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, etc., was a critic not to be gainsaid, but from the half-comical petulance with which he "curses" and "sun-burns" (Letters to Moore, February 22, March 8, 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 179, 183) Nathan, and his "vile Ebrew nasalities," it is evident that Byron winced under Moore's "chaff."

Apart from the merits or demerits of the setting, the title Hebrew Melodies is somewhat misleading. Three love-songs, "She walks in Beauty like the Night," "Oh! snatched away in Beauty's Bloom," and "I saw thee weep," still form part of the collection; and, in Nathan's folio (which does not contain "A spirit passed before me"), two fragments, "It is the hour when from the boughs" and "Francesca walks in the shadow of night," which were afterwards incorporated in Parisina, were included. The Fugitive Pieces, 1829, retain the fragments from Parisina, and add the following hitherto unpublished poems: "I speak not, I trace not," etc., "They say that Hope is Happiness," and the genuine but rejected Hebrew Melody "In the valley of waters we wept on the day."

It is uncertain when Murray's first edition appeared. Byron wrote to Nathan with regard to the copyright in January, 1815 (Letters, 1899, iii. 167), but it is unlikely that the volume was put on the market before Nathan's folio, which was advertised for the first time in the Morning Chronicle, April 6, 1815; and it is possible that the first public announcement of the Hebrew Melodies, as a separate issue, was made in the Courier, June 22, 1815.

The Hebrew Melodies were reviewed in the Christian Observer, August, 1815, vol. xiv. p. 542; in the Analectic Magazine, October, 1815, vol. vi. p. 292; and were noticed by Jeffrey [The Hebrew Melodies, though "obviously inferior" to Lord Byron's other works, "display a skill in versification and a mastery in diction which would have raised an inferior artist to the very summit of distinction"] in the Edinburgh Review, December, 1816, vol. xxvii. p. 291.

ADVERTISEMENT

The subsequent poems were written at the request of my friend, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, for a Selection of Hebrew Melodies, and have been published, with the music, arranged by Mr. Braham and Mr. Nathan.

January, 1815.

HEBREW MELODIES

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

She walks in Beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

II.

One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

III.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

June 12, 1814.

THE HARP THE MONARCH MINSTREL SWEPT.

The Harp the Monarch Minstrel swept, The King of men, the loved of Heaven! Which Music hallowed while she wept O'er tones her heart of hearts had given-- Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven! It softened men of iron mould, It gave them virtues not their own; No ear so dull, no soul so cold, That felt not--fired not to the tone, Till David's Lyre grew mightier than his Throne!

II.

It told the triumphs of our King, It wafted glory to our God; It made our gladdened valleys ring, The cedars bow, the mountains nod; Its sound aspired to Heaven and there abode! Since then, though heard on earth no more, Devotion and her daughter Love Still bid the bursting spirit soar To sounds that seem as from above, In dreams that day's broad light can not remove.

IF THAT HIGH WORLD.

If that high world, which lies beyond Our own, surviving Love endears; If there the cherished heart be fond, The eye the same, except in tears-- How welcome those untrodden spheres! How sweet this very hour to die! To soar from earth and find all fears Lost in thy light--Eternity!

II.

It must be so: 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink; And striving to o'erleap the gulf, Yet cling to Being's severing link. Oh! in that future let us think To hold each heart the heart that shares, With them the immortal waters drink, And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!

THE WILD GAZELLE.

The wild gazelle on Judah's hills Exulting yet may bound, And drink from all the living rills That gush on holy ground; Its airy step and glorious eye May glance in tameless transport by:--

II.

A step as fleet, an eye more bright, Hath Judah witnessed there; And o'er her scenes of lost delight Inhabitants more fair. The cedars wave on Lebanon, But Judah's statelier maids are gone!

III.

Than Israel's scattered race; For, taking root, it there remains In solitary grace: It cannot quit its place of birth, It will not live in other earth.

IV.

But we must wander witheringly, In other lands to die; And where our fathers' ashes be, Our own may never lie: Our temple hath not left a stone, And Mockery sits on Salem's throne.

OH! WEEP FOR THOSE.

Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream, Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream; Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell; Mourn--where their God hath dwelt the godless dwell!

II.

And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet? And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet? And Judah's melody once more rejoice The hearts that leaped before its heavenly voice?

III.

Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast, How shall ye flee away and be at rest! The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave, Mankind their country--Israel but the grave!

ON JORDAN'S BANKS.

On Jordan's banks the Arab's camels stray, On Sion's hill the False One's votaries pray, The Baal-adorer bows on Sinai's steep-- Yet there--even there--Oh God! thy thunders sleep:

II.

There--where thy finger scorched the tablet stone! There--where thy shadow to thy people shone! Thy glory shrouded in its garb of fire: Thyself--none living see and not expire!

III.

Oh! in the lightning let thy glance appear; Sweep from his shivered hand the oppressor's spear! How long by tyrants shall thy land be trod? How long thy temple worshipless, Oh God?

JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.

Since our Country, our God--Oh, my Sire! Demand that thy Daughter expire; Since thy triumph was bought by thy vow-- Strike the bosom that's bared for thee now!

II.

And the voice of my mourning is o'er, And the mountains behold me no more: If the hand that I love lay me low, There cannot be pain in the blow!

III.

And of this, oh, my Father! be sure-- That the blood of thy child is as pure As the blessing I beg ere it flow, And the last thought that soothes me below.

IV.

Though the virgins of Salem lament, Be the judge and the hero unbent! I have won the great battle for thee, And my Father and Country are free!

When this blood of thy giving hath gushed, When the voice that thou lovest is hushed, Let my memory still be thy pride, And forget not I smiled as I died!

OH! SNATCHED AWAY IN BEAUTY'S BLOOM.

Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom, On thee shall press no ponderous tomb; But on thy turf shall roses rear Their leaves, the earliest of the year; And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:

II.

And oft by yon blue gushing stream Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head, And feed deep thought with many a dream, And lingering pause and lightly tread; Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!

III.

Away! we know that tears are vain, That Death nor heeds nor hears distress: Will this unteach us to complain? Or make one mourner weep the less? And thou--who tell'st me to forget, Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

MY SOUL IS DARK.

My soul is dark--Oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear, That sound shall charm it forth again: If in these eyes there lurk a tear, 'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

II.

But bid the strain be wild and deep, Nor let thy notes of joy be first: I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, Or else this heavy heart will burst; For it hath been by sorrow nursed, And ached in sleepless silence long; And now 'tis doomed to know the worst, And break at once--or yield to song.

I SAW THEE WEEP.

I saw thee weep--the big bright tear Came o'er that eye of blue; And then methought it did appear A violet dropping dew: I saw thee smile--the sapphire's blaze Beside thee ceased to shine; It could not match the living rays That filled that glance of thine.

II.

As clouds from yonder sun receive A deep and mellow dye, Which scarce the shade of coming eve Can banish from the sky, Those smiles unto the moodiest mind Their own pure joy impart; Their sunshine leaves a glow behind That lightens o'er the heart.

THY DAYS ARE DONE.

Thy days are done, thy fame begun; Thy country's strains record The triumphs of her chosen Son, The slaughters of his sword! The deeds he did, the fields he won, The freedom he restored!

II.

Though thou art fall'n, while we are free Thou shall not taste of death! The generous blood that flowed from thee Disdained to sink beneath: Within our veins its currents be, Thy spirit on our breath!

III.

Thy name, our charging hosts along, Shall be the battle-word! Thy fall, the theme of choral song From virgin voices poured! To weep would do thy glory wrong: Thou shalt not be deplored.

SAUL.

Thou whose spell can raise the dead, Bid the Prophet's form appear. "Samuel, raise thy buried head! King, behold the phantom Seer!" Earth yawned; he stood the centre of a cloud: Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud. Death stood all glassy in his fixed eye; His hand was withered, and his veins were dry; His foot, in bony whiteness, glittered there, Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare; From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame, Like caverned winds, the hollow accents came. Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak, At once, and blasted by the thunder-stroke.

II.

"Why is my sleep disquieted? Who is he that calls the dead? Is it thou, O King? Behold, Bloodless are these limbs, and cold: Such are mine; and such shall be Thine to-morrow, when with me: Ere the coming day is done, Such shalt thou be--such thy Son. Fare thee well, but for a day, Then we mix our mouldering clay. Thou--thy race, lie pale and low, Pierced by shafts of many a bow; And the falchion by thy side To thy heart thy hand shall guide: Crownless--breathless--headless fall, Son and Sire--the house of Saul!"

Seaham, Feb., 1815.

SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST BATTLE.

Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord, Heed not the corse, though a King's, in your path: Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!

II.

Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe, Stretch me that moment in blood at thy feet! Mine be the doom which they dared not to meet.

III.

Farewell to others, but never we part, Heir to my Royalty--Son of my heart! Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway, Or kingly the death, which awaits us to-day!

Seaham, 1815.

"ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER"

Fame, Wisdom, Love, and Power were mine, And Health and Youth possessed me; My goblets blushed from every vine, And lovely forms caressed me; I sunned my heart in Beauty's eyes, And felt my soul grow tender; All Earth can give, or mortal prize, Was mine of regal splendour.

II.

I strive to number o'er what days Remembrance can discover, Which all that Life or Earth displays Would lure me to live over. There rose no day, there rolled no hour Of pleasure unembittered; And not a trapping decked my Power That galled not while it glittered.

III.

The serpent of the field, by art And spells, is won from harming; But that which coils around the heart, Oh! who hath power of charming? It will not list to Wisdom's lore, Nor Music's voice can lure it; But there it stings for evermore The soul that must endure it.

Seaham, 1815.

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

When coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darkened dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey?

II.

Eternal--boundless,--undecayed, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth, or skies displayed, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that Memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the Soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears.

III.

Before Creation peopled earth, Its eye shall roll through chaos back; And where the farthest heaven had birth, The Spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While Sun is quenched--or System breaks, Fixed in its own Eternity.

IV.

Above or Love--Hope--Hate--or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years as moments shall endure. Away--away--without a wing, O'er all--through all--its thought shall fly, A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.

Seaham, 1815.

VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.

The King was on his throne, The Satraps thronged the hall: A thousand bright lamps shone O'er that high festival. A thousand cups of gold, In Judah deemed divine-- Jehovah's vessels hold The godless Heathen's wine!

II.

In that same hour and hall, The fingers of a hand Came forth against the wall, And wrote as if on sand: The fingers of a man;-- A solitary hand Along the letters ran, And traced them like a wand.

III.

The monarch saw, and shook, And bade no more rejoice; All bloodless waxed his look, And tremulous his voice. "Let the men of lore appear, The wisest of the earth, And expound the words of fear, Which mar our royal mirth."

IV.

Chaldea's seers are good, But here they have no skill; And the unknown letters stood Untold and awful still. And Babel's men of age Are wise and deep in lore; But now they were not sage, They saw--but knew no more.

A captive in the land, A stranger and a youth, He heard the King's command, He saw that writing's truth. The lamps around were bright, The prophecy in view; He read it on that night,-- The morrow proved it true.

VI.

"Belshazzar's grave is made, His kingdom passed away. He, in the balance weighed, Is light and worthless clay; The shroud, his robe of state, His canopy the stone; The Mede is at his gate! The Persian on his throne!"

SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS!

Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star! Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far, That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel, How like art thou to Joy remembered well! So gleams the past, the light of other days, Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays: A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold, Distinct, but distant--clear--but, oh how cold!

WERE MY BOSOM AS FALSE AS THOU DEEM'ST IT TO BE.

Were my bosom as false as thou deem'st it to be, I need not have wandered from far Galilee; It was but abjuring my creed to efface The curse which, thou say'st, is the crime of my race.

II.

If the bad never triumph, then God is with thee! If the slave only sin--thou art spotless and free! If the Exile on earth is an Outcast on high, Live on in thy faith--but in mine I will die.

III.

I have lost for that faith more than thou canst bestow, As the God who permits thee to prosper doth know; In his hand is my heart and my hope--and in thine The land and the life which for him I resign.

Seaham, 1815.

HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE.

Oh, Mariamne! now for thee The heart for which thou bled'st is bleeding; Revenge is lost in Agony And wild Remorse to rage succeeding. Oh, Mariamne! where art thou? Thou canst not hear my bitter pleading: Ah! could'st thou--thou would'st pardon now, Though Heaven were to my prayer unheeding.

II.

And is she dead?--and did they dare Obey my Frenzy's jealous raving? My Wrath but doomed my own despair: The sword that smote her 's o'er me waving.-- But thou art cold, my murdered Love! And this dark heart is vainly craving For he who soars alone above, And leaves my soul unworthy saving.

III.

She's gone, who shared my diadem; She sunk, with her my joys entombing; I swept that flower from Judah's stem, Whose leaves for me alone were blooming; And mine's the guilt, and mine the hell, This bosom's desolation dooming; And I have earned those tortures well, Which unconsumed are still consuming!

Jan. 15, 1815.

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

From the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome, I beheld thee, oh Sion! when rendered to Rome: 'Twas thy last sun went down, and the flames of thy fall Flashed back on the last glance I gave to thy wall.

II.

I looked for thy temple--I looked for my home, And forgot for a moment my bondage to come; I beheld but the death-fire that fed on thy fane, And the fast-fettered hands that made vengeance in vain.

III.

On many an eve, the high spot whence I gazed Had reflected the last beam of day as it blazed; While I stood on the height, and beheld the decline Of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy shrine.

IV.

And now on that mountain I stood on that day, But I marked not the twilight beam melting away; Oh! would that the lightning had glared in its stead, And the thunderbolt burst on the Conqueror's head!

But the Gods of the Pagan shall never profane The shrine where Jehovah disdained not to reign; And scattered and scorned as thy people may be, Our worship, oh Father! is only for thee.

1815.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT.

We sate down and wept by the waters Of Babel, and thought of the day When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters, Made Salem's high places his prey; And Ye, oh her desolate daughters! Were scattered all weeping away.

II.

While sadly we gazed on the river Which rolled on in freedom below, They demanded the song; but, oh never That triumph the Stranger shall know! May this right hand be withered for ever, Ere it string our high harp for the foe!

III.

On the willow that harp is suspended, Oh Salem! its sound should be free; And the hour when thy glories were ended But left me that token of thee: And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended With the voice of the Spoiler by me!

Jan. 15, 1813.

"BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON."

In the valley of waters we wept on the day When the host of the Stranger made Salem his prey; And our heads on our bosoms all droopingly lay, And our hearts were so full of the land far away!

II.

The song they demanded in vain--it lay still In our souls as the wind that hath died on the hill-- They called for the harp--but our blood they shall spill Ere our right hands shall teach them one tone of their skill.

III.

All stringlessly hung in the willow's sad tree, As dead as her dead-leaf, those mute harps must be: Our hands may be fettered--our tears still are free For our God--and our Glory--and Sion, Oh Thee!

1815.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

II.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

III.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved--and for ever grew still!

IV.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail: And the tents were all silent--the banners alone-- The lances unlifted--the trumpet unblown.

VI.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Seaham, Feb. 17, 1815.

A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE ME.

FROM JOB.

A spirit passed before me: I beheld The face of Immortality unveiled-- Deep Sleep came down on every eye save mine-- And there it stood,--all formless--but divine: Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake; And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake:

II.

"Is man more just than God? Is man more pure Than he who deems even Seraphs insecure? Creatures of clay--vain dwellers in the dust! The moth survives you, and are ye more just? Things of a day! you wither ere the night, Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!"

FOOTNOTES:

{381} [In a manuscript note to a letter of Byron's, dated June 11, 1814, Wedderburn Webster writes, "I did take him to Lady Sitwell's party.... He there for the first time saw his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot [who had appeared in mourning with numerous spangles in her dress]. When we returned to ... the Albany, he ... desired Fletcher to give him a tumbler of brandy, which he drank at once to Mrs. Wilmot's health.... The next day he wrote some charming lines upon her, 'She walks in beauty,' etc."--Letters, 1899, iii. 92, note 1.

Anne Beatrix, daughter and co-heiress of Eusebius Horton, of Catton Hall, Derbyshire, married Byron's second cousin, Robert John Wilmot (1784-1841), son of Sir Robert Wilmot of Osmaston, by Juliana, second daughter of the Hon. John Byron, and widow of the Hon. William Byron. She died February 4, 1871.

Nathan (Fugitive Pieces, 1829, pp. 2, 3) has a note to the effect that Byron, while arranging the first edition of the Melodies, used to ask for this song, and would not unfrequently join in its execution.]

{382} The Harp the Minstrel Monarch swept, The first of men, the loved of Heaven, Which Music cherished while she wept.--[MS. M.]

{383} It told the Triumph----.--[MS. M.]

It there abode, and there it rings, But ne'er on earth its sound shall be; The prophets' race hath passed away; And all the hallowed minstrelsy-- From earth the sound and soul are fled, And shall we never hear again?--[MS. M. erased.]

Needless to add, "in a subsequent conversation," Byron repels this charge, and delivers himself of some admirable if commonplace sentiments on the "grand perhaps."-Fugitive Pieces, 1829, pp. 5, 6.]

{384} ----breaking link.--[Nathan, 1815, 1829.]

"Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's, Now brightly bold or beautifully shy."

Compare, too, The Giaour, lines 473, 474--

"Her eye's dark charm 'twere vain to tell, But gaze on that of the Gazelle." Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 13; et ante, p. 108.]

{387} [Nathan (Fugitive Pieces, 1829, pp. 11, 12) seems to have tried to draw Byron into a discussion on the actual fate of Jephtha's daughter--death at her father's hand, or "perpetual seclusion"--and that Byron had no opinion to offer. "Whatever may be the absolute state of the case, I am innocent of her blood; she has been killed to my hands;" and again, "Well, my hands are not imbrued in her blood!"]

{388} ["In submitting the melody to his Lordship's judgment, I once inquired in what manner they might refer to any scriptural subject: he appeared for a moment affected--at last replied, 'Every mind must make its own references; there is scarcely one of us who could not imagine that the affliction belongs to himself, to me it certainly belongs.' 'She is no more, and perhaps the only vestige of her existence is the feeling I sometimes fondly indulge.'"--Fugitive Pieces, 1829, p. 30. It has been surmised that the lines contain a final reminiscence of the mysterious Thyrza.]

----in gentle gloom.--[MS. M.]

Shall Sorrow on the waters gaze, And lost in deep remembrance dream, As if her footsteps could disturb the dead.--[MS. M.]

{389} Even thou----.--[MS. M.]

IV.

Nor need I write to tell the tale, My pen were doubly weak; Oh what can idle words avail, Unless my heart could speak?

By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart no longer free Must bear the love it cannot show, And silent turn for thee.--[MS. M.]

{390} ["It was generally conceived that Lord Byron's reported singularities approached on some occasions to derangement; and at one period, indeed, it was very currently asserted that his intellects were actually impaired. The report only served to amuse his Lordship. He referred to the circumstance, and declared that he would try how a Madman could write: seizing the pen with eagerness, he for a moment fixed his eyes in majestic wildness on vacancy; when, like a flash of inspiration, without erasing a single word, the above verses were the result."--Fugitive Pieces, 1829, p. 37.]

{392} He stands amidst an earthly cloud, And the mist mantled o'er his floating shroud.--[MS. erased.]

At once and scorched beneath----.--[MS. Copy (1, 2).]

Bloodless are these bones----.--[MS.]

{393} Heed not the carcase that lies in your path.--[MS. Copy (1).]

----my shield and my bow, Should the ranks of your king look away from the foe.--[MS.]

{394} Heir to my monarchy----.--[MS.] Note to Heir--Jonathan.--[Copy.]

My father was the shepherd's son, Ah were my lot as lowly My earthly course had softly run.--[MS.]

{395} [Compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxii. lines 8, 9--

"Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings." Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 73, and note 16, p. 93.]

Ah! what hath been but what shall be, The same dull scene renewing? And all our fathers were are we In erring and undoing.--[MS.]

When this corroding clay is gone.--[MS. erased.]

The stars in their eternal way.--[MS. L. erased.]

{396} A conscious light that can pervade.--[MS. erased.]

{397} [Compare the lines entitled "Belshazzar" (vide post, p. 421), and Don Juan, Canto III. stanza lxv.]

----in the hall.--[Copy.]

In Israel----.--[Copy.]

{398} [It was not in his youth, but in extreme old age, that Daniel interpreted the "writing on the wall."]

Oh king thy grave----.--[Copy erased.]

{400} [Mariamne, the wife of Herod the Great, falling under the suspicion of infidelity, was put to death by his order. Ever after, Herod was haunted by the image of the murdered Mariamne, until disorder of the mind brought on disorder of body, which led to temporary derangement. See History of the Jews, by H. H. Milman, 1878, pp. 236, 237. See, too, Voltaire's drama, Mariamne, passim.

Nathan, wishing "to be favoured with so many lines pathetic, some playful, others martial, etc.... one evening ... unfortunately (while absorbed for a moment in worldly affairs) requested so many dull lines--meaning plaintive." Byron instantly caught at the expression, and exclaimed, "Well, Nathan! you have at length set me an easy task," and before parting presented him with "these beautifully pathetic lines, saying, 'Here, Nathan, I think you will find these dull enough.'"--Fugitive Pieces, 1829, p. 51.]

And what was rage is agony.--[MS. erased.] Revenge is turned----.--[MS.]

And deep Remorse----.--[MS.]

And what am I thy tyrant pleading.--[MS. erased.]

Thou art not dead--they could not dare Obey my jealous Frenzy's raving.--[MS.]

But yet in death my soul enslaving.--[MS. erased.]

{401} Oh I have earned----.--[MS.]

----that looks o'er thy once holy dome.--[MS.]

----o'er thy once holy wall I beheld thee O Sion the day of thy fall.--[MS. erased.]

And forgot in their ruin----.--[MS. erased.]

{402} And the red bolt----.--[MS. erased.] And the thunderbolt crashed----.--[MS.]

"Dear Kinnaird,--Take only one of these marked 1 and 2 [i.e. 'By the Rivers,' etc.; and 'By the waters,' vide p. 404], as both are but different versions of the same thought--leave the choice to any important person you like. Yours, B."]

"A prey in 'the hue of his slaughters'! This is very pathetic; but not more so than the thought it suggested to me, which is plainer--

'We sat down and wept by the waters Of Camus, and thought of the day When damsels would show their red garters In their hurry to scamper away.'"]

{403} Our mute harps were hung on the willow That grew by the stream of our foe, And in sadness we gazed on each billow That rolled on in freedom below.--[MS, erased.]

On the willow that harp still hangs mutely Oh Salem its sound was for thee.--[MS. erased.]

{405} [Compare--"As leaves in autumn, so the bodies fell." The Barons' Wars, by Michael Drayton, Bk. II. stanza lvii.; Anderson's British Poets, iii. 38.]

And the foam of his bridle lay cold on the earth.--[MS.]

----of the cliff-beating surf.--[MS.]

With the crow on his breast----.--[MS.]

And the widows of Babel----.--[MS. erased.]

And the voices of Israel are joyous and high.--[MS. erased.]

POEMS 1814-1816.

POEMS 1814-1816.

FAREWELL! IF EVER FONDEST PRAYER.

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer For other's weal availed on high, Mine will not all be lost in air, But waft thy name beyond the sky. 'Twere vain to speak--to weep--to sigh: Oh! more than tears of blood can tell, When wrung from Guilt's expiring eye, Are in that word--Farewell!--Farewell!

These lips are mute, these eyes are dry; But in my breast and in my brain, Awake the pangs that pass not by, The thought that ne'er shall sleep again. My soul nor deigns nor dares complain, Though Grief and Passion there rebel: I only know we loved in vain-- I only feel--Farewell!--Farewell!

WHEN WE TWO PARTED.

When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow-- It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.

They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me-- Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well:-- Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met-- In silence I grieve. That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee?-- With silence and tears.

I cannot talk of Love to thee, Though thou art young and free and fair! There is a spell thou dost not see, That bids a genuine love despair.

And yet that spell invites each youth, For thee to sigh, or seem to sigh; Makes falsehood wear the garb of truth, And Truth itself appear a lie.

If ever Doubt a place possest In woman's heart, 'twere wise in thine: Admit not Love into thy breast, Doubt others' love, nor trust in mine.

Perchance 'tis feigned, perchance sincere, But false or true thou canst not tell; So much hast thou from all to fear, In that unconquerable spell.

Of all the herd that throng around, Thy simpering or thy sighing train, Come tell me who to thee is bound By Love's or Plutus' heavier chain.

In some 'tis Nature, some 'tis Art That bids them worship at thy shrine; But thou deserv'st a better heart, Than they or I can give for thine.

For thee, and such as thee, behold, Is Fortune painted truly--blind! Who doomed thee to be bought or sold, Has proved too bounteous to be kind.

Each day some tempter's crafty suit Would woo thee to a loveless bed: I see thee to the altar's foot A decorated victim led.

Adieu, dear maid! I must not speak Whate'er my secret thoughts may be; Though thou art all that man can reck I dare not talk of Love to thee.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name, There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame: But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.

Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace, Were those hours--can their joy or their bitterness cease? We repent, we abjure, we will break from our chain,-- We will part, we will fly to--unite it again!

Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt! Forgive me, adored one!--forsake, if thou wilt;-- But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased And man shall not break it--whatever thou mayst.

And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee, This soul, in its bitterest blackness, shall be: And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet, With thee by my side, than with worlds at our feet.

One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love, Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove; And the heartless may wonder at all I resign-- Thy lip shall reply, not to them, but to mine.

May 4, 1814. [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 554.]

ADDRESS INTENDED TO BE RECITED AT THE CALEDONIAN MEETING.

Who hath not glowed above the page where Fame Hath fixed high Caledon's unconquered name; The mountain-land which spurned the Roman chain, And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane, Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand No foe could tame--no tyrant could command? That race is gone--but still their children breathe, And Glory crowns them with redoubled wreath: O'er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine, And, England! add their stubborn strength to thine. The blood which flowed with Wallace flows as free, But now 'tis only shed for Fame and thee! Oh! pass not by the northern veteran's claim, But give support--the world hath given him fame!

The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled While cheerly following where the Mighty led-- Who sleep beneath the undistinguished sod Where happier comrades in their triumph trod, To us bequeath--'tis all their fate allows-- The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse: She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise The tearful eye in melancholy gaze, Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose The Highland Seer's anticipated woes, The bleeding phantom of each martial form Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm; While sad, she chaunts the solitary song, The soft lament for him who tarries long-- For him, whose distant relics vainly crave The Coronach's wild requiem to the brave!

'Tis Heaven--not man--must charm away the woe, Which bursts when Nature's feelings newly flow; Yet Tenderness and Time may rob the tear Of half its bitterness for one so dear; A Nation's gratitude perchance may spread A thornless pillow for the widowed head; May lighten well her heart's maternal care, And wean from Penury the soldier's heir; Or deem to living war-worn Valour just Each wounded remnant--Albion's cherished trust-- Warm his decline with those endearing rays, Whose bounteous sunshine yet may gild his days-- So shall that Country--while he sinks to rest-- His hand hath fought for--by his heart be blest!

May, 1814. [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 559.]

ELEGIAC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART.

There is a tear for all that die, A mourner o'er the humblest grave; But nations swell the funeral cry, And Triumph weeps above the brave.

For them is Sorrow's purest sigh O'er Ocean's heaving bosom sent: In vain their bones unburied lie, All earth becomes their monument!

A tomb is theirs on every page, An epitaph on every tongue: The present hours, the future age, For them bewail, to them belong.

For them the voice of festal mirth Grows hushed, their name the only sound; While deep Remembrance pours to Worth The goblet's tributary round.

A theme to crowds that knew them not, Lamented by admiring foes, Who would not share their glorious lot? Who would not die the death they chose?

And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be; And early valour, glowing, find A model in thy memory.

But there are breasts that bleed with thee In woe, that glory cannot quell; And shuddering hear of victory, Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell.

Where shall they turn to mourn thee less? When cease to hear thy cherished name? Time cannot teach forgetfulness, While Grief's full heart is fed by Fame.

Alas! for them, though not for thee, They cannot choose but weep the more; Deep for the dead the grief must be, Who ne'er gave cause to mourn before.

October 7, 1814. [First published, Morning Chronicle, October 7, 1814.]

JULIAN [A FRAGMENT].

The Night came on the Waters--all was rest On Earth--but Rage on Ocean's troubled Heart. The Waves arose and rolled beneath the blast; The Sailors gazed upon their shivered Mast. In that dark Hour a long loud gathered cry From out the billows pierced the sable sky, And borne o'er breakers reached the craggy shore-- The Sea roars on--that Cry is heard no more.

There is no vestige, in the Dawning light, Of those that shrieked thro' shadows of the Night. The Bark--the Crew--the very Wreck is gone, Marred--mutilated--traceless--all save one. In him there still is Life, the Wave that dashed On shore the plank to which his form was lashed, Returned unheeding of its helpless Prey-- The lone survivor of that Yesterday-- The one of Many whom the withering Gale Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All sunless on that solitary Isle.

The naked Stranger rose, and wrung his hair, And that first moment passed in silent prayer. Alas! the sound--he sunk into Despair-- He was on Earth--but what was Earth to him, Houseless and homeless--bare both breast and limb? Cut off from all but Memory he curst His fate--his folly--but himself the worst. What was his hope? he looked upon the Wave-- Despite--of all--it still may be his Grave!

He rose and with a feeble effort shaped His course unto the billows--late escaped: But weakness conquered--swam his dizzy glance, And down to Earth he sunk in silent trance. How long his senses bore its chilling chain, He knew not--but, recalled to Life again, A stranger stood beside his shivering form-- And what was he? had he too scaped the storm?

He raised young Julian. "Is thy Cup so full Of bitterness--thy Hope--thy heart so dull That thou shouldst from Thee dash the Draught of Life, So late escaped the elemental strife! Rise--tho' these shores few aids to Life supply, Look upon me, and know thou shalt not die. Thou gazest in mute wonder--more may be Thy marvel when thou knowest mine and me. But come--The bark that bears us hence shall find Her Haven, soon, despite the warning Wind."

He raised young Julian from the sand, and such Strange power of healing dwelt within the touch, That his weak limbs grew light with freshened Power, As he had slept not fainted in that hour, And woke from Slumber--as the Birds awake, Recalled at morning from the branched brake, When the day's promise heralds early Spring, And Heaven unfolded woos their soaring wing: So Julian felt, and gazed upon his Guide, With honest Wonder what might next betide.

Dec. 12, 1814.

TO BELSHAZZAR.

Belshazzar! from the banquet turn, Nor in thy sensual fulness fall; Behold! while yet before thee burn The graven words, the glowing wall, Many a despot men miscall Crowned and anointed from on high; But thou, the weakest, worst of all-- Is it not written, thou must die?

Go! dash the roses from thy brow-- Grey hairs but poorly wreathe with them; Youth's garlands misbecome thee now, More than thy very diadem, Where thou hast tarnished every gem:-- Then throw the worthless bauble by, Which, worn by thee, ev'n slaves contemn; And learn like better men to die!

Oh! early in the balance weighed, And ever light of word and worth, Whose soul expired ere youth decayed, And left thee but a mass of earth. To see thee moves the scorner's mirth: But tears in Hope's averted eye Lament that even thou hadst birth-- Unfit to govern, live, or die.

February 12, 1815. [First published, 1831.]

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

"O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros Ducentium ortus ex animo: quater Felix! in imo qui scatentem Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit." Gray's Poemata. [Motto to "The Tear," Poetical Works, 1898, i. 49.]

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in Feeling's dull decay; 'Tis not on Youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere Youth itself be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess: The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like Death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreath All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.

Oh, could I feel as I have felt,--or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene; As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

March, 1815. [First published, Poems, 1816.]

ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF DORSET.

I heard thy fate without a tear, Thy loss with scarce a sigh; And yet thou wast surpassing dear, Too loved of all to die. I know not what hath seared my eye-- Its tears refuse to start; But every drop, it bids me dry, Falls dreary on my heart.

Yes, dull and heavy, one by one, They sink and turn to care, As caverned waters wear the stone, Yet dropping harden there: They cannot petrify more fast, Than feelings sunk remain, Which coldly fixed regard the past, But never melt again.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

Bright be the place of thy soul! No lovelier spirit than thine E'er burst from its mortal control, In the orbs of the blessed to shine. On earth thou wert all but divine, As thy soul shall immortally be; And our sorrow may cease to repine When we know that thy God is with thee.

Light be the turf of thy tomb! May its verdure like emeralds be! There should not be the shadow of gloom In aught that reminds us of thee. Young flowers and an evergreen tree May spring from the spot of thy rest: But nor cypress nor yew let us see; For why should we mourn for the blest?

NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL.

Farewell to the Land, where the gloom of my Glory Arose and o'ershadowed the earth with her name-- She abandons me now--but the page of her story, The brightest or blackest, is filled with my fame. I have warred with a World which vanquished me only When the meteor of conquest allured me too far; I have coped with the nations which dread me thus lonely, The last single Captive to millions in war.

Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crowned me, I made thee the gem and the wonder of earth,-- But thy weakness decrees I should leave as I found thee, Decayed in thy glory, and sunk in thy worth. Oh! for the veteran hearts that were wasted In strife with the storm, when their battles were won-- Then the Eagle, whose gaze in that moment was blasted Had still soared with eyes fixed on Victory's sun!

Farewell to thee, France!--but when Liberty rallies Once more in thy regions, remember me then,-- The Violet still grows in the depth of thy valleys; Though withered, thy tear will unfold it again-- Yet, yet, I may baffle the hosts that surround us, And yet may thy heart leap awake to my voice-- There are links which must break in the chain that has bound us, Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice!

July 25, 1815. London. [First published, Examiner, July 30, 1815.]

FROM THE FRENCH.

Must thou go, my glorious Chief, Severed from thy faithful few? Who can tell thy warrior's grief, Maddening o'er that long adieu? Woman's love, and Friendship's zeal, Dear as both have been to me-- What are they to all I feel, With a soldier's faith for thee?

II.

Idol of the soldier's soul! First in fight, but mightiest now; Many could a world control; Thee alone no doom can bow. By thy side for years I dared Death; and envied those who fell, When their dying shout was heard, Blessing him they served so well.

III.

Would that I were cold with those, Since this hour I live to see; When the doubts of coward foes Scarce dare trust a man with thee, Dreading each should set thee free! Oh! although in dungeons pent, All their chains were light to me, Gazing on thy soul unbent.

IV.

Would the sycophants of him Now so deaf to duty's prayer, Were his borrowed glories dim, In his native darkness share? Were that world this hour his own, All thou calmly dost resign, Could he purchase with that throne Hearts like those which still are thine?

My Chief, my King, my Friend, adieu! Never did I droop before; Never to my Sovereign sue, As his foes I now implore: All I ask is to divide Every peril he must brave; Sharing by the hero's side His fall--his exile--and his grave.

ODE FROM THE FRENCH.

We do not curse thee, Waterloo! Though Freedom's blood thy plain bedew; There 'twas shed, but is not sunk-- Rising from each gory trunk, Like the water-spout from ocean, With a strong and growing motion-- It soars, and mingles in the air, With that of lost La Bedoyere-- With that of him whose honoured grave Contains the "bravest of the brave." A crimson cloud it spreads and glows, But shall return to whence it rose; When 'tis full 'twill burst asunder-- Never yet was heard such thunder As then shall shake the world with wonder-- Never yet was seen such lightning As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning! Like the Wormwood Star foretold By the sainted Seer of old, Show'ring down a fiery flood, Turning rivers into blood.

II.

The Chief has fallen, but not by you, Vanquishers of Waterloo! When the soldier citizen Swayed not o'er his fellow-men-- Save in deeds that led them on Where Glory smiled on Freedom's son-- Who, of all the despots banded, With that youthful chief competed? Who could boast o'er France defeated, Till lone Tyranny commanded? Till, goaded by Ambition's sting, The Hero sunk into the King? Then he fell:--so perish all, Who would men by man enthral!

III.

And thou, too, of the snow-white plume! Whose realm refused thee ev'n a tomb; Better hadst thou still been leading France o'er hosts of hirelings bleeding, Than sold thyself to death and shame For a meanly royal name; Such as he of Naples wears, Who thy blood-bought title bears. Little didst thou deem, when dashing On thy war-horse through the ranks. Like a stream which burst its banks, While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing, Shone and shivered fast around thee-- Of the fate at last which found thee: Was that haughty plume laid low By a slave's dishonest blow? Once--as the Moon sways o'er the tide, It rolled in air, the warrior's guide; Through the smoke-created night Of the black and sulphurous fight, The soldier raised his seeking eye To catch that crest's ascendancy,-- And, as it onward rolling rose, So moved his heart upon our foes. There, where death's brief pang was quickest, And the battle's wreck lay thickest, Strewed beneath the advancing banner Of the eagle's burning crest-- (There with thunder-clouds to fan her, Who could then her wing arrest-- Victory beaming from her breast?) While the broken line enlarging Fell, or fled along the plain; There be sure was Murat charging! There he ne'er shall charge again!

IV.

O'er glories gone the invaders march, Weeps Triumph o'er each levelled arch-- But let Freedom rejoice, With her heart in her voice; But, her hand on her sword, Doubly shall she be adored; France hath twice too well been taught The "moral lesson" dearly bought-- Her safety sits not on a throne, With Capet or Napoleon! But in equal rights and laws, Hearts and hands in one great cause-- Freedom, such as God hath given Unto all beneath his heaven, With their breath, and from their birth, Though guilt would sweep it from the earth; With a fierce and lavish hand Scattering nations' wealth like sand; Pouring nations' blood like water, In imperial seas of slaughter!

But the heart and the mind, And the voice of mankind, Shall arise in communion-- And who shall resist that proud union? The time is past when swords subdued-- Man may die--the soul's renewed: Even in this low world of care Freedom ne'er shall want an heir; Millions breathe but to inherit Her for ever bounding spirit-- When once more her hosts assemble, Tyrants shall believe and tremble-- Smile they at this idle threat? Crimson tears will follow yet.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed Ocean's pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lulled winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight Moon is weaving Her bright chain o'er the deep; Whose breast is gently heaving, As an infant's asleep: So the spirit bows before thee, To listen and adore thee; With a full but soft emotion, Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

March 28 . [First published, Poems, 1816.]

ON THE STAR OF "THE LEGION OF HONOUR."

Star of the brave!--whose beam hath shed Such glory o'er the quick and dead-- Thou radiant and adored deceit! Which millions rushed in arms to greet,-- Wild meteor of immortal birth! Why rise in Heaven to set on Earth?

Souls of slain heroes formed thy rays; Eternity flashed through thy blaze; The music of thy martial sphere Was fame on high and honour here; And thy light broke on human eyes, Like a Volcano of the skies.

Like lava rolled thy stream of blood, And swept down empires with its flood; Earth rocked beneath thee to her base, As thou didst lighten through all space; And the shorn Sun grew dim in air, And set while thou wert dwelling there.

Before thee rose, and with thee grew, A rainbow of the loveliest hue Of three bright colours, each divine, And fit for that celestial sign; For Freedom's hand had blended them, Like tints in an immortal gem.

One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes; One, the blue depth of Seraph's eyes; One, the pure Spirit's veil of white Had robed in radiance of its light: The three so mingled did beseem The texture of a heavenly dream.

Star of the brave! thy ray is pale, And darkness must again prevail! But, oh thou Rainbow of the free! Our tears and blood must flow for thee. When thy bright promise fades away, Our life is but a load of clay.

And Freedom hallows with her tread The silent cities of the dead; For beautiful in death are they Who proudly fall in her array; And soon, oh, Goddess! may we be For evermore with them or thee!

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

They say that Hope is happiness; But genuine Love must prize the past, And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose the first--they set the last;

II.

And all that Memory loves the most Was once our only Hope to be, And all that Hope adored and lost Hath melted into Memory.

III.

Alas! it is delusion all: The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are.

FOOTNOTES:

{409} [Compare The Corsair, Canto I. stanza xv. lines 480-490.]

{410} Never may I behold Moment like this.--[MS.]

The damp of the morning Clung chill on my brow.--[MS. erased.]

Thy vow hath been broken.--[MS.]

----lies hidden Our secret of sorrow-- And deep in my soul-- But deed more forbidden, Our secret lies hidden, But never forgot.--[Erasures, stanza 3, MS.]

{411} If one should meet thee How should we greet thee? In silence and tears.--[MS.]

The water-mark of the paper on which a much-tortured rough copy of these lines has been scrawled, is 1809, but, with this exception, there is no hint as to the date of composition. An entry in the Diary for November 30, 1813, in which Annabella (Miss Milbanke) is described "as an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be," etc., and a letter (Byron to Miss Milbanke) dated November 29, 1813 (see Letters, 1898, ii. 357, and 1899, iii. 407), in which there is more than one allusion to her would-be suitors, "your thousand and one pretendants," etc., suggest the idea that the lines were addressed to his future wife, when he first made her acquaintance in 1812 or 1813.]

{413} ["Thou hast asked me for a song, and I enclose you an experiment, which has cost me something more than trouble, and is, therefore, less likely to be worth your taking any in your proposed setting. Now, if it be so, throw it into the fire without phrase."--Letter to Moore, May 4, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 80.]

I speak not--I breathe not--I write not that name.--[MS. erased.]

{414} We have loved--and oh, still, my adored one we love! Oh the moment is past, when that Passion might cease.-- [MS. erased.]

The thought may be madness--the wish may be--guilt.--[MS. erased.]

{But I cannot repent what we ne'er can recall. {But the heart which is thine would disdain to recall.-- [MS. erased.]

----though I feel that thou mayst.--[MS. L. erased.]

This soul in its bitterest moments shall be, And our days run as swift--and our moments more sweet, With thee at my side, than the world at my feet.--[MS.]

{415} And thine is that love which I will never forego Though the price which I pay be Eternity's woe.--[MS. erased]

One tear of thy sorrow, one smile----.--[MS. erased]

{416} [As an instance of Scottish gallantry in the Peninsular War it is sufficient to cite the following list of "casualties" at the battle of Vittoria, June 21, 1813: "The battalion [the seventy-first Highland Light Infantry] suffered very severely, having had 1 field officer, 1 captain, 2 lieutenants, 6 sergeants, 1 bugler, and 78 rank and file killed; 1 field officer, 3 captains, 7 lieutenants, 13 sergeants, 2 buglers, and 255 rank and file were wounded."--Historical Record of the 71st Highland Light Infantry, by Lieut. Henry J. T. Hildyard, 1876, p. 91.]

{417} [The last six lines are printed from the MS.]

{419} [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for the first time printed.]

{421} 1.

The red light glows, the wassail flows, Around the royal hall; And who, on earth, dare mar the mirth Of that high festival? The prophet dares--before thee glows-- Belshazzar rise, nor dare despise The writing on the wall!

Thy vice might raise th' avenging steel, Thy meanness shield thee from the blow-- And they who loathe thee proudly feel.--[MS.]

{422} The words of God along the wall.--[MS. erased.] The word of God--the graven wall.--[MS.]

Behold it written----.--[MS.]

----thy sullied diadem.--[MS.]

{423} [Byron gave these verses to Moore for Mr. Power of the Strand, who published them, with music by Sir John Stevenson. "I feel merry enough," he wrote, March 2, "to send you a sad song." And again, March 8, 1815, "An event--the death of poor Dorset--and the recollection of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not--set me pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in your hands." A year later, in another letter to Moore, he says, "I pique myself on these lines as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote." (March 8, 1816.)--Letters, 1899, iii. 181, 183, 274.]

'Tis not the blush alone that fades from Beauty's cheek.--[MS.]

{424} As ivy o'er the mouldering wall that heavily hath crept.--[MS.]

"And oft we see gay ivy's wreath The tree with brilliant bloom o'erspread, When, part its leaves and gaze beneath, We find the hidden tree is dead." "To Anna," The Warrior's Return, etc., by Mrs. Opie, 1808, p. 144.]

{425} [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for the first time printed. The MS. is headed, in pencil, "Lines written on the Death of the Duke of Dorset, a College Friend of Lord Byron's, who was killed by a fall from his horse while hunting." It is endorsed, "Bought of Markham Thorpe, August 29, 1844." (For Duke of Dorset, see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 194, note 2; and Letters, 1899, in. 181, note 1.)]

{426} ----shall eternally be.--[MS. erased.]

Green be the turf----.--[MS.]

May its verdure be sweetest to see.--[MS.]

{427} Young flowers and a far-spreading tree May wave on the spot of thy rest; But nor cypress nor yew let it be.--[MS.]

The brightest and blackest are due to my fame.--[MS.]

But thy destiny wills----.--[MS.]

{428} Oh for the thousands of Those who have perished By elements blasted, unvanquished by man-- Then the hope which till now I have fearlessly cherished, Had waved o'er thine eagles in Victory's van.--[MS.]

{429} ----that mute adieu.--[MS.]

Dear as they have seemed to me.--[MS.]

In the faith I pledged to thee.--[MS.]

Glory lightened from thy soul. Never did I grieve till now.--[MS.]

When the hearts of coward foes.--[MS.]

{430} ----to Friendship's prayer.--[MS.]

'Twould not gather round his throne Half the hearts that still are thine.--[MS.]

Let me but partake his doom, Be it exile or the grave. or, All I ask is to abide All the perils he must brave, All my hope was to divide.--[MS.] or, Let me still partake his gloom, Late his soldier, now his slave-- Grant me but to share the gloom Of his exile or his grave.--[MS.]

{431} [These lines "are said to have been done into English verse by R. S. ---- P. L. P. R., Master of the Royal Spanish Inqn., etc., etc."--Morning Chronicle, March 15, 1816. "The French have their Poems and Odes on the famous Battle of Waterloo, as well as ourselves. Nay, they seem to glory in the battle as the source of great events to come. We have received the following poetical version of a poem, the original of which is circulating in Paris, and which is ascribed (we know not with what justice) to the Muse of M. de Chateaubriand. If so, it may be inferred that in the poet's eye a new change is at hand, and he wishes to prove his secret indulgence of old principles by reference to this effusion."--Note, ibid.]

{432} See Rev. Chap. viii. V. 7, etc., "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood," etc. V. 8, "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood," etc. V. 10, "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters." V. 11, "And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."

Murat's remains are said to have been torn from the grave and burnt. ["Poor dear Murat, what an end ...! His white plume used to be a rallying point in battle, like Henry the Fourth's. He refused a confessor and a bandage; so would neither suffer his soul or body to be bandaged."--Letter to Moore, November 4. 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 245. See, too, for Joachim Murat (born 1771), proclaimed King of Naples and the Two Sicilies, August, 1808, ibid., note 1.]

{434} ["Write, Britain, write the moral lesson down." Scott's Field of Waterloo, Conclusion, stanza vi. line 3.]

{435} ["Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem says, pray look at the conclusion of my 'Ode on Waterloo,' written in the year 1815, and comparing it with the Duke de Berri's catastrophe in 1820, tell me if I have not as good a right to the character of 'Vates,' in both senses of the word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge?--

'Crimson tears will follow yet;'

and have not they?"--Letter to Murray, April 24, 1820.

In the Preface to The Tyrant's Downfall, etc., 1814, W. L. Fitzgerald (see English Bards, etc., line 1, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 297, note 3) "begs leave to refer his reader to the dates of his Napoleonics ... to prove his legitimate title to the prophetical meaning of Vates" (Cent. Mag., July, 1814, vol. lxxxiv. p. 58). Coleridge claimed to have foretold the restoration of the Bourbons (see Biographia Literaria, cap. x.).]

{436} ["The Friend who favoured us with the following lines, the poetical spirit of which wants no trumpet of ours, is aware that they imply more than an impartial observer of the late period might feel, and are written rather as by Frenchman than Englishman;--but certainly, neither he nor any lover of liberty can help feeling and regretting that in the latter time, at any rate, the symbol he speaks of was once more comparatively identified with the cause of Freedom."--Examiner. April 7, 1816.]

{437} The tricolor.

THE SIEGE OF CORINTH

"Guns, Trumpets, Blunderbusses, Drums and Thunder."

Pope, Sat. i. 26.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.

In a note to the "Advertisement" to the Siege of Corinth (vide post, p. 447), Byron puts it on record that during the years 1809-10 he had crossed the Isthmus of Corinth eight times, and in a letter to his mother, dated Patras, July 30, 1810, he alludes to a recent visit to the town of Corinth, in company with his friend Lord Sligo. (See, too, his letter to Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 228.) It is probable that he revisited Corinth more than once in the autumn of 1810; and we may infer that, just as the place and its surroundings--the temple with its "two or three columns" (line 497), and the view across the bay from Acro-Corinth--are sketched from memory, so the story of the siege which took place in 1715 is based upon tales and legends which were preserved and repeated by the grandchildren of the besieged, and were taken down from their lips. There is point and meaning in the apparently insignificant line (stanza xxiv. line 765), "We have heard the hearers say" (see variant i. p. 483), which is slipped into the description of the final catastrophe. It bears witness to the fact that the Siege of Corinth is not a poetical expansion of a chapter in history, but a heightened reminiscence of local tradition.

History has, indeed, very little to say on the subject. The anonymous Compleat History of the Turks (London, 1719), which Byron quotes as an authority, is meagre and inaccurate. Hammer-Purgstall (Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, 1839, xiii. 269), who gives as his authorities Girolamo Ferrari and Raschid, dismisses the siege in a few lines; and it was not till the publication of Finlay's History of Greece (vol. v., a.d. 1453-1821), in 1856, that the facts were known or reported. Finlay's newly discovered authority was a then unpublished MS. of a journal kept by Benjamin Brue, a connection of Voltaire's, who accompanied the Grand Vizier, Ali Cumurgi, as his interpreter, on the expedition into the Morea. According to Brue (Journal de la Campagne ... en 1715 ... Paris, 1870, p. 18), the siege began on June 28, 1715. A peremptory demand on the part of the Grand Vizier to surrender at discretion was answered by the Venetian proveditor-general, Giacomo Minetto, with calm but assured defiance ("Your menaces are useless, for we are prepared to resist all your attacks, and, with confidence in the assistance of God, we will preserve this fortress to the most serene Republic. God is with us"). Nevertheless, the Turks made good their threat, and on the 2nd of July the fortress capitulated. On the following day at noon, whilst a party of Janissaries, contrary to order, were looting and pillaging in all directions, the fortress was seen to be enveloped in smoke. How or why the explosion happened was never discovered, but the result was that some of the pillaging Janissaries perished, and that others, to avenge their death, which they attributed to Venetian treachery, put the garrison to the sword. It was believed at the time that Minetto was among the slain; but, as Brue afterwards discovered, he was secretly conveyed to Smyrna, and ultimately ransomed by the Dutch Consul.

The late Professor Koelbing (Siege of Corinth, 1893, p. xxvii.), in commenting on the sources of the poem, suggests, under reserve, that Byron may have derived the incident of Minetto's self-immolation from an historic source--the siege of Zsigetvar, in 1566, when a multitude of Turks perished from the explosion of a powder magazine which had been fired at the cost of his own life by the Hungarian commander Zrini.

It is, at least, equally probable that local patriotism was, in the first instance, responsible for the poetic colouring, and that Byron supplemented the meagre and uninteresting historic details which were at his disposal by "intimate knowledge" of the Corinthian version of the siege. (See Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron, London, 1822, p. 222; and Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron, by George Clinton, London, 1825, p. 284.)

It has been generally held that the Siege of Corinth was written in the second half of 1815 (Koelbing's Siege of Corinth, p. vii.). "It appears," says John Wright (Works, 1832, x. 100), "by the original MS., to have been begun in July, 1815;" and Moore (Life, p. 307), who probably relied on the same authority, speaks of "both the Siege of Corinth and Parisina having been produced but a short time before the Separation" (i.e. spring, 1816). Some words which Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 55) puts into Byron's mouth point to the same conclusion. Byron's own testimony, which is completely borne out by the MS. itself (dated J^y [i.e. January, not July] 31, 1815), is in direct conflict with these statements. In a note to stanza xix. lines 521-532 (vide post, pp. 471-473) he affirms that it "was not till after these lines were written" that he heard "that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem [Christabel] recited;" and in a letter to S. T. Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815 (Letters, 1899, iii. 228), he is careful to explain that "the enclosed extract from an unpublished poem (i.e. stanza xix. lines 521-532) ... was written before (not seeing your Christabelle , for that you know I never did till this day), but before I heard Mr. S repeat it, which he did in June last, and this thing was begun in January, and more than half written before the Summer." The question of plagiarism will be discussed in an addendum to Byron's note on the lines in question; but, subject to the correction that it was, probably, at the end of May (see Lockhart's Memoir of the Life of Sir W. Scott, 1871, pp. 311-313), not in June, that Scott recited Christabel for Byron's benefit, the date of the composition of the poem must be determined by the evidence of the author himself.

The copy of the MS. of the Siege of Corinth was sent to Murray at the beginning (probably on the 2nd, the date of the copy) of November, and was placed in Gifford's hands about the same time (see letter to Murray, November 4, 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 245; and Murray's undated letter on Gifford's "great delight" in the poem, and his "three critical remarks," Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 356). As with Lara, Byron began by insisting that the Siege should not be published separately, but slipped into a fourth volume of the collected works, and once again (possibly when he had at last made up his mind to accept a thousand guineas for his own requirements, and not for other beneficiaries--Godwin, Coleridge, or Maturin) yielded to his publisher's wishes and representations. At any rate, the Siege of Corinth and Parisina, which, says Moore, "during the month of January and part of February were in the hands of the printers" (Life, p. 300), were published in a single volume on February 7, 1816. The greater reviews were silent, but notices appeared in numerous periodicals; e.g. the Monthly Review, February, 1816, vol. lxxix. p. 196; the Eclectic Review, March, 1816, N.S. vol. v. p. 269; the European, May, 1816, vol. lxxix. p. 427; the Literary Panorama, June, 1816, N.S. vol. iv. p. 418; etc. Many of these reviews took occasion to pick out and hold up to ridicule the illogical sentences, the grammatical solecisms, and general imperfections of technique which marked and disfigured the Siege of Corinth. A passage in a letter which John Murray wrote to his brother-publisher, William Blackwood (Annals of a Publishing House, 1897, i. 53), refers to these cavillings, and suggests both an apology and a retaliation--

"Many who by 'numbers judge a poet's song' are so stupid as not to see the powerful effect of the poems, which is the great object of poetry, because they can pick out fifty careless or even bad lines. The words may be carelessly put together; but this is secondary. Many can write polished lines who will never reach the name of poet. You see it is all poetically conceived in Lord B.'s mind."

In such wise did Murray bear testimony to Byron's "splendid and imperishable excellence, which covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects--the excellence of sincerity and strength."

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.,

this poem is inscribed,

by his

FRIEND.

January 22nd, 1816.

ADVERTISEMENT

"The grand army of the Turks (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that country, thought it best in the first place to attack Corinth, upon which they made several storms. The garrison being weakened, and the governor seeing it was impossible to hold out such a place against so mighty a force, thought it fit to beat a parley: but while they were treating about the articles, one of the magazines in the Turkish camp, wherein they had six hundred barrels of powder, blew up by accident, whereby six or seven hundred men were killed; which so enraged the infidels, that they would not grant any capitulation, but stormed the place with so much fury, that they took it, and put most of the garrison, with Signior Minotti, the governor, to the sword. The rest, with Signior or Antonio Bembo, Proveditor Extraordinary, were made prisoners of war."--A Compleat History of the Turks [London, 1719], iii. 151.

NOTE ON THE MS. OF THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.

The original MS. of the Siege of Corinth (now in the possession of Lord Glenesk) consists of sixteen folio and nine quarto sheets, and numbers fifty pages. Sheets 1-4 are folios, sheets 5-10 are quartos, sheets 11-22 are folios, and sheets 23-25 are quartos.

To judge from the occasional and disconnected pagination, this MS. consists of portions of two or more fair copies of a number of detached scraps written at different times, together with two or three of the original scraps which had not been transcribed.

The water-mark of the folios is, with one exception (No. 8, 1815), 1813; and of the quartos, with one exception (No. 8, 1814), 1812.

Lord Glenesk's MS. is dated January 31, 1815. Lady Byron's transcript, from which the Siege of Corinth was printed, and which is in Mr. Murray's possession, is dated November 2, 1815.

THE SIEGE OF CORINTH

In the year since Jesus died for men, Eighteen hundred years and ten, We were a gallant company, Riding o'er land, and sailing o'er sea. Oh! but we went merrily! We forded the river, and clomb the high hill, Never our steeds for a day stood still; Whether we lay in the cave or the shed, Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed; Whether we couched in our rough capote, 10 On the rougher plank of our gliding boat, Or stretched on the beach, or our saddles spread, As a pillow beneath the resting head, Fresh we woke upon the morrow: All our thoughts and words had scope, We had health, and we had hope, Toil and travel, but no sorrow. We were of all tongues and creeds;-- Some were those who counted beads, Some of mosque, and some of church, 20 And some, or I mis-say, of neither; Yet through the wide world might ye search, Nor find a motlier crew nor blither.

But some are dead, and some are gone, And some are scattered and alone, And some are rebels on the hills That look along Epirus' valleys, Where Freedom still at moments rallies, And pays in blood Oppression's ills; And some are in a far countree, 30 And some all restlessly at home; But never more, oh! never, we Shall meet to revel and to roam. But those hardy days flew cheerily! And when they now fall drearily, My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main, And bear my spirit back again Over the earth, and through the air, A wild bird and a wanderer. 'Tis this that ever wakes my strain, 40 And oft, too oft, implores again The few who may endure my lay, To follow me so far away. Stranger, wilt thou follow now, And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow?

Many a vanished year and age, And Tempest's breath, and Battle's rage, Have swept o'er Corinth; yet she stands, A fortress formed to Freedom's hands. The Whirlwind's wrath, the Earthquake's shock, 50 Have left untouched her hoary rock, The keystone of a land, which still, Though fall'n, looks proudly on that hill, The landmark to the double tide That purpling rolls on either side, As if their waters chafed to meet, Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet. But could the blood before her shed Since first Timoleon's brother bled, Or baffled Persia's despot fled, 60 Arise from out the Earth which drank The stream of Slaughter as it sank, That sanguine Ocean would o'erflow Her isthmus idly spread below: Or could the bones of all the slain, Who perished there, be piled again, That rival pyramid would rise More mountain-like, through those clear skies Than yon tower-capp'd Acropolis, Which seems the very clouds to kiss. 70

II.

On dun Cithaeron's ridge appears The gleam of twice ten thousand spears; And downward to the Isthmian plain, From shore to shore of either main, The tent is pitched, the Crescent shines Along the Moslem's leaguering lines; And the dusk Spahi's bands advance Beneath each bearded Pacha's glance; And far and wide as eye can reach The turbaned cohorts throng the beach; 80 And there the Arab's camel kneels, And there his steed the Tartar wheels; The Turcoman hath left his herd, The sabre round his loins to gird; And there the volleying thunders pour, Till waves grow smoother to the roar. The trench is dug, the cannon's breath Wings the far hissing globe of death; Fast whirl the fragments from the wall, Which crumbles with the ponderous ball; 90 And from that wall the foe replies, O'er dusty plain and smoky skies, With fares that answer fast and well The summons of the Infidel.

III.

But near and nearest to the wall Of those who wish and work its fall, With deeper skill in War's black art, Than Othman's sons, and high of heart As any Chief that ever stood Triumphant in the fields of blood; 100 From post to post, and deed to deed, Fast spurring on his reeking steed, Where sallying ranks the trench assail, And make the foremost Moslem quail; Or where the battery, guarded well, Remains as yet impregnable, Alighting cheerly to inspire The soldier slackening in his fire; The first and freshest of the host Which Stamboul's Sultan there can boast, 110 To guide the follower o'er the field, To point the tube, the lance to wield, Or whirl around the bickering blade;-- Was Alp, the Adrian renegade!

IV.

From Venice--once a race of worth His gentle Sires--he drew his birth; But late an exile from her shore, Against his countrymen he bore The arms they taught to bear; and now The turban girt his shaven brow. 120 Through many a change had Corinth passed With Greece to Venice' rule at last; And here, before her walls, with those To Greece and Venice equal foes, He stood a foe, with all the zeal Which young and fiery converts feel, Within whose heated bosom throngs The memory of a thousand wrongs. To him had Venice ceased to be Her ancient civic boast--"the Free;" 130 And in the palace of St. Mark Unnamed accusers in the dark Within the "Lion's mouth" had placed A charge against him uneffaced: He fled in time, and saved his life, To waste his future years in strife, That taught his land how great her loss In him who triumphed o'er the Cross, 'Gainst which he reared the Crescent high, And battled to avenge or die. 140

Coumourgi--he whose closing scene Adorned the triumph of Eugene, When on Carlowitz' bloody plain, The last and mightiest of the slain, He sank, regretting not to die, But cursed the Christian's victory-- Coumourgi--can his glory cease, That latest conqueror of Greece, Till Christian hands to Greece restore The freedom Venice gave of yore? 150 A hundred years have rolled away Since he refixed the Moslem's sway; And now he led the Mussulman, And gave the guidance of the van To Alp, who well repaid the trust By cities levelled with the dust; And proved, by many a deed of death, How firm his heart in novel faith.

VI.

The walls grew weak; and fast and hot Against them poured the ceaseless shot, 160 With unabating fury sent From battery to battlement; And thunder-like the pealing din Rose from each heated culverin; And here and there some crackling dome Was fired before the exploding bomb; And as the fabric sank beneath The shattering shell's volcanic breath, In red and wreathing columns flashed The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, 170 Or into countless meteors driven, Its earth-stars melted into heaven; Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun, Impervious to the hidden sun, With volumed smoke that slowly grew To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.

VII.

But not for vengeance, long delayed, Alone, did Alp, the renegade, The Moslem warriors sternly teach His skill to pierce the promised breach: 180 Within these walls a Maid was pent His hope would win, without consent Of that inexorable Sire, Whose heart refused him in its ire, When Alp, beneath his Christian name, Her virgin hand aspired to claim. In happier mood, and earlier time, While unimpeached for traitorous crime, Gayest in Gondola or Hall, He glittered through the Carnival; 190 And tuned the softest serenade That e'er on Adria's waters played At midnight to Italian maid.

VIII.

And many deemed her heart was won; For sought by numbers, given to none, Had young Francesca's hand remained Still by the Church's bonds unchained: And when the Adriatic bore Lanciotto to the Paynim shore, Her wonted smiles were seen to fail, 200 And pensive waxed the maid and pale; More constant at confessional, More rare at masque and festival; Or seen at such, with downcast eyes, Which conquered hearts they ceased to prize: With listless look she seems to gaze: With humbler care her form arrays; Her voice less lively in the song; Her step, though light, less fleet among The pairs, on whom the Morning's glance 210 Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.

IX.

Sent by the State to guard the land, (Which, wrested from the Moslem's hand, While Sobieski tamed his pride By Buda's wall and Danube's side, The chiefs of Venice wrung away From Patra to Euboea's bay,) Minotti held in Corinth's towers The Doge's delegated powers, While yet the pitying eye of Peace 220 Smiled o'er her long forgotten Greece: And ere that faithless truce was broke Which freed her from the unchristian yoke, With him his gentle daughter came; Nor there, since Menelaus' dame Forsook her lord and land, to prove What woes await on lawless love, Had fairer form adorned the shore Than she, the matchless stranger, bore.

The wall is rent, the ruins yawn; 230 And, with to-morrow's earliest dawn, O'er the disjointed mass shall vault The foremost of the fierce assault. The bands are ranked--the chosen van Of Tartar and of Mussulman, The full of hope, misnamed "forlorn," Who hold the thought of death in scorn, And win their way with falchion's force, Or pave the path with many a corse, O'er which the following brave may rise, 240 Their stepping-stone--the last who dies!

XI.

'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown The cold, round moon shines deeply down; Blue roll the waters, blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright; Who ever gazed upon them shining And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away, 250 And mix with their eternal ray? The waves on either shore lay there Calm, clear, and azure as the air; And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, But murmured meekly as the brook. The winds were pillowed on the waves; The banners drooped along their staves, And, as they fell around them furling, Above them shone the crescent curling; And that deep silence was unbroke, 260 Save where the watch his signal spoke, Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill, And echo answered from the hill, And the wide hum of that wild host Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, As rose the Muezzin's voice in air In midnight call to wonted prayer; It rose, that chanted mournful strain, Like some lone Spirit's o'er the plain: 'Twas musical, but sadly sweet, 270 Such as when winds and harp-strings meet, And take a long unmeasured tone, To mortal minstrelsy unknown. It seemed to those within the wall A cry prophetic of their fall: It struck even the besieger's ear With something ominous and drear, An undefined and sudden thrill, Which makes the heart a moment still, Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed 280 Of that strange sense its silence framed; Such as a sudden passing-bell Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.

XII.

The tent of Alp was on the shore; The sound was hushed, the prayer was o'er; The watch was set, the night-round made, All mandates issued and obeyed: 'Tis but another anxious night, His pains the morrow may requite With all Revenge and Love can pay, 290 In guerdon for their long delay. Few hours remain, and he hath need Of rest, to nerve for many a deed Of slaughter; but within his soul The thoughts like troubled waters roll. He stood alone among the host; Not his the loud fanatic boast To plant the Crescent o'er the Cross, Or risk a life with little loss, Secure in paradise to be 300 By Houris loved immortally: Nor his, what burning patriots feel, The stern exaltedness of zeal, Profuse of blood, untired in toil, When battling on the parent soil. He stood alone--a renegade Against the country he betrayed; He stood alone amidst his band, Without a trusted heart or hand: They followed him, for he was brave, 310 And great the spoil he got and gave; They crouched to him, for he had skill To warp and wield the vulgar will: But still his Christian origin With them was little less than sin. They envied even the faithless fame He earned beneath a Moslem name; Since he, their mightiest chief, had been In youth a bitter Nazarene. They did not know how Pride can stoop, 320 When baffled feelings withering droop; They did not know how Hate can burn In hearts once changed from soft to stern; Nor all the false and fatal zeal The convert of Revenge can feel. He ruled them--man may rule the worst, By ever daring to be first: So lions o'er the jackals sway; The jackal points, he fells the prey, Then on the vulgar, yelling, press, 330 To gorge the relics of success.

XIII.

His head grows fevered, and his pulse The quick successive throbs convulse; In vain from side to side he throws His form, in courtship of repose; Or if he dozed, a sound, a start Awoke him with a sunken heart. The turban on his hot brow pressed, The mail weighed lead-like on his breast, Though oft and long beneath its weight 340 Upon his eyes had slumber sate, Without or couch or canopy, Except a rougher field and sky Than now might yield a warrior's bed, Than now along the heaven was spread. He could not rest, he could not stay Within his tent to wait for day, But walked him forth along the sand, Where thousand sleepers strewed the strand. What pillowed them? and why should he 350 More wakeful than the humblest be, Since more their peril, worse their toil? And yet they fearless dream of spoil; While he alone, where thousands passed A night of sleep, perchance their last, In sickly vigil wandered on, And envied all he gazed upon.

XIV.

He felt his soul become more light Beneath the freshness of the night. Cool was the silent sky, though calm, 360 And bathed his brow with airy balm: Behind, the camp--before him lay, In many a winding creek and bay, Lepanto's gulf; and, on the brow Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow, High and eternal, such as shone Through thousand summers brightly gone, Along the gulf, the mount, the clime; It will not melt, like man, to time: Tyrant and slave are swept away, 370 Less formed to wear before the ray; But that white veil, the lightest, frailest, Which on the mighty mount thou hailest, While tower and tree are torn and rent, Shines o'er its craggy battlement; In form a peak, in height a cloud, In texture like a hovering shroud, Thus high by parting Freedom spread, As from her fond abode she fled, And lingered on the spot, where long 380 Her prophet spirit spake in song. Oh! still her step at moments falters O'er withered fields, and ruined altars, And fain would wake, in souls too broken, By pointing to each glorious token: But vain her voice, till better days Dawn in those yet remembered rays, Which shone upon the Persian flying, And saw the Spartan smile in dying.

XV.

Not mindless of these mighty times 390 Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes; And through this night, as on he wandered, And o'er the past and present pondered, And thought upon the glorious dead Who there in better cause had bled, He felt how faint and feebly dim The fame that could accrue to him, Who cheered the band, and waved the sword, A traitor in a turbaned horde; And led them to the lawless siege, 400 Whose best success were sacrilege. Not so had those his fancy numbered, The chiefs whose dust around him slumbered; Their phalanx marshalled on the plain, Whose bulwarks were not then in vain. They fell devoted, but undying; The very gale their names seemed sighing; The waters murmured of their name; The woods were peopled with their fame; The silent pillar, lone and grey, 410 Claimed kindred with their sacred clay; Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain; The meanest rill, the mightiest river Rolled mingling with their fame for ever. Despite of every yoke she bears, That land is Glory's still and theirs! 'Tis still a watch-word to the earth: When man would do a deed of worth He points to Greece, and turns to tread, 420 So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head: He looks to her, and rushes on Where life is lost, or Freedom won.

XVI.

Still by the shore Alp mutely mused, And wooed the freshness Night diffused. There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea, Which changeless rolls eternally; So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood, Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood; And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 430 Heedless if she come or go: Calm or high, in main or bay, On their course she hath no sway. The rock unworn its base doth bare, And looks o'er the surf, but it comes not there; And the fringe of the foam may be seen below, On the line that it left long ages ago: A smooth short space of yellow sand Between it and the greener land.

He wandered on along the beach, 440 Till within the range of a carbine's reach Of the leaguered wall; but they saw him not, Or how could he 'scape from the hostile shot? Did traitors lurk in the Christians' hold? Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts waxed cold? I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall There flashed no fire, and there hissed no ball, Though he stood beneath the bastion's frown, That flanked the seaward gate of the town; Though he heard the sound, and could almost tell 450 The sullen words of the sentinel, As his measured step on the stone below Clanked, as he paced it to and fro; And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall Hold o'er the dead their Carnival, Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb; They were too busy to bark at him! From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull, 460 As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew dull, As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed; So well had they broken a lingering fast With those who had fallen for that night's repast. And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band: Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven and bare. 470 The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw: But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

XVII.

Alp turned him from the sickening sight: Never had shaken his nerves in fight; 480 But he better could brook to behold the dying, Deep in the tide of their warm blood lying, Scorched with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain, Than the perishing dead who are past all pain. There is something of pride in the perilous hour, Whate'er be the shape in which Death may lower; For Fame is there to say who bleeds, And Honour's eye on daring deeds! But when all is past, it is humbling to tread O'er the weltering field of the tombless dead, 490 And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air, Beasts of the forest, all gathering there; All regarding man as their prey, All rejoicing in his decay.

XVIII.

There is a temple in ruin stands, Fashioned by long forgotten hands; Two or three columns, and many a stone, Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown! Out upon Time! it will leave no more Of the things to come than the things before! 500 Out upon Time! who for ever will leave But enough of the past for the future to grieve O'er that which hath been, and o'er that which must be: What we have seen, our sons shall see; Remnants of things that have passed away, Fragments of stone, reared by creatures of clay!

XIX.

He sate him down at a pillar's base, And passed his hand athwart his face; Like one in dreary musing mood, Declining was his attitude; 510 His head was drooping on his breast, Fevered, throbbing, and oppressed; And o'er his brow, so downward bent, Oft his beating fingers went, Hurriedly, as you may see Your own run over the ivory key, Ere the measured tone is taken By the chords you would awaken. There he sate all heavily, As he heard the night-wind sigh. 520 Was it the wind through some hollow stone, Sent that soft and tender moan? He lifted his head, and he looked on the sea, But it was unrippled as glass may be; He looked on the long grass--it waved not a blade; How was that gentle sound conveyed? He looked to the banners--each flag lay still, So did the leaves on Cithaeron's hill, And he felt not a breath come over his cheek; What did that sudden sound bespeak? 530 He turned to the left--is he sure of sight? There sate a lady, youthful and bright!

XX.

He started up with more of fear Than if an armed foe were near. "God of my fathers! what is here? Who art thou? and wherefore sent So near a hostile armament?" His trembling hands refused to sign The cross he deemed no more divine: He had resumed it in that hour, 540 But Conscience wrung away the power. He gazed, he saw; he knew the face Of beauty, and the form of grace; It was Francesca by his side, The maid who might have been his bride!

The rose was yet upon her cheek, But mellowed with a tenderer streak: Where was the play of her soft lips fled? Gone was the smile that enlivened their red. The Ocean's calm within their view, 550 Beside her eye had less of blue; But like that cold wave it stood still, And its glance, though clear, was chill. Around her form a thin robe twining, Nought concealed her bosom shining; Through the parting of her hair, Floating darkly downward there, Her rounded arm showed white and bare: And ere yet she made reply, Once she raised her hand on high; 560 It was so wan, and transparent of hue, You might have seen the moon shine through.

XXI.

"I come from my rest to him I love best, That I may be happy, and he may be blessed. I have passed the guards, the gate, the wall; Sought thee in safety through foes and all. 'Tis said the lion will turn and flee From a maid in the pride of her purity; And the Power on high, that can shield the good Thus from the tyrant of the wood, 570 Hath extended its mercy to guard me as well From the hands of the leaguering Infidel. I come--and if I come in vain, Never, oh never, we meet again! Thou hast done a fearful deed In falling away from thy fathers' creed: But dash that turban to earth, and sign The sign of the cross, and for ever be mine; Wring the black drop from thy heart, And to-morrow unites us no more to part." 580

"And where should our bridal couch be spread? In the midst of the dying and the dead? For to-morrow we give to the slaughter and flame The sons and the shrines of the Christian name. None, save thou and thine, I've sworn, Shall be left upon the morn: But thee will I bear to a lovely spot, Where our hands shall be joined, and our sorrow forgot. There thou yet shall be my bride, When once again I've quelled the pride 590 Of Venice; and her hated race Have felt the arm they would debase Scourge, with a whip of scorpions, those Whom Vice and Envy made my foes."

Upon his hand she laid her own-- Light was the touch, but it thrilled to the bone, And shot a chillness to his heart, Which fixed him beyond the power to start. Though slight was that grasp so mortal cold, He could not loose him from its hold; 600 But never did clasp of one so dear Strike on the pulse with such feeling of fear, As those thin fingers, long and white, Froze through his blood by their touch that night. The feverish glow of his brow was gone, And his heart sank so still that it felt like stone, As he looked on the face, and beheld its hue, So deeply changed from what he knew: Fair but faint--without the ray Of mind, that made each feature play 610 Like sparkling waves on a sunny day; And her motionless lips lay still as death, And her words came forth without her breath, And there rose not a heave o'er her bosom's swell, And there seemed not a pulse in her veins to dwell. Though her eye shone out, yet the lids were fixed, And the glance that it gave was wild and unmixed With aught of change, as the eyes may seem Of the restless who walk in a troubled dream; Like the figures on arras, that gloomily glare, 620 Stirred by the breath of the wintry air So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light, Lifeless, but life-like, and awful to sight; As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down From the shadowy wall where their images frown; Fearfully flitting to and fro, As the gusts on the tapestry come and go.

"If not for love of me be given Thus much, then, for the love of Heaven,-- Again I say--that turban tear 630 From off thy faithless brow, and swear Thine injured country's sons to spare, Or thou art lost; and never shalt see-- Not earth--that's past--but Heaven or me. If this thou dost accord, albeit A heavy doom' tis thine to meet, That doom shall half absolve thy sin, And Mercy's gate may receive thee within: But pause one moment more, and take The curse of Him thou didst forsake; 640 And look once more to Heaven, and see Its love for ever shut from thee. There is a light cloud by the moon-- 'Tis passing, and will pass full soon-- If, by the time its vapoury sail Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil, Thy heart within thee is not changed, Then God and man are both avenged; Dark will thy doom be, darker still Thine immortality of ill." 650

Alp looked to heaven, and saw on high The sign she spake of in the sky; But his heart was swollen, and turned aside, By deep interminable pride. This first false passion of his breast Rolled like a torrent o'er the rest. He sue for mercy! He dismayed By wild words of a timid maid! He, wronged by Venice, vow to save Her sons, devoted to the grave! 660 No--though that cloud were thunder's worst, And charged to crush him--let it burst!

He looked upon it earnestly, Without an accent of reply; He watched it passing; it is flown: Full on his eye the clear moon shone, And thus he spake--"Whate'er my fate, I am no changeling--'tis too late: The reed in storms may bow and quiver, Then rise again; the tree must shiver. 670 What Venice made me, I must be, Her foe in all, save love to thee: But thou art safe: oh, fly with me!" He turned, but she is gone! Nothing is there but the column stone. Hath she sunk in the earth, or melted in air? He saw not--he knew not--but nothing is there.

XXII.

The night is past, and shines the sun As if that morn were a jocund one. Lightly and brightly breaks away 680 The Morning from her mantle grey, And the Noon will look on a sultry day. Hark to the trump, and the drum, And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne, And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, And the clash, and the shout, "They come! they come!" The horsetails are plucked from the ground, and the sword From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word. Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, 690 Strike your tents, and throng to the van; Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain, That the fugitive may flee in vain, When he breaks from the town; and none escape, Aged or young, in the Christian shape; While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass, Bloodstain the breach through which they pass. The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein; Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane; White is the foam of their champ on the bit; 700 The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit; The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar, And crush the wall they have crumbled before: Forms in his phalanx each Janizar; Alp at their head; his right arm is bare, So is the blade of his scimitar; The Khan and the Pachas are all at their post; The Vizier himself at the head of the host. When the culverin's signal is fired, then on; Leave not in Corinth a living one-- 710 A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls, A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls. God and the prophet--Alla Hu! Up to the skies with that wild halloo! "There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale; And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail? He who first downs with the red cross may crave His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!" Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless Vizier; The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, 720 And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:-- Silence--hark to the signal--fire!

XXIII.

As the wolves, that headlong go On the stately buffalo, Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar, And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore, He tramples on earth, or tosses on high The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die Thus against the wall they went, Thus the first were backward bent; 730 Many a bosom, sheathed in brass, Strewed the earth like broken glass, Shivered by the shot, that tore The ground whereon they moved no more: Even as they fell, in files they lay, Like the mower's grass at the close of day, When his work is done on the levelled plain; Such was the fall of the foremost slain.

XXIV.

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash, From the cliffs invading dash 740 Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow, Till white and thundering down they go, Like the avalanche's snow On the Alpine vales below; Thus at length, outbreathed and worn, Corinth's sons were downward borne By the long and oft renewed Charge of the Moslem multitude. In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell, Heaped by the host of the Infidel, 750 Hand to hand, and foot to foot: Nothing there, save Death, was mute; Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry For quarter, or for victory, Mingle there with the volleying thunder, Which makes the distant cities wonder How the sounding battle goes, If with them, or for their foes; If they must mourn, or may rejoice In that annihilating voice, 760 Which pierces the deep hills through and through With an echo dread and new: You might have heard it, on that day, O'er Salamis and Megara; (We have heard the hearers say,) Even unto Piraeus' bay.

XXV.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt, Sabres and swords with blood were gilt; But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun, And all but the after carnage done. 770 Shriller shrieks now mingling come From within the plundered dome: Hark to the haste of flying feet, That splash in the blood of the slippery street; But here and there, where 'vantage ground Against the foe may still be found, Desperate groups, of twelve or ten, Make a pause, and turn again-- With banded backs against the wall, Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780 There stood an old man--his hairs were white, But his veteran arm was full of might: So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray, The dead before him, on that day, In a semicircle lay; Still he combated unwounded, Though retreating, unsurrounded. Many a scar of former fight Lurked beneath his corslet bright; But of every wound his body bore, 790 Each and all had been ta'en before: Though aged, he was so iron of limb, Few of our youth could cope with him, And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay, Outnumbered his thin hairs of silver grey. From right to left his sabre swept: Many an Othman mother wept Sons that were unborn, when dipped His weapon first in Moslem gore, Ere his years could count a score. 800 Of all he might have been the sire Who fell that day beneath his ire: For, sonless left long years ago, His wrath made many a childless foe; And since the day, when in the strait His only boy had met his fate, His parent's iron hand did doom More than a human hecatomb. If shades by carnage be appeased, Patroclus' spirit less was pleased 810 Than his, Minotti's son, who died Where Asia's bounds and ours divide. Buried he lay, where thousands before For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore; What of them is left, to tell Where they lie, and how they fell? Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves; But they live in the verse that immortally saves.

XXVI.

Hark to the Allah shout! a band Of the Mussulman bravest and best is at hand; 820 Their leader's nervous arm is bare, Swifter to smite, and never to spare-- Unclothed to the shoulder it waves them on; Thus in the fight is he ever known: Others a gaudier garb may show, To tempt the spoil of the greedy foe; Many a hand's on a richer hilt, But none on a steel more ruddily gilt; Many a loftier turban may wear,-- Alp is but known by the white arm bare; 830 Look through the thick of the fight,'tis there! There is not a standard on that shore So well advanced the ranks before; There is not a banner in Moslem war Will lure the Delhis half so far; It glances like a falling star! Where'er that mighty arm is seen, The bravest be, or late have been; There the craven cries for quarter Vainly to the vengeful Tartar; 840 Or the hero, silent lying, Scorns to yield a groan in dying; Mustering his last feeble blow 'Gainst the nearest levelled foe, Though faint beneath the mutual wound, Grappling on the gory ground.

XXVII.

Still the old man stood erect. And Alp's career a moment checked. "Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take, For thine own, thy daughter's sake." 850

"Never, Renegado, never! Though the life of thy gift would last for ever."

"Francesca!--Oh, my promised bride! Must she too perish by thy pride!"

"She is safe."--"Where? where?"--"In Heaven; From whence thy traitor soul is driven-- Far from thee, and undefiled." Grimly then Minotti smiled, As he saw Alp staggering bow Before his words, as with a blow. 860

"Oh God! when died she?"--"Yesternight-- Nor weep I for her spirit's flight: None of my pure race shall be Slaves to Mahomet and thee-- Come on!"--That challenge is in vain-- Alp's already with the slain! While Minotti's words were wreaking More revenge in bitter speaking Than his falchion's point had found, Had the time allowed to wound, 870 From within the neighbouring porch Of a long defended church, Where the last and desperate few Would the failing fight renew, The sharp shot dashed Alp to the ground; Ere an eye could view the wound That crashed through the brain of the infidel, Round he spun, and down he fell; A flash like fire within his eyes Blazed, as he bent no more to rise, 880 And then eternal darkness sunk Through all the palpitating trunk; Nought of life left, save a quivering Where his limbs were slightly shivering: They turned him on his back; his breast And brow were stained with gore and dust, And through his lips the life-blood oozed, From its deep veins lately loosed; But in his pulse there was no throb, Nor on his lips one dying sob; 890 Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath Heralded his way to death: Ere his very thought could pray, Unaneled he passed away, Without a hope from Mercy's aid,-- To the last a Renegade.

XXVIII.

Fearfully the yell arose Of his followers, and his foes; These in joy, in fury those: Then again in conflict mixing, 900 Clashing swords, and spears transfixing, Interchanged the blow and thrust, Hurling warriors in the dust. Street by street, and foot by foot, Still Minotti dares dispute The latest portion of the land Left beneath his high command; With him, aiding heart and hand, The remnant of his gallant band. Still the church is tenable, 910 Whence issued late the fated ball That half avenged the city's fall, When Alp, her fierce assailant, fell: Thither bending sternly back, They leave before a bloody track; And, with their faces to the foe, Dealing wounds with every blow, The chief, and his retreating train, Join to those within the fane; There they yet may breathe awhile, 920 Sheltered by the massy pile.

XXIX.

Brief breathing-time! the turbaned host, With added ranks and raging boast, Press onwards with such strength and heat, Their numbers balk their own retreat; For narrow the way that led to the spot Where still the Christians yielded not; And the foremost, if fearful, may vainly try Through the massy column to turn and fly; They perforce must do or die. 930 They die; but ere their eyes could close, Avengers o'er their bodies rose; Fresh and furious, fast they fill The ranks unthinned, though slaughtered still; And faint the weary Christians wax Before the still renewed attacks: And now the Othmans gain the gate; Still resists its iron weight, And still, all deadly aimed and hot, From every crevice comes the shot; 940 From every shattered window pour The volleys of the sulphurous shower: But the portal wavering grows and weak-- The iron yields, the hinges creak-- It bends--it falls--and all is o'er; Lost Corinth may resist no more!

XXX.

Darkly, sternly, and all alone, Minotti stood o'er the altar stone: Madonna's face upon him shone, Painted in heavenly hues above, 950 With eyes of light and looks of love; And placed upon that holy shrine To fix our thoughts on things divine, When pictured there, we kneeling see Her, and the boy-God on her knee, Smiling sweetly on each prayer To Heaven, as if to waft it there. Still she smiled; even now she smiles, Though slaughter streams along her aisles: Minotti lifted his aged eye, 960 And made the sign of a cross with a sigh, Then seized a torch which blazed thereby; And still he stood, while with steel and flame, Inward and onward the Mussulman came.

XXXI.

The vaults beneath the mosaic stone Contained the dead of ages gone; Their names were on the graven floor, But now illegible with gore; The carved crests, and curious hues The varied marble's veins diffuse, 970 Were smeared, and slippery--stained, and strown With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown: There were dead above, and the dead below Lay cold in many a coffined row; You might see them piled in sable state, By a pale light through a gloomy grate; But War had entered their dark caves, And stored along the vaulted graves Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread In masses by the fleshless dead: 980 Here, throughout the siege, had been The Christians' chiefest magazine; To these a late formed train now led, Minotti's last and stern resource Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.

XXXII.

The foe came on, and few remain To strive, and those must strive in vain: For lack of further lives, to slake The thirst of vengeance now awake, With barbarous blows they gash the dead, 990 And lop the already lifeless head, And fell the statues from their niche, And spoil the shrines of offerings rich, And from each other's rude hands wrest The silver vessels Saints had blessed. To the high altar on they go; Oh, but it made a glorious show! On its table still behold The cup of consecrated gold; Massy and deep, a glittering prize, 1000 Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes: That morn it held the holy wine, Converted by Christ to his blood so divine, Which his worshippers drank at the break of day, To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray. Still a few drops within it lay; And round the sacred table glow Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row, From the purest metal cast; A spoil--the richest, and the last. 1010

XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretched To grasp the spoil he almost reached When old Minotti's hand Touched with the torch the train-- 'Tis fired! Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain, The turbaned victors, the Christian band, All that of living or dead remain, Hurled on high with the shivered fane, In one wild roar expired! 1020 The shattered town--the walls thrown down-- The waves a moment backward bent-- The hills that shake, although unrent, As if an Earthquake passed-- The thousand shapeless things all driven In cloud and flame athwart the heaven, By that tremendous blast-- Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er On that too long afflicted shore: Up to the sky like rockets go 1030 All that mingled there below: Many a tall and goodly man, Scorched and shrivelled to a span, When he fell to earth again Like a cinder strewed the plain: Down the ashes shower like rain; Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles With a thousand circling wrinkles; Some fell on the shore, but, far away, Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040 Christian or Moslem, which be they? Let their mothers see and say! When in cradled rest they lay, And each nursing mother smiled On the sweet sleep of her child, Little deemed she such a day Would rend those tender limbs away. Not the matrons that them bore Could discern their offspring more; That one moment left no trace 1050 More of human form or face Save a scattered scalp or bone: And down came blazing rafters, strown Around, and many a falling stone, Deeply dinted in the clay, All blackened there and reeking lay. All the living things that heard The deadly earth-shock disappeared: The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled, And howling left the unburied dead; 1060 The camels from their keepers broke; The distant steer forsook the yoke-- The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, And burst his girth, and tore his rein; The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh, Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh; The wolves yelled on the caverned hill Where Echo rolled in thunder still; The jackal's troop, in gathered cry, Bayed from afar complainingly, 1070 With a mixed and mournful sound, Like crying babe, and beaten hound: With sudden wing, and ruffled breast, The eagle left his rocky nest, And mounted nearer to the sun, The clouds beneath him seemed so dun; Their smoke assailed his startled beak, And made him higher soar and shriek-- Thus was Corinth lost and won!

FOOTNOTES:

"With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss, and Thunder."

{447} Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains his government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-11; and, in the course of journeying through the country from my first arrival in 1809, I crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains; or in the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. Both the routes are picturesque and beautiful, though very different: that by sea has more sameness; but the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it, presents many attractive views of the islands Salamis, AEgina, Poros, etc., and the coast of the Continent.

{449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as an opening to the Siege of Corinth. I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now;--on that you and your Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale," October 23rd. First published in Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 638, they were included among the Occasional Poems in the edition of 1831, and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]

"Upon the sixteen hunder year Of God, and fifty-three, From Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie," etc.

See "The Life and Age of Man" (Burns' Selected Poems, ed. by J. L. Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]

{450} [For "capote," compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 132, 181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (Letters, 1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]

The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

{451} But those winged days----.--[MS.]

"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main-- To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]

The kindly few who love my lay.--[MS.]

Many a year, and many an age.--[MS. G. Copy.]

A marvel from her Moslem bands.--[MS. G.]

{452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on the story, and that Akenside had the same design (Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]

Or could the dead be raised again.--[MS. G. erased.]

----through yon clear skies Than tower-capt Acropolis.--[MS. G.]

Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]

The turbaned crowd of dusky hue Whose march Morea's fields may rue.--[MS. G. erased.]

{453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.

{454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how "Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed (Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan elevee jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en poussiere."--Hammer-Purgstall, Histoire de l'Empire Othoman, i. 13-15.]

But now an exile----.--[MS. G.]

{455} ["The Lions' Mouths, under the arcade at the summit of the Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal for the public welfare."--Sketches from Venetian History, 1832, ii. 380.]

To waste its future----.--[MS. G.]

Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."

{456} And death-like rolled----.--[MS. G. erased.]

Like comets in convulsion riven.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

Impervious to the powerless sun, Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew.-- [MS. G. erased.]

{457} In midnight courtship to Italian maid.--[MS. G.]

{458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]

By Buda's wall to Danube's side.--[MS. G.]

Pisani held----.--[MS. G.]

Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore.--[MS. G. erased.]

{459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see Childe Harold, Canto II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

By stepping o'er----.--[MS. G.]

Bespangled with her isles----.--[MS. G.]

"The seraph eye shall count the starry train, Like distant isles embosomed on the main."

And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in The Island, Canto II. stanza xi. lines 14, 15--

"The studded archipelago, O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."

For other "star-similes," see Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii. line 9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]

And take a dark unmeasured tone.--[MS. G.] And make a melancholy moan, To mortal voice and ear unknown.--[MS. G. erased.]

{461} [Compare Scott's Marmion, III. xvi. 4--

"And that strange Palmer's boding say, That fell so ominous and drear."]

----by fancy framed, Which rings a deep, internal knell, A visionary passing-bell.--[MS. G. erased.]

The thoughts tumultuously roll.--[MS. G.]

{462} To triumph o'er----.--[MS. G. erased.]

They but provide, he fells the prey.--[MS. G.] As lions o'er the jackal sway By springing dauntless on the prey; They follow on, and yelling press To gorge the fragments of success.--[MS. G. erased.]

{463} He vainly turned from side to side, And each reposing posture tried.--[MS. G. erased.]

Beyond a rougher----.--[MS. G.]

----to sigh for day.--[MS. G.]

{464} Of Liakura--his unmelting snow Bright and eternal----.--[MS. G. erased.]

"For where is he that hath beheld The peak of Liakura unveiled?"

The reference is to the almost perpetual "cap" of mist on Parnassus (Mount Likeri or Liakura), which lies some thirty miles to the north-west of Corinth.]

{465} Her spirit spoke in deathless song.--[MS. G. erased.]

And in this night----.--[MS. G.]

He felt how little and how dim.--[MS. G. erased.]

Who led the band----.--[MS. G.]

{466} Their memory hallowed every fountain.--[MS. G. erased.]

Here follows, in the MS.--

Immortal--boundless--undecayed-- Their souls the very soil pervade.-- [In the Copy the lines are erased.]

Where Freedom loveliest may be won.--[MS. G. erased.]

The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.

So that fiercest of waves----.--[MS. G.]

{467} A little space of light grey sand.--[MS. G. erased.]

"A narrow segment of the yellow sand On one side forms the outline of a strand."]

Or would not waste on a single head The ball on numbers better sped.--[MS. G. erased]

I know not in faith----.--[MS. G.]

{468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's Travels [in Albania, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.

This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.

{469} Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying.--[MS. G. Copy.]

Than the rotting dead----.--[MS. G. erased.]

"Scorch'd with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain, Than the perishing dead who are past all pain."

What is a "perishing dead"?--Gifford.]

And when all----.--[MS. G.]

All that liveth on man will prey, All rejoicing in his decay, or, Nature rejoicing in his decay. All that can kindle dismay and disgust Follow his frame from the bier to the dust.--[MS. G. erased.]

{470} ----it hath left no more Of the mightiest things that have gone before.--[MS. G. erased.]

After this follows in the MS. erased--

Monuments that the coming age Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage-- Till Ruin makes the relics scarce, Then Learning acts her solemn farce, And, roaming through the marble waste, Prates of beauty, art, and taste.

XIX.

That Temple was more in the midst of the plain-- or, What of that shrine did yet remain Lay to his left more in midst of the plain.--[MS. G.]

{471} Is it the wind that through the stone. or,----o'er the heavy stone.--[MS. G. erased.]

I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.

"The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek-- There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

" ... What sees she there? There she sees a damsel bright, Drest in a silken robe of white."

Byron (vide ante, p. 443), in a letter to Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815, had already expressly guarded himself against a charge of plagiarism, by explaining that lines 521-532 of stanza xix. were written before he heard Walter Scott repeat Christabel in the preceding June. Now, as Byron himself perceived, perhaps for the first time, when he had the MS. of Christabel before him, the coincidence in language and style between the two passages is unquestionable; and, as he hoped and expected that Coleridge's fragment, when completed, would issue from the press, he was anxious to avoid even the semblance of pilfering, and went so far as to suggest that the passage should be cancelled. Neither in the private letter nor the published note does Byron attempt to deny or explain away the coincidence, but pleads that his lines were written before he had heard Coleridge's poem recited, and that he had not been guilty of a "wilful plagiarism." There is no difficulty in accepting his statement. Long before the summer of 1815 Christabel "had a pretty general circulation in the literary world" (Medwin, Conversations, 1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of Christabel had sounded in his ears, he may (as Koelbing points out) have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey, or of Scott himself.

Compare Thalaba the Destroyer, v. 20 (1838, iv. 187)--

"What sound is borne on the wind? Is it the storm that shakes The thousand oaks of the forest?

* * * * *

Is it the river's roar Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.

Or compare The Lay of the Last Minstrel, I. xii. 5. seq. (1812, p. 24)--

"And now she sits in secret bower In old Lord David's western tower, And listens to a heavy sound, That moans the mossy turrets round. Is it the roar of Teviot's tide, That chafes against the scaur's red side? Is it the wind that swings the oaks? Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.

Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the Siege of Corinth, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced to his notice.]

{473}There sate a lady young and bright.--[MS. G. erased.]

He would have made it----.--[MS. G. erased.]

She who would----.--[MS. G. erased.]

{474} The ocean spread before their view.--[Copy.]

Byron, according to Leigh Hunt (Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, 1828, i. 77), could not "see anything" in Spenser, and was not familiar with the Fairy Queen; but he may have had in mind Scott's allusion to Spenser's Una--

"Harpers have sung and poets told That he, in fury uncontrolled, The shaggy monarch of the wood, Before a virgin, fair and good, Hath pacified his savage mood."

Marmion, Canto II. stanza vii. line 3, seq.

(See Koelbing's note to Siege of Corinth, 1893, pp. 110-112.)]

{476} She laid her fingers on his hand, Its coldness thrilled through every bone.--[MS. G. erased.]

As he looked on her face----.--[MS. G.]

----on her bosom's swell.--[MS. G. erased. Copy.]

"You see, her eyes are open, Aye, but their sense is shut."

Compare, too, Christabel, Conclusion to Part the First (lines 292, 293)--

"With open eyes (ah, woe is me!) Asleep, and dreaming fearfully."]

{477} Like a picture, that magic had charmed from its frame, Lifeless but life-like, and ever the same. or, Like a picture come forth from its canvas and frame.-- [MS. G. erased.]

And seen----.--[MS. G.] ----its fleecy mail.--[MS. G. erased.]

" ... and till the grave Open, the gate of mercy is not closed."]

{478} I have been told that the idea expressed in this and the five following lines has been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it; but it is not original--at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of "Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.--[The following is the passage: "'Deluded prince!' said the Genius, addressing the Caliph ... 'This moment is the last, of grace, allowed thee: ... give back Nouronihar to her father, who still retains a few sparks of life: destroy thy tower, with all its abominations: drive Carathis from thy councils: be just to thy subjects: respect the ministers of the Prophet: compensate for thy impieties by an exemplary life; and, instead of squandering thy days in voluptuous indulgence, lament thy crimes on the sepulchres of thy ancestors. Thou beholdest the clouds that obscure the sun: at the instant he recovers his splendour, if thy heart be not changed, the time of mercy assigned thee will be past for ever.'"

"Vathek, depressed with fear, was on the point of prostrating himself at the feet of the shepherd ... but, his pride prevailing ... he said, 'Whoever thou art, withhold thy useless admonitions.... If what I have done be so criminal ... there remains not for me a moment of grace. I have traversed a sea of blood to acquire a power which will make thy equals tremble; deem not that I shall retire when in view of the port; or that I will relinquish her who is dearer to me than either my life or thy mercy. Let the sun appear! let him illumine my career! it matters not where it may end!' On uttering these words ... Vathek ... commanded that his horses should be forced back to the road.

"There was no difficulty in obeying these orders; for the attraction had ceased; the sun shone forth in all his glory, and the shepherd vanished with a lamentable scream" (ed. 1786, pp. 183-185).]

{479} By rooted and unhallowed pride.--[MS. G. erased.]

{480} [Compare--"While the still morn went out with sandals grey." Lycidas, line 187.]

The horsetails, fixed upon a lance, a pacha's standard.

Compare Childe Harold, Canto II., "Albanian War-Song," stanza 10, line 2; and Bride of Abydos, line 714 (vide ante, p. 189).]

"While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass, Bloodstain the breach through which they pass."

--Gifford.]

{482} ["Thus against the wall they bent, Thus the first were backward sent."

--Gifford.]

With such volley yields like glass.--[MS. G. erased.]

Like the mowers ridge----.--[MS. G. erased.]

{483} [Compare The Deformed Transformed, Part I. sc. 2 ("Song of the Soldiers")--

"Our shout shall grow gladder, And death only be mute."]

I have heard----.--[MS. G.]

"If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal."]

{484} ["There stood a man," etc.--Gifford.]

{485} [Bravo!--this is better than King Priam's fifty sons.--Gifford.]

In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the Venetians and Turks.

"Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save?... If life eternal may await the lyre."]

{486} [Gifford has erased lines 839-847.]

Though the life of thy giving would last for ever.--[MS. G. Copy.]

Where's Francesca?--my promised bride!--[MS. G. Copy.]

{488} Here follows in MS. G.--

Twice and once he roll'd a space, Then lead-like lay upon his face.

Sigh, nor sign, nor parting word.--[MS. G. erased.]

"And our Ponds shall better please thee, Than those now dishonoured seas, With their shores and Cyclades Stocked with Pachas, Seraskiers, Slaves and turbaned Buccaneers; Sensual Mussulmans atrocious, Renegadoes more ferocious," etc.]

{489} These in rage, in triumph those.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

Then again in fury mixing.--[MS. G.]

{490} [Compare Don Juan, Canto XIII. stanza lxi. lines 1, seq.--

"But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned, The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round ... But even the faintest relics of a shrine Of any worship wake some thoughts divine."]

/ chequered \ ----beneath the { } stone.--[MS. G. erased.] \ inlaid /

But now half-blotted----.--[MS. G. erased.]

But War must make the most of means.--[MS. G. erased.]

{492} ["Oh, but it made a glorious show!!!" Gifford erases the line, and adds these marks of exclamation.]

----the sacrament wine.--[MS. G. erased.]

Which the Christians partook at the break of the day.--[MS. G. Copy.]

{493} [Compare Sardanapalus, act v. sc. 1 (s.f.)--

"Myr. Art thou ready? Sard. As the torch in thy grasp. (Myrrha fires the pile.) Myr. 'Tis fired! I come."]

The hills as by an earthquake bent.--[MS. G. erased.]

{494} [Strike out from "Up to the sky," etc., to "All blackened there and reeking lay." Despicable stuff.--Gifford.]

Who can see or who shall say?--[MS. G. erased.]

"Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to Such things a mother had not known her son Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew."

Compare, too, The Island, Canto I. section ix. lines 13, 14.]

{495} And crashed each mass of stone.--[MS. G. erased.]

And left their food the unburied dead.--[Copy.] And left their food the untasted dead.--[MS. G.] And howling left----.--[MS. G. erased.]

Where Echo rolled in horror still.--[MS. G.]

The frightened jackal's shrill sharp cry.--[MS. G. erased.]

I believe I have taken a poetical licence to transplant the jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and follow armies. [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line 6; and Don Juan, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2.]

Mixed and mournful as the sound.--[MS. G.]

"Far and wide the thundering shout, Rolling among reduplicating rocks, Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales. The wild ass starting in the forest glade Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake; The sluggish bear, awakened in his den, Roused up and answered with a sullen growl, Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar scared, The brooding eagle from her nest took wing."

A sentence in a letter to Moore, dated January 10, 1815 (Letters, 1899, iii. 168), "I have tried the rascals (i.e. the public) with my Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. Nobody but S....y has done any thing worth a slice of bookseller's pudding, and he has not luck enough to be found out in doing a good thing," implies that Byron had read and admired Southey's Roderick--an inference which is curiously confirmed by a memorandum in Murray's handwriting: "When Southey's poem, Don Roderick (sic), was published, Lord Byron sent in the middle of the night to ask John Murray if he had heard any opinion of it, for he thought it one of the finest poems he had ever read." The resemblance between the two passages, which is pointed out by Professor Koelbing, is too close to be wholly unconscious, but Byron's expansion of Southey's lines hardly amounts to a plagiarism.]

PARISINA.

INTRODUCTION TO PARISINA.

Parisina, which had been begun before the Siege of Corinth, was transcribed by Lady Byron, and sent to the publisher at the beginning of December, 1815. Murray confessed that he had been alarmed by some hints which Byron had dropped as to the plot of the narrative, but was reassured when he traced "the delicate hand that transcribed it." He could not say enough of this "Pearl" of great price. "It is very interesting, pathetic, beautiful--do you know I would almost say moral" (Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 353). Ward, to whom the MS. of Parisina was shown, and Isaac D'Israeli, who heard it read aloud by Murray, were enthusiastic as to its merits; and Gifford, who had mingled censure with praise in his critical appreciation of the Siege, declared that the author "had never surpassed Parisina."

The last and shortest of the six narrative poems composed and published in the four years (the first years of manhood and of fame, the only years of manhood passed at home in England) which elapsed between the appearance of the first two cantos of Childe Harold and the third, Parisina has, perhaps, never yet received its due. At the time of its appearance it shared the odium which was provoked by the publication of Fare Thee Well and A Sketch, and before there was time to reconsider the new volume on its own merits, the new canto of Childe Harold, followed almost immediately by the Prisoner of Chillon and its brilliant and noticeable companion poems, usurped the attention of friend and foe. Contemporary critics (with the exception of the Monthly and Critical Reviews) fell foul of the subject-matter of the poem--the guilty passion of a bastard son for his father's wife. "It was too disgusting to be rendered pleasing by any display of genius" (European Magazine); "The story of Parisina includes adultery not to be named" (Literary Panorama); while the Eclectic, on grounds of taste rather than of morals, gave judgment that "the subject of the tale was purely unpleasing"--"the impression left simply painful."

Byron, no doubt, for better or worse, was in advance of his age, in the pursuit of art for art's sake, and in his indifference, not to morality--the denouement of the story is severely moral--but to the moral edification of his readers. The tale was chosen because it is a tale of love and guilt and woe, and the poet, unconcerned with any other issue, sets the tale to an enchanting melody. It does not occur to him to condone or to reprobate the loves of Hugo and Parisina, and in detailing the issue leaves the actors to their fate. It was this aloofness from ethical considerations which perturbed and irritated the "canters," as Byron called them--the children and champions of the anti-revolution. The modern reader, without being attracted or repelled by the motif of the story, will take pleasure in the sustained energy and sure beauty of the poetic strain. Byron may have gone to the "nakedness of history" for his facts, but he clothed them in singing robes of a delicate and shining texture.

SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES, ESQ.

the following poem

Is Inscribed,

by one who has long admired his talents

and valued his friendship.

January 22, 1816.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following poem is grounded on a circumstance mentioned in Gibbon's "Antiquities of the House of Brunswick." I am aware, that in modern times, the delicacy or fastidiousness of the reader may deem such subjects unfit for the purposes of poetry. The Greek dramatists, and some of the best of our old English writers, were of a different opinion: as Alfieri and Schiller have also been, more recently, upon the Continent. The following extract will explain the facts on which the story is founded. The name of Azo is substituted for Nicholas, as more metrical.--[B.]

"Under the reign of Nicholas III. [A.D. 1425] Ferrara was polluted with a domestic tragedy. By the testimony of a maid, and his own observation, the Marquis of Este discovered the incestuous loves of his wife Parisina, and Hugo his bastard son, a beautiful and valiant youth. They were beheaded in the castle by the sentence of a father and husband, who published his shame, and survived their execution. He was unfortunate, if they were guilty: if they were innocent, he was still more unfortunate; nor is there any possible situation in which I can sincerely approve the last act of the justice of a parent."--Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. iii. p. 470.--[Ed. 1837, p. 830.]

PARISINA.

It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whispered word; And gentle winds, and waters near, Make music to the lonely ear. Each flower the dews have lightly wet, And in the sky the stars are met, And on the wave is deeper blue, And on the leaf a browner hue, 10 And in the heaven that clear obscure, So softly dark, and darkly pure, Which follows the decline of day, As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

II.

But it is not to list to the waterfall That Parisina leaves her hall, And it is not to gaze on the heavenly light That the Lady walks in the shadow of night; And if she sits in Este's bower, 'Tis not for the sake of its full-blown flower; 20 She listens--but not for the nightingale-- Though her ear expects as soft a tale. There glides a step through the foliage thick, And her cheek grows pale, and her heart beats quick. There whispers a voice through the rustling leaves, And her blush returns, and her bosom heaves: A moment more--and they shall meet-- 'Tis past--her Lover's at her feet.

III.

And what unto them is the world beside, With all its change of time and tide? 30 Its living things--its earth and sky-- Are nothing to their mind and eye. And heedless as the dead are they Of aught around, above, beneath; As if all else had passed away, They only for each other breathe; Their very sighs are full of joy So deep, that did it not decay, That happy madness would destroy The hearts which feel its fiery sway: 40 Of guilt, of peril, do they deem In that tumultuous tender dream? Who that have felt that passion's power, Or paused, or feared in such an hour? Or thought how brief such moments last? But yet--they are already past! Alas! we must awake before We know such vision comes no more.

IV.

With many a lingering look they leave The spot of guilty gladness past: 50 And though they hope, and vow, they grieve, As if that parting were the last. The frequent sigh--the long embrace-- The lip that there would cling for ever, While gleams on Parisina's face The Heaven she fears will not forgive her, As if each calmly conscious star Beheld her frailty from afar-- The frequent sigh, the long embrace, Yet binds them to their trysting-place. 60 But it must come, and they must part In fearful heaviness of heart, With all the deep and shuddering chill Which follows fast the deeds of ill.

And Hugo is gone to his lonely bed, To covet there another's bride; But she must lay her conscious head A husband's trusting heart beside. But fevered in her sleep she seems, And red her cheek with troubled dreams, 70 And mutters she in her unrest A name she dare not breathe by day, And clasps her Lord unto the breast Which pants for one away: And he to that embrace awakes, And, happy in the thought, mistakes That dreaming sigh, and warm caress, For such as he was wont to bless; And could in very fondness weep O'er her who loves him even in sleep. 80

VI.

He clasped her sleeping to his heart, And listened to each broken word: He hears--Why doth Prince Azo start, As if the Archangel's voice he heard? And well he may--a deeper doom Could scarcely thunder o'er his tomb, When he shall wake to sleep no more, And stand the eternal throne before. And well he may--his earthly peace Upon that sound is doomed to cease. 90 That sleeping whisper of a name Bespeaks her guilt and Azo's shame. And whose that name? that o'er his pillow Sounds fearful as the breaking billow, Which rolls the plank upon the shore, And dashes on the pointed rock The wretch who sinks to rise no more,-- So came upon his soul the shock. And whose that name?--'tis Hugo's,--his-- In sooth he had not deemed of this!-- 100 'Tis Hugo's,--he, the child of one He loved--his own all-evil son-- The offspring of his wayward youth, When he betrayed Bianca's truth, The maid whose folly could confide In him who made her not his bride.

VII.

He plucked his poniard in its sheath, But sheathed it ere the point was bare; Howe'er unworthy now to breathe, He could not slay a thing so fair-- 110 At least, not smiling--sleeping--there-- Nay, more:--he did not wake her then, But gazed upon her with a glance Which, had she roused her from her trance, Had frozen her sense to sleep again; And o'er his brow the burning lamp Gleamed on the dew-drops big and damp. She spake no more--but still she slumbered-- While, in his thought, her days are numbered.

VIII.

And with the morn he sought and found, 120 In many a tale from those around, The proof of all he feared to know, Their present guilt--his future woe; The long-conniving damsels seek To save themselves, and would transfer The guilt--the shame--the doom--to her: Concealment is no more--they speak All circumstance which may compel Full credence to the tale they tell: And Azo's tortured heart and ear 130 Have nothing more to feel or hear.

IX.

He was not one who brooked delay: Within the chamber of his state, The Chief of Este's ancient sway Upon his throne of judgement sate; His nobles and his guards are there,-- Before him is the sinful pair; Both young,--and one how passing fair! With swordless belt, and fettered hand, Oh, Christ! that thus a son should stand 140 Before a father's face! Yet thus must Hugo meet his sire, And hear the sentence of his ire, The tale of his disgrace! And yet he seems not overcome, Although, as yet, his voice be dumb.

And still,--and pale--and silently Did Parisina wait her doom; How changed since last her speaking eye Glanced gladness round the glittering room, 150 Where high-born men were proud to wait-- Where Beauty watched to imitate Her gentle voice--her lovely mien-- And gather from her air and gait The graces of its Queen: Then,--had her eye in sorrow wept, A thousand warriors forth had leapt, A thousand swords had sheathless shone, And made her quarrel all their own. Now,--what is she? and what are they? 160 Can she command, or these obey? All silent and unheeding now, With downcast eyes and knitting brow, And folded arms, and freezing air, And lips that scarce their scorn forbear, Her knights, her dames, her court--is there: And he--the chosen one, whose lance Had yet been couched before her glance, Who--were his arm a moment free-- Had died or gained her liberty; 170 The minion of his father's bride,-- He, too, is fettered by her side; Nor sees her swoln and full eye swim Less for her own despair than him: Those lids--o'er which the violet vein Wandering, leaves a tender stain, Shining through the smoothest white That e'er did softest kiss invite-- Now seemed with hot and livid glow To press, not shade, the orbs below; 180 Which glance so heavily, and fill, As tear on tear grows gathering still

XI.

And he for her had also wept, But for the eyes that on him gazed: His sorrow, if he felt it, slept; Stern and erect his brow was raised. Whate'er the grief his soul avowed, He would not shrink before the crowd; But yet he dared not look on her; Remembrance of the hours that were-- 190 His guilt--his love--his present state-- His father's wrath, all good men's hate-- His earthly, his eternal fate-- And hers,--oh, hers! he dared not throw One look upon that death-like brow! Else had his rising heart betrayed Remorse for all the wreck it made.

XII.

And Azo spake:--"But yesterday I gloried in a wife and son; That dream this morning passed away; 200 Ere day declines, I shall have none. My life must linger on alone; Well,--let that pass,--there breathes not one Who would not do as I have done: Those ties are broken--not by me; Let that too pass;--the doom's prepared! Hugo, the priest awaits on thee, And then--thy crime's reward! Away! address thy prayers to Heaven. Before its evening stars are met, 210 Learn if thou there canst be forgiven: Its mercy may absolve thee yet. But here, upon the earth beneath, There is no spot where thou and I Together for an hour could breathe: Farewell! I will not see thee die-- But thou, frail thing! shall view his head-- Away! I cannot speak the rest: Go! woman of the wanton breast; Not I, but thou his blood dost shed: 220 Go! if that sight thou canst outlive, And joy thee in the life I give."

XIII.

And here stern Azo hid his face-- For on his brow the swelling vein Throbbed as if back upon his brain The hot blood ebbed and flowed again; And therefore bowed he for a space, And passed his shaking hand along His eye, to veil it from the throng; While Hugo raised his chained hands, 230 And for a brief delay demands His father's ear: the silent sire Forbids not what his words require. "It is not that I dread the death-- For thou hast seen me by thy side All redly through the battle ride, And that--not once a useless brand-- Thy slaves have wrested from my hand Hath shed more blood in cause of thine, Than e'er can stain the axe of mine: 240 Thou gav'st, and may'st resume my breath, A gift for which I thank thee not; Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot, Her slighted love and ruined name, Her offspring's heritage of shame; But she is in the grave, where he, Her son--thy rival--soon shall be. Her broken heart--my severed head-- Shall witness for thee from the dead How trusty and how tender were 250 Thy youthful love--paternal care. 'Tis true that I have done thee wrong-- But wrong for wrong:--this,--deemed thy bride, The other victim of thy pride,-- Thou know'st for me was destined long; Thou saw'st, and coveted'st her charms; And with thy very crime--my birth,-- Thou taunted'st me--as little worth; A match ignoble for her arms; Because, forsooth, I could not claim 260 The lawful heirship of thy name, Nor sit on Este's lineal throne; Yet, were a few short summers mine, My name should more than Este's shine With honours all my own. I had a sword--and have a breast That should have won as haught a crest As ever waved along the line Of all these sovereign sires of thine. Not always knightly spurs are worn 270 The brightest by the better born; And mine have lanced my courser's flank Before proud chiefs of princely rank, When charging to the cheering cry Of 'Este and of Victory!' I will not plead the cause of crime, Nor sue thee to redeem from time A few brief hours or days that must At length roll o'er my reckless dust;-- Such maddening moments as my past, 280 They could not, and they did not, last;-- Albeit my birth and name be base, And thy nobility of race Disdained to deck a thing like me-- Yet in my lineaments they trace Some features of my father's face, And in my spirit--all of thee. From thee this tamelessness of heart-- From thee--nay, wherefore dost thou start?--- From thee in all their vigour came 290 My arm of strength, my soul of flame-- Thou didst not give me life alone, But all that made me more thine own. See what thy guilty love hath done! Repaid thee with too like a son! I am no bastard in my soul, For that, like thine, abhorred control; And for my breath, that hasty boon Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon, I valued it no more than thou, 300 When rose thy casque above thy brow, And we, all side by side, have striven, And o'er the dead our coursers driven: The past is nothing--and at last The future can but be the past; Yet would I that I then had died: For though thou work'dst my mother's ill, And made thy own my destined bride, I feel thou art my father still: And harsh as sounds thy hard decree, 310 'Tis not unjust, although from thee. Begot in sin, to die in shame, My life begun and ends the same: As erred the sire, so erred the son, And thou must punish both in one. My crime seems worst to human view, But God must judge between us too!"

XIV.

He ceased--and stood with folded arms, On which the circling fetters sounded; And not an ear but felt as wounded, 320 Of all the chiefs that there were ranked, When those dull chains in meeting clanked: Till Parisina's fatal charms Again attracted every eye-- Would she thus hear him doomed to die! She stood, I said, all pale and still, The living cause of Hugo's ill: Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide, Not once had turned to either side-- Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 330 Or shade the glance o'er which they rose, But round their orbs of deepest blue The circling white dilated grew-- And there with glassy gaze she stood As ice were in her curdled blood; But every now and then a tear So large and slowly gathered slid From the long dark fringe of that fair lid, It was a thing to see, not hear! And those who saw, it did surprise, 340 Such drops could fall from human eyes. To speak she thought--the imperfect note Was choked within her swelling throat, Yet seemed in that low hollow groan Her whole heart gushing in the tone. It ceased--again she thought to speak, Then burst her voice in one long shriek, And to the earth she fell like stone Or statue from its base o'erthrown, More like a thing that ne'er had life,-- 350 A monument of Azo's wife,-- Than her, that living guilty thing, Whose every passion was a sting, Which urged to guilt, but could not bear That guilt's detection and despair. But yet she lived--and all too soon Recovered from that death-like swoon-- But scarce to reason--every sense Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense; And each frail fibre of her brain 360 (As bowstrings, when relaxed by rain, The erring arrow launch aside) Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide-- The past a blank, the future black, With glimpses of a dreary track, Like lightning on the desert path, When midnight storms are mustering wrath. She feared--she felt that something ill Lay on her soul, so deep and chill; That there was sin and shame she knew, 370 That some one was to die--but who? She had forgotten:--did she breathe? Could this be still the earth beneath, The sky above, and men around; Or were they fiends who now so frowned On one, before whose eyes each eye Till then had smiled in sympathy? All was confused and undefined To her all-jarred and wandering mind; A chaos of wild hopes and fears: 380 And now in laughter, now in tears, But madly still in each extreme, She strove with that convulsive dream; For so it seemed on her to break: Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!

XV.

The Convent bells are ringing, But mournfully and slow; In the grey square turret swinging, With a deep sound, to and fro. Heavily to the heart they go! 390 Hark! the hymn is singing-- The song for the dead below, Or the living who shortly shall be so! For a departed being's soul The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll: He is near his mortal goal; Kneeling at the Friar's knee, Sad to hear, and piteous to see-- Kneeling on the bare cold ground. With the block before and the guards around; 400 And the headsman with his bare arm ready, That the blow may be both swift and steady, Feels if the axe be sharp and true Since he set its edge anew: While the crowd in a speechless circle gather To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father!

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet Before the summer sun shall set, Which rose upon that heavy day, And mock'd it with his steadiest ray; 410 And his evening beams are shed Full on Hugo's fated head, As his last confession pouring To the monk, his doom deploring In penitential holiness, He bends to hear his accents bless With absolution such as may Wipe our mortal stains away. That high sun on his head did glisten As he there did bow and listen, 420 And the rings of chestnut hair Curled half down his neck so bare; But brighter still the beam was thrown Upon the axe which near him shone With a clear and ghastly glitter---- Oh! that parting hour was bitter! Even the stern stood chilled with awe: Dark the crime, and just the law-- Yet they shuddered as they saw.

XVII.

The parting prayers are said and over 430 Of that false son, and daring lover! His beads and sins are all recounted, His hours to their last minute mounted; His mantling cloak before was stripped, His bright brown locks must now be clipped; 'Tis done--all closely are they shorn; The vest which till this moment worn-- The scarf which Parisina gave-- Must not adorn him to the grave. Even that must now be thrown aside, 440 And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied; But no--that last indignity Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye. All feelings seemingly subdued, In deep disdain were half renewed, When headsman's hands prepared to bind Those eyes which would not brook such blind, As if they dared not look on death. "No--yours my forfeit blood and breath; These hands are chained, but let me die 450 At least with an unshackled eye-- Strike:"--and as the word he said, Upon the block he bowed his head; These the last accents Hugo spoke: "Strike"--and flashing fell the stroke-- Rolled the head--and, gushing, sunk Back the stained and heaving trunk, In the dust, which each deep vein Slaked with its ensanguined rain; His eyes and lips a moment quiver, 460 Convulsed and quick--then fix for ever.

He died, as erring man should die, Without display, without parade; Meekly had he bowed and prayed, As not disdaining priestly aid, Nor desperate of all hope on high. And while before the Prior kneeling, His heart was weaned from earthly feeling; His wrathful Sire--his Paramour-- What were they in such an hour? 470 No more reproach,--no more despair,-- No thought but Heaven,--no word but prayer-- Save the few which from him broke, When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke, He claimed to die with eyes unbound, His sole adieu to those around.

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death, Each gazer's bosom held his breath: But yet, afar, from man to man, A cold electric shiver ran, 480 As down the deadly blow descended On him whose life and love thus ended; And, with a hushing sound compressed, A sigh shrunk back on every breast; But no more thrilling noise rose there, Beyond the blow that to the block Pierced through with forced and sullen shock, Save one:--what cleaves the silent air So madly shrill, so passing wild? That, as a mother's o'er her child, 490 Done to death by sudden blow, To the sky these accents go, Like a soul's in endless woe. Through Azo's palace-lattice driven, That horrid voice ascends to heaven, And every eye is turned thereon; But sound and sight alike are gone! It was a woman's shriek--and ne'er In madlier accents rose despair; And those who heard it, as it past, 500 In mercy wished it were the last.

XIX.

Hugo is fallen; and, from that hour, No more in palace, hall, or bower, Was Parisina heard or seen: Her name--as if she ne'er had been-- Was banished from each lip and ear, Like words of wantonness or fear; And from Prince Azo's voice, by none Was mention heard of wife or son; No tomb--no memory had they; 510 Theirs was unconsecrated clay-- At least the Knight's who died that day. But Parisina's fate lies hid Like dust beneath the coffin lid: Whether in convent she abode, And won to heaven her dreary road, By blighted and remorseful years Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears; Or if she fell by bowl or steel, For that dark love she dared to feel: 520 Or if, upon the moment smote, She died by tortures less remote, Like him she saw upon the block With heart that shared the headsman's shock, In quickened brokenness that came, In pity o'er her shattered frame, None knew--and none can ever know: But whatsoe'er its end below, Her life began and closed in woe!

XX.

And Azo found another bride, 530 And goodly sons grew by his side; But none so lovely and so brave As him who withered in the grave; Or if they were--on his cold eye Their growth but glanced unheeded by, Or noticed with a smothered sigh. But never tear his cheek descended, And never smile his brow unbended; And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought The intersected lines of thought; 540 Those furrows which the burning share Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there; Scars of the lacerating mind Which the Soul's war doth leave behind. He was past all mirth or woe: Nothing more remained below But sleepless nights and heavy days, A mind all dead to scorn or praise, A heart which shunned itself--and yet That would not yield, nor could forget, 550 Which, when it least appeared to melt, Intensely thought--intensely felt: The deepest ice which ever froze Can only o'er the surface close; The living stream lies quick below, And flows, and cannot cease to flow. Still was his sealed-up bosom haunted By thoughts which Nature hath implanted; Too deeply rooted thence to vanish, Howe'er our stifled tears we banish; 560 When struggling as they rise to start, We check those waters of the heart, They are not dried--those tears unshed But flow back to the fountain head, And resting in their spring more pure, For ever in its depth endure, Unseen--unwept--but uncongealed, And cherished most where least revealed. With inward starts of feeling left, To throb o'er those of life bereft, 570 Without the power to fill again The desert gap which made his pain; Without the hope to meet them where United souls shall gladness share; With all the consciousness that he Had only passed a just decree; That they had wrought their doom of ill; Yet Azo's age was wretched still. The tainted branches of the tree, If lopped with care, a strength may give, 580 By which the rest shall bloom and live All greenly fresh and wildly free: But if the lightning, in its wrath, The waving boughs with fury scathe, The massy trunk the ruin feels, And never more a leaf reveals.

FOOTNOTES:

{503} ["Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated; but the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon."--Vide Advertisement to Lament of Tasso.]

{505} "This turned out a calamitous year for the people of Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other, have given the following relation of it,--from which, however, are rejected many details, and especially the narrative of Bandelli, who wrote a century afterwards, and who does not accord with the contemporary historians.

"By the above-mentioned Stella dell' Assassino, the Marquis, in the year 1405, had a son called Ugo, a beautiful and ingenuous youth. Parisina Malatesta, second wife of Niccolo, like the generality of step-mothers, treated him with little kindness, to the infinite regret of the Marquis, who regarded him with fond partiality. One day she asked leave of her husband to undertake a certain journey, to which he consented, but upon condition that Ugo should bear her company; for he hoped by these means to induce her, in the end, to lay aside the obstinate aversion which she had conceived against him. And indeed his intent was accomplished but too well, since, during the journey, she not only divested herself of all her hatred, but fell into the opposite extreme. After their return, the Marquis had no longer any occasion to renew his former reproofs. It happened one day that a servant of the Marquis, named Zoese, or, as some call him, Giorgio, passing before the apartments of Parisina, saw going out from them one of her chamber-maids, all terrified and in tears. Asking the reason, she told him that her mistress, for some slight offence, had been beating her; and, giving vent to her rage, she added, that she could easily be revenged, if she chose to make known the criminal familiarity which subsisted between Parisina and her step-son. The servant took note of the words, and related them to his master. He was astounded thereat, but, scarcely believing his ears, he assured himself of the fact, alas! too clearly, on the 18th of May, by looking through a hole made in the ceiling of his wife's chamber. Instantly he broke into a furious rage, and arrested both of them, together with Aldobrandino Rangoni, of Modena, her gentleman, and also, as some say, two of the women of her chamber, as abettors of this sinful act. He ordered them to be brought to a hasty trial, desiring the judges to pronounce sentence, in the accustomed forms, upon the culprits. This sentence was death. Some there were that bestirred themselves in favour of the delinquents, and, amongst others, Ugoccion Contrario, who was all-powerful with Niccolo, and also his aged and much deserving minister Alberto dal Sale. Both of these, their tears flowing down their cheeks, and upon their knees, implored him for mercy; adducing whatever reasons they could suggest for sparing the offenders, besides those motives of honour and decency which might persuade him to conceal from the public so scandalous a deed. But his rage made him inflexible, and, on the instant, he commanded that the sentence should be put in execution.

"It was, then, in the prisons of the castle, and exactly in those frightful dungeons which are seen at this day beneath the chamber called the Aurora, at the foot of the Lion's tower, at the top of the street Giovecca, that on the night of the 21st of May were beheaded, first, Ugo, and afterwards Parisina. Zoese, he that accused her, conducted the latter under his arm to the place of punishment. She, all along, fancied that she was to be thrown into a pit, and asked at every step, whether she was yet come to the spot? She was told that her punishment was the axe. She enquired what was become of Ugo, and received for answer, that he was already dead; at which, sighing grievously, she exclaimed, 'Now, then, I wish not myself to live;' and, being come to the block, she stripped herself, with her own hands, of all her ornaments, and, wrapping a cloth round her head, submitted to the fatal stroke, which terminated the cruel scene. The same was done with Rangoni, who, together with the others, according to two calendars in the library of St. Francesco, was buried in the cemetery of that convent. Nothing else is known respecting the women.

"The Marquis kept watch the whole of that dreadful night, and, as he was walking backwards and forwards, enquired of the captain of the castle if Ugo was dead yet? who answered him, Yes. He then gave himself up to the most desperate lamentations, exclaiming, 'Oh! that I too were dead, since I have been hurried on to resolve thus against my own Ugo!' And then gnawing with his teeth a cane which he had in his hand, he passed the rest of the night in sighs and in tears, calling frequently upon his own dear Ugo. On the following day, calling to mind that it would be necessary to make public his justification, seeing that the transaction could not be kept secret, he ordered the narrative to be drawn out upon paper, and sent it to all the courts of Italy.

"On receiving this advice, the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, gave orders, but without publishing his reasons, that stop should be put to the preparations for a tournament, which, under the auspices of the Marquis, and at the expense of the city of Padua, was about to take place, in the square of St. Mark, in order to celebrate his advancement to the ducal chair.

"The Marquis, in addition to what he had already done, from some unaccountable burst of vengeance, commanded that as many of the married women as were well known to him to be faithless, like his Parisina, should, like her, be beheaded. Amongst others, Barberina, or, as some call her, Laodamia Romei, wife of the court judge, underwent this sentence, at the usual place of execution; that is to say, in the quarter of St. Giacomo, opposite the present fortress, beyond St. Paul's. It cannot be told how strange appeared this proceeding in a prince, who, considering his own disposition, should, as it seemed, have been in such cases most indulgent. Some, however, there were who did not fail to commend him." [Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara, Raccolte da Antonio Frizzi, 1793, iii. 408-410. See, too, Celebri Famiglie Italiane, by Conte Pompeo Litta, 1832, Fasc. xxvi. Part III. vol. ii.]

{507} [The revise of Parisina is endorsed in Murray's handwriting, "Given to me by Lord Byron at his house, Saturday, January 13, 1816."]

The lines contained in this section were printed as set to music some time since, but belonged to the poem where they now appear; the greater part of which was composed prior to Lara, and other compositions since published. [Note to Siege, etc., First Edition, 1816.]

Francisca walks in the shadow of night, But it is not to gaze on the heavenly light-- But if she sits in her garden bower, 'Tis not for the sake of its blowing flower.-- [Nathan, 1815, 1829.]

{508} There winds a step----.--[Nathan, 1815, 1829.]

{509} [Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography (1860, p. 252), says, "I had the pleasure of supplying my friendly critic, Lord Byron, with a point for his Parisina (the incident of the heroine talking in her sleep)."

Putting Lady Macbeth out of the question, the situation may be traced to a passage in Henry Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigne (1777, ii. 101: "Montauban to Segarva," Letter xxxv.):--

"I was last night abroad at supper; Julia was a-bed before my return. I found her lute lying on the table, and a music-book open by it. I could perceive the marks of tears shed on the paper, and the air was such as might encourage their falling. Sleep, however, had overcome her sadness, and she did not awake when I opened the curtain to look on her. When I had stood some moments, I heard her sigh strongly through her sleep, and presently she muttered some words, I know not of what import. I had sometimes heard her do so before, without regarding it much; but there was something that roused my attention now. I listened; she sighed again, and again spoke a few broken words. At last I heard her plainly pronounce the name Savillon two or three times, and each time it was accompanied with sighs so deep that her heart seemed bursting as it heaved then."]

{511} ----Medora's----.--[Copy erased.]

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth."]

{513} [Compare the famous eulogy of Marie Antoinette, in Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, in a Letter intended to have been sent to a Gentleman in Paris, London, 1790, pp. 112, 113--

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles.... Little did I dream ... that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult."]

{514} As tear by tear rose gathering still.--[Revise.]

{516} [The meaning is plain, but the construction is involved. The contrast is between the blood of foes, which Hugo has shed for Azo, and Hugo's own blood, which Azo is about to shed on the scaffold. But this is one of Byron's incurious infelicities.]

{517} Haught--haughty. "Away, haught man, thou art insulting me."--Shakespeare [Richard II., act iv. sc. i, line 254--"No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man."]

{518} [Lines 304, 305, and lines 310-317 are not in the Copy. They were inserted by Byron in the Revise.]

"Her look composed, and steady eye, Bespoke a matchless constancy; And there she stood so calm and pale, That, but her breathing did not fail, And motion slight of eye and head, And of her bosom, warranted That neither sense nor pulse she lacks, You must have thought a form of wax, Wrought to the very life, was there-- So still she was, so pale, so fair."