The Isles of Greece

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus
sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set...

The mountains look on MarathonAnd
Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.


A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er seaborn
Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nationsall
were his!
He counted them at break of dayAnd
when the sun set, where were they?


And where are they? And where art thou?
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless nowThe
heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?


'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blushfor
Greece a tear....


Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shadeI
see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning teardrop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.


Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swanlike, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash
down yon cup of Samian wine!

The Island: Canto III.

I.
The fight was o'er; the flashing through the gloom,
Which robes the cannon as he wings a tomb,
Had ceased; and sulphury vapours upward driven
Had left the Earth, and but polluted Heaven:
The rattling roar which rung in every volley
Had left the echoes to their melancholy;
No more they shrieked their horror, boom for boom;
The strife was done, the vanquished had their doom;
The mutineers were crushed, dispersed, or ta'en,
Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain.
Few, few escaped, and these were hunted o'er
The isle they loved beyond their native shore.
No further home was theirs, it seemed, on earth,
Once renegades to that which gave them birth;
Tracked like wild beasts, like them they sought the wild,
As to a Mother's bosom flies the child;
But vainly wolves and lions seek their den,
And still more vainly men escape from men,
II.
Beneath a rock whose jutting base protrudes
Far over Ocean in its fiercest moods,
When scaling his enormous crag the wave
Is hurled down headlong, like the foremost brave,
And falls back on the foaming crowd behind,
Which fight beneath the banners of the wind,
But now at rest, a little remnant drew
Together, bleeding, thirsty, faint, and few;
But still their weapons in their hands, and still
With something of the pride of former will,
As men not all unused to meditate,
And strive much more than wonder at their fate.
Their present lot was what they had foreseen,
And dared as what was likely to have been;
Yet still the lingering hope, which deemed their lot
Not pardoned, but unsought for or forgot,
Or trusted that, if sought, their distant caves
Might still be missed amidst the world of waves,
Had weaned their thoughts in part from what they saw
And felt, the vengeance of their country's law.
Their seagreen
isle, their guiltwon
Paradise,
No more could shield their Virtue or their Vice:
Their better feelings, if such were, were thrown
Back on themselves,their
sins remained alone.
Proscribed even in their second country, they
Were lost; in vain the World before them lay;
All outlets seemed secured. Their new allies
Had fought and bled in mutual sacrifice;
But what availed the club and spear, and arm
Of Hercules, against the sulphury charm,
The magic of the thunder, which destroyed

The warrior ere his strength could be employed?
Dug, like a spreading pestilence, the grave
No less of human bravery than the brave!
Their own scant numbers acted all the few
Against the many oft will dare and do;
But though the choice seems native to die free,
Even Greece can boast but one Thermopylae,
Till now, when she has forged her broken chain
Back to a sword, and dies and lives again!


III.
Beside the jutting rock the few appeared,
Like the last remnant of the reddeer's
herd;
Their eyes were feverish, and their aspect worn,
But still the hunter's blood was on their horn.
A little stream came tumbling from the height,
And straggling into ocean as it might,
Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray,
And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray;
Close on the wild, wide ocean, yet as pure
And fresh as Innocettce, and more secure,
Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep,
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,
While far below the vast and sullen swell
Of Ocean's alpine azure rose and fell.
To this young spring they rushed,all
feelings first
Absorbed in Passion's and in Nature's thirst,Drank
as they do who drink their last, and threw
Their arms aside to revel in its dew;
Cooled their scorched throats, and washed the gory stains
From wounds whose only bandage might be chains;
Then,when their drought was quenched, looked sadly round,
As wondering how so many still were found
Alive and fetterless:but
silent all,
Each sought his fellow's eyes, as if to call
On him for language which his lips denied,
As though their voices with their cause had died.
IV.
Stern, and aloof a little from the rest,
Stood Christian, with his arms across his chest.
The ruddy, reckless, dauntless hue once spread
Along his cheek was livid now as lead;
His lightbrown
locks, so graceful in their flow,
Now rose like startled vipers o'er his brow.
Still as a statue, with his lips coinprest
To stifle even the breath within his breast,
Fast by the rock, all menacing, but mute,
He stood; and, save a slight beat of his foot,
Which deepened now and then the sandy dint
Beneath his heel, his form seemed turned to flint.
Some paces further Torquil leaned his head

Against a bank, and spoke not, but he bled,Not
mortally:his
worst wound was within;
His brow was pale, his blue eyes sunken in,too
And blooddrops,
sprinkled o'er his yellow hair,
Showed that his faintness came not from despair,
But Nature's ebb. Beside him was another,
Rough as a bear, but willing as a brother,Ben
Bunting, who essayed to wash, and wipe,
And bind his woundthen
calmly lit his pipe,
A trophy which survived a hundred fights,
A beacon which had cheered ten thousand nights.
The fourth and last of this deserted group
Walked up and downat
times would stand, then stoop
To pick a pebble upthen
let it dropThen
hurry as in hastethen
quickly stopThen
cast his eyes on his companionsthen
Half whistle half a tune, and pause againAnd
then his former movements would redouble,
With something between carelessness and trouble.
This is a long description, but applies
To scarce five minutes passed before the eyes;
But yet what minutes! Moments like to these
Rend men's lives into immortalities.


V.
At length Jack Skyscrape, a mercurial man,
Who fluttered over all things like a fan,
More brave than firm, and more disposed to dare
And die at once than wrestle with despair,
Exclaimed, 'Gd
damn I'those
syllables intense,Nucleus
of England's native eloquence,
As the Turk's 'Allah!' or the Roman's more
Pagan 'Proh Jupiter!' was wont of yore
To give their first impressions such a vent,
By way of echo to embarrassment.
Jack was embarrassed,never
hero more,
Till on the surf their skimming paddles play,
Buoyant as wings, and flitting through the spray;Now
perching on the wave's high curl, and now
Dashed downward in the thundering foam below,
Which flings it broad and boiling sheet on sheet,
And slings its high flakes, shivered into sleet:
But floating still through surf and swell, drew nigh
The barks, like small birds through a lowering sky.
Their art seemed naturesuch
the skill to sweep
The wave of these born playmates of the deep.
VIII.
And who the first that, springing on the strand,
Leaped like a Nereid from her shell to land,
With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye
Shining with love, and, hope, and constancy?

Neuhathe
fond, the faithful, the adoredHer
heart on Torquil's like a torrent poured;
And smiled, and wept, and near, and nearer clasped,
As if to be assured 'twas him she grasped;
Shuddered to see his yet warm wound, and then,
To find it trivial, smiled and wept again.
She was a warrior's daughter, and could bear
Such sights, and feel, and mourn, but not despair.
Her lover lived,nor
foes nor fears could blight
That fullblown
moment in its all delight:
Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob
That rocked her heart till almost HEARD to throb;
And Paradise was breathing in the sigh
Of Nature's child in Nature's ecstasy.


IX.
The sterner spirits who beheld that meeting
Were not unmoved; who are, when hearts are greeting?
Even Christian gazed upon the maid and boy
With tearless eye, but yet a gloomy joy
Mixed with those bitter thoughts the soul arrays
In hopeless visions of our better days,
When all 's goneto
the rainbow's latest ray.
'And but for me!' he said, and turned away;
Then gazed upon the pair, as in his den
A lion looks upon his cubs again;
And then relapsed into his sullen guise,
As heedless of his further destinies.
X.
But brief their time for good or evil thought;
The billows round the promontory brought
The plash of hostile oars.Alas!
who made
That sound a dread? All around them seemed arrayed
Against them, save the bride of Toobonai
She, as she caught the first glimpse o'er the bay
Of the armed boats, which hurried to complete
The remnant's ruin with their flying feet,
Beckoned the natives round her to their prows,
Embarked their guests and launched their light canoes;
In one placed Christian and his comrades twainBut
she and Torquil must not part again.
She fixed him in her own.Away!
away!
They cleared the breakers, dart along the bay,
And towards a group of islets, such as bear
The seabird's
nest and seal's surfhollowed
lair,
They skim the blue tops of the billows; fast
They flew, and fast their fierce pursuers chased.
They gain upon themnow
they lose again,Again
make way and menace o'er the main;
And now the two canoes in chase divide,
Arid follow different courses o'er the tide,

To baffle the pursuit.Away!
away!
As Life is on each paddle's flight today,
And more than Life or lives to Neuha: Love
Freights the frail bark and urges to the cove;
And now the refuge and the foe are nighYet,
yet a moment! Fly, thou light ark, fly!

The Island: Canto I.

I.
The morning watch was come; the vessel lay
Her course, and gently made her liquid way;
The cloven billow flashed from off her prow
In furrows formed by that majestic plough;
The waters with their world were all before;
Behind, the South Sea's many an islet shore.
The quiet night, now dappling, 'gan to wane,
Dividing darkness from the dawning main;
The dolphins, not unconscious of the day,
Swam high, as eager of the coming ray;
The stars from broader beams began to creep,
And lift their shining eyelids from the deep;
The sail resumed its lately shadowed white,
And the wind fluttered with a freshening flight;
The purpling Ocean owns the coming Sun,
But ere he breaka
deed is to be done.
e
II.
The gallant Chief within his cabin slept,
Secure in those by whom the watch was kept:
His dreams were of Old England's welcome shore,
Of toils rewarded, and of dangers o'er;
His name was added to the glorious roll
Of those who search the stormsurrounded
Pole.
The worst was over, and the rest seemed sure,
And why should not his slumber be secure?
Alas! his deck was trod by unwilling feet,
And wilder hands would hold the vessel's sheet;
Young hearts, which languished for some sunny isle,
Where summer years and summer women smile;
Men without country, who, too long estranged,
Had found no native home, or found it changed,
And, half uncivilised, preferred the cave
Of some soft savage to the uncertain waveThe
gushing fruits that nature gave untilled;
The wood without a pathbut
where they willed;
The field o'er which promiscuous Plenty poured
Her horn; the equal land without a lord;
The wishwhich
ages have not yet subdued
In manto
have no master save his mood
The earth, whose mine was on its face, unsold,
The glowing sun and produce all its gold;
The Freedom which can call each grot a home;
The general garden, where all steps may roam,
Where Nature owns a nation as her child,
Exulting in the enjoyment of the wild
Their shells, their fruits, the only wealth they know,
Their unexploring navy, the canoe
Their sport, the dashing breakers and the chase;
Their strangest sight, an European face
Such was the country which these strangers yearned

To see againa
sight they dearly earned.

III.
Awake, bold Bligh! the foe is at the gate!
Awake! awake!Alas!
it is too late!
Fiercely beside thy cot the mutineer
Stands, and proclaims the reign of rage and fear.
Thy limbs are bound, the bayonet at thy breast;
The hands, which trembled at thy voice, arrest;
Dragged o'er the deck, no more at thy command
The obedient helm shall veer, the sail expand;
That savage Spirit, which would lull by wrath
Its desperate escape from Duty's path,
Glares round thee, in the scarce believing eyes
Of those who fear the Chief they sacrifice:
For ne'er can Man his conscience all assuage,
Unless he drain the wine of PassionRage.
IV.
In vain, not silenced by the eye of Death,
Thou call'st the loyal with thy menaced breath
They come not; they are few, and, overawed,
Must acquiesce, while sterner hearts applaud.
In vain thou dost demand the cause: a curse
Is all the answer, with the threat of worse.
Full in thine eyes is waved the glittering blade,
Close to thy throat the pointed bayonet laid.
The levelled muskets circle round thy breast
In hands as steeled to do the deadly rest.
Thou dar'st them to their worst, exclaiming'
Fire!'
But they who pitied not could yet admire;
Some lurking remnant of their former awe
Restrained them longer than their broken law;
They would not dip their souls at once in blood,
But left thee to the mercies of the flood.
V.
'Hoist out the boat!' was now the leader's cry;
And who dare answer 'No!' to Mutiny,
In the first dawning of the drunken hour,
The Saturnalia of unhopedfor
power?
The boat is lowered with all the haste of hate,
With its slight plank between thee and thy fate;
Her only cargo such a scant supply
As promises the death their hands deny;
And just enough of water and of bread
To keep, some days, the dying from the dead:
Some cordage, canvass, sails, and lines, and twine,
But treasures all to hermits of the brine,
Were added after, to the earnest prayer
Of those who saw no hope, save sea and air;
And last, that trembling vassal of the Polewww.
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The feeling compassNavigation's
soul.

VI.
And now the selfelected
Chief finds time
To stun the first sensation of his crime,
And raise it in his followers'
Ho! the bowl!'
Lest passion should return to reason's shoal.
'Brandy for heroes!' Burke could once exclaimNo
doubt a liquid path to Epic fame;
And such the newborn
heroes found it here,
And drained the draught with an applauding cheer,
'Huzza! for Otaheite!' was the cry.
How strange such shouts from sons of Mutiny!
The gentle island, and the genial soil,
The friendly hearts, the feasts without a toil,
The courteous manners but from nature caught,
The wealth unhoarded, and the love unbought; sic
Could these have charms for rudest seaboys,
driven
Before the mast by every wind of heaven?
And now, even now prepared with others' woes
To earn mild Virtue's vain desire, repose?
Alas! such is our nature! all but aim
At the same end by pathways not the same;
Our meansour
birthour
nation, and our name,
Our fortunetempereven
our outward frame,
Are far more potent o'er our yielding clay
Than aught we know beyond our little day.
Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din:
Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the Oracle of God.
VII.
The launch is crowded with the faithful few
Who wait their Chief, a melancholy crew:
But some remained reluctant on the deck
Of that proud vesselnow
a moral wreckAnd
viewed their Captain's fate with piteous eyes;
While others scoffed his augured miseries,
Sneered at the prospect of his pigmy sail,
And the slight bark so laden and so frail.
The tender nautilus, who steers his prow,
The seaborn
sailor of his shell canoe,
The ocean Mab, the fairy of the sea,
Seems far less fragile, and, alas! more free.
He, when the lightningwinged
Tornados sweep
The surge, is safehis
port is in the deepAnd
triumphs o'er the armadas of Mankind,
Which shake the World, yet crumble in the wind.
VIII.
When all was now prepared, the vessel clear

Which hailed her master in the mutineer,
A seaman, less obdurate than his mates,
Showed the vain pity which but irritates;
Watched his late Chieftain with exploring eye,
And told, in signs, repentant sympathy;
Held the moist shaddock to his parchéd mouth,
Which felt Exhaustion's deep and bitter drouth.
But soon observed, this guardian was withdrawn,
Nor further Mercy clouds Rebellion's dawn.
Then forward stepped the bold and froward boy
His Chief had cherished only to destroy,
And, pointing to the helpless prow beneath,
Exclaimed, 'Depart at once! delay is death!'
Yet then, even then, his feelings ceased not all:
In that last moment could a word recall
Remorse for the black deed as yet half done,
And what he hid from many showed to one:
When Bligh in stern reproach demanded where
Was now his grateful sense of former care?
Where all his hopes to see his name aspire,
And blazon Britain's thousand glories higher?
His feverish lips thus broke their gloomy spell,
''Tis that! 'Tis that! I am in hell! in hell!'
No more he said; but urging to the bark
His Chief, commits him to his fragile ark;
These the sole accents from his tongue that fell,
But volumes lurked below his fierce farewell.


IX.
The arctic Sun rose broad above the wave;
The breeze now sank, now whispered from his cave;
As on the Aeolian harp, his fitful wings
Now swelled, now fluttered o'er his Ocean strings.
With slow, despairing oar, the abandoned skiff
Ploughs its drear progress to the scarce seen cliff,
Which lifts its peak a cloud above the main:
That boat and ship shall never meet again!
But 'tis not mine to tell their tale of grief,
Their constant peril, and their scant relief;
Their days of danger, and their nights of pain;
Their manly courage even when deemed in vain;
The sapping famine, rendering scarce a son
Known to his mother in the skeleton;
The ills that lessened still their little store,
And starved even Hunger till he wrung no more;
The varying frowns and favours of the deep,
That now almost ingulfs, then leaves to creep
With crazy oar and shattered strength along
The tide that yields reluctant to the strong;
The incessant fever of that arid thirst
Which welcomes, as a well, the clouds that burst



Above their naked bones, and feels delight
In the cold drenching of the stormy night,
And from the outspread canvass gladly wrings
A drop to moisten Life's allgasping
springs;
The savage foe escaped, to seek again
More hospitable shelter from the main;
The ghastly Spectres which were doomed at last
To tell as true a tale of dangers past,
As ever the dark annals of the deep
Disclosed for man to dread or woman weep.


X.
We leave them to their fate, but not unknown
Nor unredressed. Revenge may have her own:
Roused Discipline aloud proclaims their cause,
And injured Navies urge their broken laws.
Pursue we on his track the mutineer,
Whom distant vengeance had not taught to fear.
Wide o'er the waveaway!
away! away!
Once more his eyes shall hail the welcome bay;
Once more the happy shores without a law
Receive the outlaws whom they lately saw;
Nature, and Nature's goddessWomanwoos
To lands where, save their conscience, none accuse;
Where all partake the earth without dispute,
And bread itself is gathered as a fruit;
Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams
The goldless Age, where Gold disturbs no dreams,
Inhabits or inhabited the shore,
Till Europe taught them better than before;
Bestowed her customs, and amended theirs,
But left her vices also to their heirs.
Away with this! behold them as they were,
Do good with Nature, or with Nature err.
'Huzza! for Otaheite!' was the cry,
As stately swept the gallant vessel by.
The breeze springs up; the lately flapping sail
Extends its arch before the growing gale;
In swifter ripples stream aside the seas,
Which her bold bow flings off with dashing ease.
Thus Argo ploughed the Euxine's virgin foam,
But those she wafted still looked back to home;
These spurn their country with their rebel bark,
And fly her as the raven fled the Ark;
And yet they seek to nestle with the dove,
And tame their fiery spirits down to Love.

The Giaour

A Fragment of a Turkish Tale

The tale which these disjointed fragments present, is founded upon circumstances now
less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect
than in the 'olden time', or because the Christians have better fortune, or less
enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who
was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a
young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the
Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea,
which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The
desertion of the Mainotes on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the
abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea,during which the
cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.

No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
First greets the homewardveering
skiff
High o'er the land he saved in vain;
When shall such Hero live again?

Fair clime! where every season smiles
Benignant o'er those blesséd isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to lonliness delight.
There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave:
And if at times a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That waves and wafts the odours there!
For there the Rose, o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale,

The maid for whom his melody,

His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale:
His queen, the garden queen, his Rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows,
Far from winters of the west,
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by Nature given
In soft incense back to Heaven;
And gratefu yields that smiling sky
Her fairest hue and fragrant sigh.
And many a summer flower is there,
And many a shade that Love might share,


And many a grotto, meant by rest,
That holds the pirate for a guest;
Whose bark in sheltering cove below
Lurks for the pasiing peaceful prow,
Till the gay mariner's guitar
Is heard, and seen the Evening Star;
Then stealing with the muffled oar,
Far shaded by the rocky shore,
Rush the nightprowlers
on the prey,
And turns to groan his roudelay.
Strandethat
where Nature loved to trace,
As if for Gods, a dwelling place,
And every charm and grace hath mixed
Within the Paradise she fixed,
There man, enarmoured of distress,
Shoul mar it into wilderness,
And trample, brutelike,
o'er each flower
That tasks not one labourious hour;
Nor claims the culture of his hand
To blood along the fairy land,
But springs as to preclude his care,
And sweetly woos himbut
to spare!
Strangethat
where all is Peace beside,
There Passion riots in her pride,
And Lust and Rapine wildly reign
To darken o'er the fair domain.
It is as though the Fiends prevailed
Against the Seraphs they assailed,
And, fixed on heavenly thrones, should dwell
The freed inheritors of Hell;
So soft the scene, so formed for joy,
So curst the tyrants that destroy!


He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of Death is fled,
The first dark day of Nothingness,
The last of Danger and Distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where Beauty lingers,)
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of Repose that's there,
The fixed yet tender thraits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
Andbut
for that sad shrouded eye,


That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,


Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,



Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the Tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by Death revealed!
Such is the aspect of his shore;
'T is Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for Soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded Halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling past away!


Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!

Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountaincave
Was Freedom;s home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be,
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is this not Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,


Of servile offspring of the freePronounce
what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis!
These scenes, their story yet unknown;
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your Sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it many a deathless age!
While Kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a namesless pyramid,
Thy Heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of thy native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'T were long to tell, and sad to trace,



Each step from Spledour to Disgrace;
Enoughno
foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yet! Selfabasement
paved the way
To villainbonds
and despot sway.


What can he tell who tread thy shore?

No legend of thine olden time,
No theme on which the Muse might soar
High as thine own days of yore,


When man was worthy of thy clime.
The hearts within thy valleys bred,
The fiery souls that might have led


Thy sons to deeds sublime,
Now crawl from cradle to the Grave,
Slavesnay,
the bondsmen of a Slave,


And callous, save to crime.
Stained with each evil that pollutes
Mankind, where least above the brutes;
Without even savage virtue blest,
Without one free or valiant breast,
Still to the neighbouring ports tey waft
Proverbial wiles, and ancient craft;
In this subtle Greek is found,
For this, and this alown, renowned.
In vain might Liberty invoke
The spirit to its bondage broke
Or raise the neck that courts the yoke:
No more her sorrows I bewail,
Yet this will be a mournful tale,
And they who listen may believe,
Who heard it first had cause to grieve.


Far, dark, along the blue sea glancing,
The shadows of the rocks advancing
Start on the fisher's eye like boat
Of islandpirate
or Mainote;
And fearful for his light caïque,
He shuns the near but doubtful creek:
Though worn and weary with his toil,
And cumbered with his scaly spoil,
Slowly, yet strongly, plies the oar,
Till Port Leone's safer shore
Receives him by the lovely light
That best becomes an Eastern night.


... Who thundering comes on blackest steed,
With slackened bit and hoof of speed?
Beneath the clattering iron's sound
The caverned echoes wake around
In lash for lash, and bound for bound;



The foam that streaks the courser's side
Seems gathered from the oceantide:
Though weary waves are sunk to rest,
There's none within his rider's breast;
And though tomorrow's tempest lower,
'Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!
I know thee not, I loathe thy race,
But in thy lineaments I trace
What time shall strengthen, not efface:
Though young and pale, that sallow front
Is scathed by fiery passion's brunt;
Though bent on earth thine evil eye,
As meteorlike
thou glidest by,
Right well I view thee and deem thee one
Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun.


On on
he hastened, and he drew

My gaze of wonder as he flew:

Though like a demon of the night

He passed, and vanished from my sight,

His aspect and his air impressed

A troubled memory on my breast,

And long upon my startled ear

Rung his dark courser's hoofs of fear.

He spurs his steed; he nears the steep,

That, jutting, shadows o'er the deep;

He winds around; he hurries by;

The rock relieves him from mine eye;

For, well I ween, unwelcome he

Whose glance is fixed on those that flee;

And not a start that shines too bright

On him who takes such timeless flight.

He wound along; but ere he passed

One glance he snatched, as if his last,

A moment checked his wheeling steed,

A moment breathed him from his speed,

A moment on his stirrup stood


Why looks he o'er the olive wood?

The crescent glimmers on the hill,

The mosque's high lamps are quivering still

Though too remote for sound to wake

In echoes of far tophaike,

The flashes of each joyous peal

Are seen to prove the Moslem's zeal,

Tonight, set Rhamazani's sun;

Tonight the Bairam feast's begun;

Tonight but
who and what art thou

Of foreign garb and fearful brow?

That thou should'st either pause or flee?


He stood some
dread was on his face,

Soon hatred settled in its place:

It rose not with the reddening flush

Of transient anger's hasty blush,

But pale as marble o'er the tomb,

Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.

His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;

He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,

And sternly shook his hand on high,

As doubting to return or fly;

Impatient of his flight delayed,

Here loud his raven charger neighed


Down glanced that hand and, and grasped his blade;

That sound had burst his waking dream,

As slumber starts at owlet's scream.

The spur hath lanced his courser's sides;

Away, away, for life he rides:

Swift as the hurled on high jerreed

Springs to the touch his startled steed;

The rock is doubled, and the shore

Shakes with the clattering tramp no more;

The crag is won, no more is seen

His Christian crest and haughty mien.

'Twas but an instant he restrained

That fiery barb so sternly reined;

'Twas but a moment that he stood,

Then sped as if by death pursued;

But in that instant 0'er his soul

Winters of memory seemed to roll,

And gather in that drop of time

A life of pain, an age of crime.

O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,

Such moment pours the grief of years:

What felt he then, at once opprest

By all that most distracts the breast?

That pause, which pondered o'er his fate,

Oh, who its dreary length shall date!

Though in time's record nearly nought,

It was eternity to thought!

For infinite as boundless space

The thought that conscience must embrace,

Which in itself can comprehend

Woe without name, or hope, or end.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone;

And did he fly or fall alone?

Woe to that hour he came or went!

The curse for Hassan’s sin was sent

To turn a palace to a tomb:

He came, he went, like the Simoom,

That harbinger of fate and gloom,


Beneath whose widely wasting
breath
The very cypress droops to death Dark
tree, still sad when others’ grief is fled,
The only constant mourner o’er the dead!


The steed is vanished from the stall;

No serf is seen in Hassan’s hall;

The lonely spider’s thin grey pall

Waves slowly widening o’er the wall;

The bat builds in his harem bower,

And in the fortress of his power

The owl usurps the beacontower;


The wilddog
howls o’er the fountain’s brim,

With baffled thirst and famine, grim;

For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,

Where the weeds and the desolate dust are spread.

‘Twas sweet of yore to see it play

And chase the sultriness of day,

As springing high the silver dew

In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness round

The air, and verdure o’er the ground.

‘Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night.

And oft had Hassan’s childhood played

Around the verge of that cascade;

And oft upon his mother’s breast

That sound had harmonized his rest;

And oft had Hassan’s youth along

Its bank been soothed by beauty’s song;

And softer seem’d each melting tone

Of music mingled with its own.

But ne’er shall Hassan’s age repose

Along the brink at twilight’s close:

The stream that filled that font is fled


The blood that warmed his heart is shed!

And here no more shall human voice

Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice.

The last sad note that swelled the gale

Was woman’s wildest funeral wall:

That quenched in silence all is still,

But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill:

Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,

No hand shall clasp its clasp again.

On desert sands ‘twere joy to scan

The rudest steps of fellow man,

So here the very voice of grief

Might wake an echo like relief


At least ‘twould say, ‘All are not gone;

There lingers life, though but in one’



For many a gilded chamber’s there,
Which solitude might well forbear;
Within that dome as yet decay
Hath slowly worked her cankering way But
gloom is gathered o’er the gate,
Nor there the fakir’s self will wait;
Nor there will wandering dervise stay,
For bounty cheers not his delay;
Nor there will weary stranger halt
To bless the sacred ‘bread and salt’.
Alike must wealth and poverty
Pass heedless and unheeded by,
For courtesy and pity died
With Hassan on the mountain side.
His roof, that refuge unto men,
Is desolation’s hungry den.
The guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour,
Since his turban was cleft by the infidel’s sabre!


I hear the sound of coming feet,
But not a voice mine ear to greet;
More near each
turban I can scan,
And silversheathed
ataghan;
The foremost of the band is seen
An emir by his garb of green:
‘Ho! Who art thou?’ ‘
This low salam
Replies of Moslem faith I am.’
‘The burden ye so gently bear,
Seems one that claims your utmost care,
And, doubtless, holds some precious freight,
My humble bark would gladly wait.’

‘Thou speakest sooth; they skiff unmoor,
And waft us from the silent shore;
Nay, leave the sail still furled, and ply
The nearest oar that’s scattered by,
And midway to those rocks where sleep
The channeled waters dark and deep.
Rest from your task so
bravely
done,
Of course had been right swiftly run;
Yet ‘tis the longest voyage, I trow,
That one of


Sullen it plunged, and slowly sank,
The calm wave rippled to the bank;
I watched it as it sank, methought
Some motion from the current caught
Bestirred it more, ‘
twas but the beam
That checkered o’er the living stream:


I gazed, till vanishing from view,
Like lessening pebble it withdrew;
Still less and less, a speck of white
That gemmed the tide, then mocked the sight;
And all its hidden secrets sleep,
Known but to Genii of the deep,
Which, trembling in their coral caves,
They dare not whisper to the waves.


As rising on its purple wing
The insectqueen
of eastern spring,
O’er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flower to flower
A weary chase and wasted hour,
Then leaves him, as it soars on high,
With panting heart and tearful eye:
So beauty lures the fullgrown
child,
With hue as bright, and wing as wild:
A chase of idle hopes and fears,
Begun in folly, closed in tears.
If won, to equal ills betrayed,
Woe waits the insect and the maid;
A life of pain, the loss of peace,
From infant’s play and man’s caprice:
The lovely toy so fiercely sought
Hath lost its charm by being caught,
For every touch that wooed its stay
Hath brushed its brightest hues away,
Till charm, and hue, and beauty gone,
‘Tis left to fly or fall alone.
With wounded wing, or bleeding breast,
Ah! Where shall either victim rest?
Can this with faded pinion soar
From rose to tulip as before?
Or beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No: gayer insects fluttering by
Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die,
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister’s shame.

The mind that broods o’er guilty woes,

Is like the scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly searched by thousand throes,

And maddening in her ire,


One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourished for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!


Black Hassan from the harem flies,

Nor bends on woman’s form his eyes;

The unwonted chase each hour employs,

Yet shares he not the hunter’s joys.

Not thus was Hassan wont to fly

When Leila dwelt in his Serai.

Doth Leila there no longer dwell?

That tale can only Hassan tell:

Strange rumours in our city say

Upon that eve she fled away

When Rhamazan’s last sun was set,

And flashing from each minaret

Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast

Of Bairam through the boundless East.

‘Twas then she went as to the bath,

Which Hassan vainly searched in wrath;

For she was flown her master’s rage

In likeness of a Georgian page,

And far beyond the Moslem’s power

Had wronged him with the faithless Giaour.

Somewhat of this had Hassan deemed;

But still so fond, so fair she seemed,

Too well he trusted to the slave

Whose treachery deserved a grave:

And on that eve had gone to mosque,

And thence to feast in his kiosk.

Such is the tale his Nubians tell,

Who did not watch their charge too well;

But others say, that on that night,

By pale Phingari’s trembling light,

The Giaour upon his jetblack
steed

Was seen, but seen alone to speed

With bloody spur along the shore,

Nor maid nor page behind him bore.

Her eye’s dark charm ‘twere vain to tell,

But gaze on that of the gazelle,

It will assist thy fancy well;

As large, as languishingly dark,


But soul beamed forth in every spark
That darted from beneath the lid,
Bright as the jewel of Giamschild.
Yea, Soul, and should our prophet say
That form was nought but breathing clay,
By Allah! I would answer nay;
Though on AlSirat’s
arch I stood,
Which totters o’er the fiery flood,
With Paradise within my view,
And all his Houris beckoning through.
Oh! Who young Leila’s glance could read
And keep that portion of his creed,
Which saith that woman is but dust,
A soulless toy for tyrant’s lust?
On her might Muftis might gaze, and own
That through her eye the Immortal shone;
On her fair cheek’s unfading hue
The young pomegranate’s blossoms strew
Their bloom in blushes ever new;
Her hair in hyacinthine flow,
When left to roll its folds below,
As midst her handmaids in the hall
She stood superior to them all,
Hath swept the marble where her feet
Gleamed whiter than the mountain sleet
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth
It fell, and caught one stain of earth.
The cygnet nobly walks the water;
So moved on earth Circassia’s daughter,
The loveliest bird of Franguestan!
As rears her crest the ruffled swan,


And spurns the wave with wings of pride,
When pass the steps of stranger man


Along the banks that bound her tide;
Thus rose fair Leila’s whiter neck:Thus
armed with beauty would she check
Intrusion’s glance, till folly’s gaze
Shrunk from the charms it meant to praise:
Thus high and graceful as her gait;
Her heart as tender to her mate;
Her mate stern
Hassan, who was he?
Alas! That name was not for thee!

Stern Hassan hath a journey ta'en
With twenty vassals in his train,
Each armed, as best becomes a man,
With arquebuss and ataghan;
The chief before, as decked for war,
Bears in his belt the scimitar
Stain'd with the best of Amaut blood
When in the pass the rebels stood,


And few returned to tell the tale
Of what befell in Parne's vale.
The pistols which his girdle bore
Were those that once a pasha wore,
Which still, though gemmed and bossed with gold,
Even robbers tremble to behold.
'Tis said he goes to woo a bride
More true than her who left his side;
The faithless slave that broke her bower,
And worse
than faithless for
a Giaour!


The sun's last rays are on the hill,
And sparkle in the fountain rill,
Whose welcome waters, cool and clear,
Draw blessings from the mountaineer:
Here may the loitering merchant Greek
Find that repose 'twere vain to seek
In cities lodged too near his lord,
And trembling for his secret hoard Here
may he rest where none can see,
In crowds a slave, in deserts free;
And with forbidden wine may stain
The bowl a Moslem must not drain.


The foremost Tartar's in the gap,
Conspicuous by his yellow cap;
The rest in lengthening line the while
Wind slowly through the long defile:
Above, the mountain rears a peak,
Where vultures whet the thirsty beak,
And theirs may be a feast tonight,
Shall tempt them down ere morrow's light;
Beneath, a river's wintry stream
Has shrunk before the summer beam,
And left a channel bleak and bare,
Save shrubs that spring to perish there:
Each side the midway path there lay
Small broken crags of granite grey
By time, or mountain lightning, riven
From summits clad in mists of heaven;
For where is he that hath beheld
The peak of Liakura unveiled?

They reach the grove of pine at last:
'Bismillah! now the peril's past;
For yonder view the opening plain,
And there we'll prick our steeds amain.'
The Chiaus spake, and as he said,
A bullet whistled o'er his head;


The foremost Tartar bites the ground!
Scarce had they time to check the rein,
Swift from their steeds the riders bound;
But three shall never mount again:
Unseen the foes that gave the wound,

The dying ask revenge in vain.
With steel unsheathed, and carbine bent,
Some o'er their courser's harness leant,

Half sheltered by the steed;
Some fly behind the nearest rock,
And there await the coming shock,

Nor tamely stand to bleed
Beneath the shaft of foes unseen,
Who dare not quit their craggy screen.
Stern Hassan only from his horse
Disdains to light, and keeps his course,
Till fiery flashes in the van
Proclaim too sure the robberclan
Have well secured the only way
Could now avail the promised prey;
Then curled his very beard with ire,
And glared his eye with fiercer fire:
‘Though far and near the bullets hiss,
I've 'scaped a bloodier hour than this.'
And now the foe their covert quit,
And call his vassals to submit;
But Hassan's frown and furious word
Are dreaded more than hostile sword,
Nor of his little band a man
Resigned carbine or ataghan,
Nor raised the craven cry, Amaun!
In fuller sight, more near and near,
The lately ambushed foes appear,
And, issuing from the grove, advance
Some who on battlecharger
prance.
Who leads them on with foreign brand,
Far flashing in his red right hand?
"Tis he! 'tis he! I know him now;
I know him by his pallid brow;
I know him by the evil eye
That aids his envious treachery;
I know him by his jetblack
barb:
Though now arrayed in Arnaut garb
Apostate from his own vile faith,
It shall not save him from the death:
'Tis he! well met in any hour,
Lost Leila's love, accursed Giaour!

As rolls the river into ocean,
In sable torrent wildly streaming;
As the seatide's
opposing motion,


In azure column Proudly gleaming
Beats back the current many a rood,
In curling foam and mingling flood,
While eddying whirl, and breaking wave,
Roused by the blast of winter, rave;
Through sparkling spray, in thundering clash,
The lightnings of the waters flash
In awful whiteness o'er the shore,
That shines and shakes beneath the roar;
Thus as
the stream, and Ocean greet,
With waves that madden as they meet Thus
join the bands, whom mutual wrong,
And fate, and fury, drive along.
The bickering sabres’ shivering jar;


And pealing wide or ringing near

Its echoes on the throbbing ear,
The deathshot hissing from afar;
The shock, the shout, the groan of war,

Reverberate along that vale

More suited to the shepherds tale:
Though few the numbers theirs
the strife
That neither spares nor speaks for life!
Ah! fondly youthful hearts can press,
To seize and share the dear caress;
But love itself could never pant
For all that beauty sighs to grant
With half the fervour hate bestows
Upon the last embrace of foes,
When grappling in the fight they fold
Those arms that ne'er shall lose their hold:
Friends meet to part; love laughs at faith;
True foes, once met, are joined till death!

With sabre shivered to the hilt,
Yet dripping with the blood he spilt;
Yet strained within the severed hand
Which quivers round that faithless brand;
His turban far behind him rolled,
And cleft in twain its firmest fold;
His flowing robe by falchion torn,
And crimson as those clouds of morn
That, streaked with dusky red, portend
The day shall have a stormy end;
A stain on every bush that bore
A fragment of his palampore
His breast with wounds unnumbered riven,
His back to earth, his face to heaven,
Fallen Hassan lies his
unclosed eye
Yet lowering on his enemy,
As if the hour that sealed his fate
Surviving left his quenchless hate;



And o'er him bends that foe with brow
As dark as his that bled below.

'Yes, Leila sleeps beneath the wave,

But his shall be a redder grave;

Her spirit pointed well the steel

Which taught that felon heart to feel.

He called the Prophet, but his power

Was vain against the vengeful Giaour:

He called on Allah but
the word.

Arose unheeded or unheard.

Thou Paynim fool! could Leila's prayer

Be passed, and thine accorded there?

I watched my time, I leagued with these,

The traitor in his turn to seize;

My wrath is wreaked, the deed is done,

And now I go but
go alone.'

The browsing camels' bells are tinkling:

His mother looked from her lattice high She
saw the dews of eve besprinkling

The pasture green beneath her eye,
She saw the planets faintly twinkling:

''Tis twilight sure
his train is nigh.'

She could not rest in the gardenbower,


But gazed through the grate of his steepest tower:

'Why comes he not? his steeds are fleet,

Nor shrink they from the summer heat;

Why sends not the bridegroom his promised gift?

Is his heart more cold, or his barb less swift?

Oh, false reproach! yon Tartar now

Has gained our nearest mountain's brow,

And warily the steep descends,

And now within the valley bends;

And he bears the gift at his saddle bow

How could I deem his courser slow?

Right well my largess shall repay

His welcome speed, and weary way.'

The Tartar lighted at the gate,

But scarce upheld his fainting weight!

His swarthy visage spake distress,

But this might be from weariness;

His garb with sanguine spots was dyed,

But these might be from his courser's side;

He drew the token from his vest


Angel of Death! 'tis Hassan's cloven crest!

His calpac rent his
caftan red


'Lady, a fearful bride thy son hath wed:

Me, not from mercy, did they spare,

But this empurpled pledge to bear.


Peace to the brave! whose blood is spilt:
Woe to the Giaour! for his the guilt.'

A turban carved in coarsest stone,
A pillar with rank weeds o'ergrown,
Whereon can now be scarcely read
The Koran verse that mourns the dead,
Point out the spot where Hassan fell
A victim in that lonely dell.
There sleeps as true an Osmanlie
As e'er at Mecca bent the knee;
As ever scorned forbidden wine,
Or prayed with face towards the shrine,
In orisons resumed anew
At solemn sound of 'Allah Hu!'
Yet died he by a stranger's hand,
And stranger in his native land;
Yet died he as in arms he stood,
And unavenged, at least in blood.
But him the maids of Paradise

Impatient to their halls invite,
And the dark Heaven of Houris' eyes

On him shall glance for ever bright;
They come their
kerchiefs green they wave,
And welcome with a kiss the brave!
Who falls in battle 'gainst a Giaour
Is worthiest an immortal bower.

But thou, false Infidel! shalt writhe
Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe;
And from its torment 'scape alone
To wander round lost Eblis' throne;
And fire unquenched, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,


Shall bless thee with a father's name That
word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go and
with Gouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!


'How name ye yon lone Caloyer?
His features I have scanned before
In mine own land: 'tis many a year,

Since, dashing by the lonely shore,
I saw him urge as fleet a steed
As ever served a horseman's need.
But once I saw that face, yet then
It was so marked with inward pain,
I could not pass it by again;
It breathes the same dark spirit now,
As death were stamped upon his brow.

''Tis twice three years at summer tide
Since first among our freres he came;
And here it soothes him to abide

For some dark deed he will not name.
But never at our vesper prayer,
Nor e'er before confession chair
Kneels he, nor recks he when arise
Incense or anthem to the skies,
But broods within his cell alone,
His faith and race alike unknown.
The sea from Paynim land he crost,
And here ascended from the coast;
Yet seems he not of Othman race,
But only Christian in his face:
I'd judge him some stray renegade,
Repentant of the change he made,
Save that he shuns our holy shrine,
Nor tastes the sacred bread and wine.
Great largess to these walls he brought,



And thus our abbot's favour bought;
But were I prior, not a day
Should brook such stranger's further stay,
Or pent within our penance cell
Should doom him there for aye to dwell.
Much in his visions mutters he
Of maiden whelmed beneath the sea;
Of sabres clashing, foemen flying,
Wrongs avenged, and Moslem dying.
On cliff he hath been known to stand,
And rave as to some bloody hand
Fresh severed from its parent limb,
Invisible to all but him,
Which beckons onward to his grave,
And lures to leap into the wave.'


Dark and unearthly is the scowl
That glares beneath his dusky cowl:
The flash of that dilating eye
Reveals too much of times gone by;
Though varying, indistinct its hue,
Oft will his glance the gazer rue,
For in it lurks that nameless spell,
Which speaks, itself unspeakable,
A spirit yet unquelled and high,
That claims and keeps ascendency;
And like the bird whose pinions quake,
But cannot fly the gazing snake,
Will others quail beneath his look,
Nor 'scape the glance they scarce can brook.
From him the halfaffrighted
friar
When met alone would fain retire,
As if that eye and bitter smile
Transferred to others fear and guile:
Not oft to smile descendeth he,
And when he doth 'tis sad to see
That he but mocks at misery.
How that pale lip will curl and quiver!
Then fix once more as if for ever;
As if his sorrow or disdain
Forbade him e'er to smile again.
Well were it so such
ghastly mirth
From joyaunce ne'er derived its birth.
But sadder still it were to trace
What once were feelings in that face:
Time hath not yet the features fixed,
But brighter traits with evil mixed;
And there are hues not always faded,
Which speak a mind not all degraded
Even by the crimes through which it waded:
The common crowd but see the gloom



Of wayward deeds, and fitting doom;

The close observer can espy

A noble soul, and lineage high:

Alas! though both bestowed in vain,

Which grief could change, and guilt could stain,

It was no vulgar tenement

To which such lofty gifts were lent,

And still with little less than dread

On such the sight is riveted.

The roofless cot, decayed and rent,
Will scarce delay the passerby;
The tower by war or tempest bent,


While yet may frown one battlement,

Demands and daunts the stranger's eye;

Each ivied arch, and pillar lone,

Pleads haughtily for glories gone!

'His floating robe around him folding,
Slow sweeps he through the columned aisle;

With dread beheld, with gloom beholding
The rites that sanctify the pile.

But when the anthem shakes the choir,

And kneel the monks, his steps retire;

By yonder lone and wavering torch

His aspect glares within the porch;

There will he pause till all is done


And hear the prayer, but utter none.

See by
the halfillumined
wall

His hood fly back, his dark hair fall,

That pale brow wildly wreathing round,

As if the Gorgon there had bound

The sablest of the serpentbraid


That o'er her fearful forehead strayed:

For he declines the convent oath

And leaves those locks unhallowed growth,

But wears our garb in all beside;

And, not from piety but pride,

Gives wealth to walls that never heard

Of his one holy vow nor word.

Lo! mark
ye, as the harmony

Peals louder praises to the sky,

That livid cheek, that stony air

Of mixed defiance and despair!

Saint Francis, keep him from the shrine!

Else may we dread the wrath divine

Made manifest by awful sign.

If ever evil angel bore

The form of mortal, such he wore:

By all my hope of sins forgiven,

Such looks are not of earth nor heaven!'


To love the softest hearts are prone,
But such can ne'er be all his own;
Too timid in his woes to share,
Too meek to meet, or brave despair;
And sterner hearts alone may feel
The wound that time can never heal.
The rugged metal of the mine,
Must burn before its surface shine,
But plunged within the furnaceflame,
It bends and melts though
still the same;
Then tempered to thy want, or will,
'Twill serve thee to defend or kill;
A breastplate
for thine hour of need,
Or blade to bid thy foeman bleed;
But if a dagger's form it bear,
Let those who shape its edge, beware!
Thus passion's fire, and woman's art,
Can turn and tame the sterner heart;
From these its form and tone are ta'en,
And what they make it, must remain,
But break before
it bend again.


If solitude succeed to grief,
Release from pain is slight relief;
The vacant bosom's wilderness
Might thank the pang that made it less.
We loathe what none are left to share:
Even bliss '
twere woe alone to bear;
The heart once left thus desolate
Must fly at last for ease to
hate.
It is as if the dead could feel
The icy worm around them steal,
And shudder, as the reptiles creep
To revel o'er their rotting sleep,
Without the power to scare away
The cold consumers of their clay I
It is as if the desertbird,


Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream

To still her famished nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferred,
Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemployed.
Who would be doomed to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the tempest's roar
Than ne'er to brave the billows more



Thrown, when the war of winds is o'er,
A lonely wreck on fortune's shore,
'Mid sullen calm, and silent bay,
Unseen to drop by dull decay; Better
to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!


'Father! thy days have passed in peace,
'Mid counted beads, and countless prayer;
To bid the sins of others cease

Thyself without a crime or care,
Save transient ills that all must bear,
Has been thy lot from youth to age;
And thou wilt bless thee from the rage
Of passions fierce and uncontrolled,
Such as thy penitents unfold,
Whose secret sins and sorrows rest
Within thy pure and pitying breast. My days, though few, have passed below
In much of joy, but more of woe;
Yet still in hours of love or strife,
I've 'scaped the weariness of life:
Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes,
I loathed the languor of repose.
Now nothing left to love or hate,
No more with hope or pride elate,
I'd rather be the thing that crawls
Most noxious o'er a dungeon's walls,
Than pass my dull, unvarying days,
Condemned to meditate and gaze.
Yet, lurks a wish within my breast
For rest but
not to feel 'tis rest
Soon shall my fate that wish fulfil;

And I shall sleep without the dream
Of what I was, and would be still,

Dark as to thee my deeds may seem:
My memory now is but the tomb
Of joys long dead; my hope, their doom:
Though better to have died with those
Than bear a life of lingering woes.
My spirit shrunk not to sustain
The searching throes of ceaseless pain;
Nor sought the selfaccorded
grave
Of ancient fool and modern knave:
Yet death I have not feared to meet;
And the field it had been sweet,
Had danger wooed me on to move
The slave of glory, not of love.
I've braved it not
for honour's boast;
I smile at laurels won or lost;
To such let others carve their way,
For high renown, or hireling pay:


But place again before my eyes
Aught that I deem a worthy prize
The maid I love, the man I hate,
And I will hunt the steps of fate,
To save or slay, as these require,
Through rending steel, and rolling fire:
Nor needest thou doubt this speech from one
Who would but do ~ what he hath done.
Death is but what the haughty brave,
The weak must bear, the wretch must crave;
Then let life go to him who gave:
I have not quailed to danger's brow
When high and happy need
I now?


'I loved her, Friar! nay, adored But
these are words that all can use


I proved it more in deed than word;

There's blood upon that dinted sword,
A stain its steel can never lose:

'Twas shed for her, who died for me,
It warmed the heart of one abhorred:

Nay, start not no
nor
bend thy knee,
Nor midst my sins such act record;

Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,

For he was hostile to thy creed!

The very name of Nazarene

Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen.

Ungrateful fool! since but for brands

Well wielded in some hardy hands,

And wounds by Galileans given


The surest pass to Turkish heaven

For him his Houris still might wait

Impatient at the Prophet's gate.

I loved her love
will find its way

Through paths where wolves would fear to prey;

And if it dares enough, 'twere hard

If passion met not some reward


No matter how, or where, or why,

I did not vainly seek, nor sigh:

Yet sometimes, with remorse, in vain

I wish she had not loved again.

She died I
dare not tell thee how;

But look '
tis written on my brow!

There read of Cain the curse and crime,

In characters unworn by time:

Still, ere thou dost condemn me, pause;

Not mine the act, though I the cause.

Yet did he but what I had done

Had she been false to more than one.

Faithless to him, he gave the blow;

But true to me, I laid him low:


Howe'er deserved her doom might be,

Her treachery was truth to me;

To me she gave her heart, that all

Which tyranny can ne'er enthral;

And I, alas! too late to save!

Yet all I then could give, I gave,

'Twas some relief, our foe a grave.

His death sits lightly; but her fate

Has made me what
thou well mayest hate.
His doom was sealed he
knew it well

Warned by the voice of stern Taheer,

Deep in whose darkly boding ear

The deathshot pealed of murder near,
As filed the troop to where they fell!

He died too in the battle broil,

A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;

One cry to Mahomet for aid,

One prayer to Allah all he made:

He knew and crossed me in the fray


I gazed upon him where he lay,

And watched his spirit ebb away:

Though pierced like pard by hunters' steel,

He felt not half that now I feel.

I searched, but vainly searched, to find

The workings of a wounded mind;

Each feature of that sullen corse

Betrayed his rage, but no remorse.

Oh, what had vengeance given to trace

Despair upon his dying face I

The late repentance of that hour,

When penitence hath lost her power

To tear one terror from the grave,

And will not soothe, and cannot save.

'The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name;

But mine was like a lava flood
That boils in Etna's breast of flame.

I cannot prate in puling strain

Of ladyelove,
and beauty's chain:

If changing cheek, and searching vein,

Lips taught to writhe, but not complain,

If bursting heart, and maddening brain,

And daring deed, and vengeful steel,

And all that I have felt, and feel,

Betoken love that
love was mine,

And shown by many a bitter sign.

'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh,

I knew but to obtain or die.

I die but
first I have possessed,

And come what may, I have been blessed.


Shall I the doom I sought upbraid?
No reft
of all, yet undismayed
But for the thought of Leila slain,
Give me the pleasure with the pain,
So would I live and love again.
I grieve, but not, my holy guide!
For him who dies, but her who died:
She sleeps beneath the wandering wave
Ah! had she but an earthly grave,
This breaking heart and throbbing head
Should seek and share her narrow bed.
She was a form of life and light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye,
The morningstar
of memory!


'Yes, love indeed is light from heaven..
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given,

To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But Heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A ray of him who formed the whole;
A glory circling round the soul !
I grant my love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, hers was not guilt !
She was my life's unerring light:
That quenched, what beam shall break my night?
Oh! would it shone to lead me still,
Although to death or deadliest ill!
Why marvel ye, if they who lose

This present joy, this future hope,

No more with sorrow meekly cope;
In phrensy then their fate accuse;
In madness do those fearful deeds

That seem to add but guilt to woe?
Alas! the breast that inly bleeds

Hath nought to dread from outward blow;
Who falls from all he knows of bliss,
Cares little into what abyss.
Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now

To thee, old man, my deeds appear:
I read abhorrence on thy brow,

And this too was I born to bear!
'Tis true, that, like that bird of prey,
With havock have I marked my way:
But this was taught me by the dove,


To die and
know no second love.
This lesson yet hath man to learn,
Taught by the thing he dares to spurn:
The bird that sings within the brake,
The swan that swims upon the lake,
One mate, and one alone, will take.
And let the fool still prone to range,
And sneer on all who cannot change,
Partake his jest with boasting boys;
I envy not his varied joys,
But deem such feeble, heartless man,
Less than yon solitary swan;
Far, far beneath the shallow maid
He left believing and betrayed.
Such shame at least was never mine Leila!
each thought was only thine!
My good, my guilt, my weal, my woe,
My hope on high my
all below.
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same.
The very crimes that mar my youth,
This bed of death attest
my truth!
'Tis all too late thou
wert, thou art
The cherished madness of my heart!


'And she was lost and
yet I breathed,
But not the breath of human life:
A serpent round my heart was wreathed,

And stung my every thought to strife.
Alike all time, abhorred all place,
Shuddering I shrunk from Nature's face,
Where every hue that charmed before
The blackness of my bosom wore.
The rest thou dost already know,
And all my sins, and half my woe.
But talk no more of penitence;
Thou see'st I soon shall part from hence:
And if thy holy tale were true,
The deed that's done canst thou undo?
Think me not thankless but
this grief
Looks not to priesthood for relief.
My soul's estate in secret guess:
But wouldst thou pity more, say less.
When thou canst bid my Leila live,
Then will I sue thee to forgive;
Then plead my cause in that high place
Where purchased masses proffer grace.
Go, when the hunter's hand hath wrung
From forestcave
her shrieking young,


And calm the lonely lioness:
But soothe not mock
not my distress!


'In earlier days, and calmer hours,
When heart with heart delights to blend,
Where bloom my native valley's bowers
I had Ah!
have I now? a
friend!
To him this pledge I charge thee send,
Memorial of a youthful vow;
I would remind him of my end:

Though souls absorbed like mine allow
Brief thought to distant friendship's claim,
Yet dear to him my blighted name.
'Tis strange he
prophesied my doom,

And I have smiled I
then could smile When
prudence would his voice assume,

And warn I
recked not what the
while:
But now remembrance whispers o'er
Those accents scarcely marked before.
Say that
his bodings came to pass,

And he will start to hear their truth,
And wish his words had not been sooth:

Tell him, unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth had been,

In pain, my faltering tongue had tried
To bless his memory ere I died;
But Heaven in wrath would turn away,
If guilt should for the guiltless pray.
I do not ask him not to blame,
Too gentle he to wound my name;
And what have I to do with fame?
I do not ask him not to mourn,
Such cold request might sound like scorn;
And what than friendship's manly tear
May better grace a brother's bier?
But bear this ring, his own of old,
And tell him what
thou dost behold!
The withered frame, the ruined mind,
The wrack by passion left behind,
A shrivelled scroll, a scattered leaf,
Seared by the autumn blast of grief!


'Tell me no more of fancy's gleam,
No, father, no, 'twas not a dream;
Alas! the dreamer first must sleep.
I only watched, and wished to weep;
But could not, for my burning brow
Throbbed to the very brain as now:
I wished but for a single tear,
As something welcome, new, and dear;



I wished it then, I wish it still;
Despair is stronger than my will.
Waste not thine orison, despair
Is mightier than thy pious prayer:
I would not if I might, be blest;
I want no paradise, but rest.
'Twas then, I tell thee, father! then
I saw her; yes, she lived again;
And shining in her white symar,
As through yon pale grey cloud the star
Which now I gaze on, as on her,
Who looked and looks far lovelier;
Dimly I view its trembling spark;
Tomorrow's night shall be more dark;
And I, before its rays appear,
That lifeless thing the living fear.
I wander, father! for my soul
Is fleeting towards the final goal.
I saw her, friar! and I rose
Forgetful of our former woes;
And rushing from my couch, I dart,
And clasp her to my desperate heart;
I clasp what
is it that I clasp?
No breathing form within my grasp,
No heart that beats reply to mine,
Yet, Leila! yet the form is thine!
And art thou, dearest, changed so much,
As meet my eye, yet mock my touch?
Ah! were thy beauties e'er so cold,
I care not; so my arms enfold
The all they ever wished to hold.
Alas! around a shadow prest,
They shrink upon my lonely breast;
Yet still 'tis there! In silence stands,
And beckons with beseeching hands!
With braided hair, and bright black eye I
knew 'twas false she
could not die!
But he is dead! within the dell
I saw him buried where he fell;
He comes not, for he cannot break
From earth; why then art thou awake?
They told me wild waves rolled above
The face I view, the form I love;
They told me '
twas a hideous tale I
I'd tell it, but my tongue would fail:
If true, and from thine oceancave
Thou com'st to claim a calmer grave;
Oh! pass thy dewy fingers o'er
This brow that then will burn no more;
Or place them on my hopeless heart:
But, shape or shade! whate'er thou art,
In mercy ne'er again depart!



Or farther with thee bear my soul
Than winds can waft or waters roll!

'Such is my name, and such my tale.
Confessor ! to thy secret ear
I breathe the sorrows I bewail,

And thank thee for the generous tear
This glazing eye could never shed.
Then lay me with the humblest dead,
And, save the cross above my head,
Be neither name nor emblem spread,
By prying stranger to be read,
Or stay the passing pilgrims tread.'

He passed nor
of his name and race
Hath left a token or a trace,
Save what the father must not say
Who shrived him on his dying day:
This broken tale was all we knew
Of her he loved, or him he slew.

The Harp The Monarch Minstrel Swept

The harp the monarch minstrel swept,
The King of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music hallow'd while she wept
O'er tones her heart of hearts had given,
Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven!
It soften'd 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!


It told the triumphs of our King,
It wafted glory to our God;
It made our gladden'd 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.

The Dream

I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past they
speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power The
tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not what
they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows Are
they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What
are they?
Creations of the mind? The
mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep for
in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.


II


I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields,
and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing the
one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself but
the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young yet
not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye



There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects; he
had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously his
heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother but
no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a timehonoured
race. It
was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not and
why?
Time taught him a deep answer when
she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.


III


A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake; he
was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere
With a convulsion then
rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love reentered
there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew For
quickly comes such knowledge that
his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face



A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.


IV


A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Glad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.


V


A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better: in her home,
A thousand leagues from his, her
native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,
Daughters and sons of Beauty, but
behold!
Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be? she
had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or illrepressed
affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be? she
had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed



Upon her mind a
spectre of the past.

VI

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned. I
saw him stand
Before an altar with
a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood; as
he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then As
in that hour a
moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced and
then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been But
the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?


VII


A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love; Oh!
she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!


VIII


A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,



The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret. Be
it so.


IX


My dream is past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality the
one
To end in madness both
in misery.

The Eve Of Waterloo

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!


Did ye not hear it? No;
'twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
But hark! that
heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before;
Arm! arm! it is it
is the
cannon's opening roar!


Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.


Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness.
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who would guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!


And there was mounting in hot haste; the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,



Or whispering, with white lips '
The foe! they come! they come!'

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.

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.

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!

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 rockbeating
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.


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!

The Corsair

'O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our soul's as free
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their swayOur
flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Oh, who can tell? not thou, luxurious slave!
Whose soul would sicken o'er the heaving wave;
Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!
whom slumber soothes not pleasure
cannot please Oh,
who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide,
The exulting sense the
pulse's maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?
That for itself can woo the approaching fight,
And turn what some deem danger to delight;
That seeks what cravens shun with more than zeal,
And where the feebler faint can only feel Feel
to
the rising bosom's inmost core,
Its hope awaken and Its spirit soar?
No dread of death if with us die our foes Save
that it seems even duller than repose:
Come when it will we
snatch the life of life When
lost what
recks it but disease or strife?
Let him who crawls enamour'd of decay,
Cling to his couch, and sicken years away:
Heave his thick breath, and shake his palsied head;
Ours the
fresh turf; and not the feverish bed.
While gasp by gasp he falters forth his soul,
Ours with one pang one
bound escapes
control.
His corse may boast its urn and narrow cave,
And they who loath'd his life may gild his grave:
Ours are the tears, though few, sincerely shed,
When Ocean shrouds and sepulchres our dead.
For us, even banquets fond regret supply
In the red cup that crowns our memory;
And the brief epitaph in danger's day,
When those who win at length divide the prey,
And cry, Remembrance saddening o'er each brow,
How had the brave who fell exulted now!'


II.
Such were the notes that from the Pirate's isle
Around the kindling watchfire
rang the while:
Such were the sounds that thrill'd the rocks along,
And unto ears as rugged seem'd a song!
In scatter'd groups upon the golden sand,
They gamecarouseconverseor
whet the brand:
Select the armsto
each his blade assign,
And careless eye the blood that dims its shine.

Repair the boat, replace the helm or oar,
While others straggling muse along the shore:
For the wild bird the busy springes set,
Or spread beneath the sun the dripping net:
Gaze where some distant sail a speck supplies
With all the 'thirsting eve of Enterprise:
Tell o'er the tales of many a night of toil,
And marvel where they next shall seize a spoil:
No matter wheretheir
chief's allotment this;
Theirs, to believe no prey nor plan amiss.
But who that CHIEF? his name on every shore
Is famed and fear'd they
ask and know no more.
With these he mingles not but to command;
Few are his words, but keen his eye and hand.
Ne'er seasons he with mirth their jovial mess
But they forgive his silence for success.
Ne'er for his lip the purpling cup they fill,
That goblet passes him untasted still And
for his fare the
rudest of his crew
Would that, in turn, have pass'd untasted too;
Earth's coarsest bread, the garden's homeliest roots,
And scarce the summer luxury of fruits,
His short repast in humbleness supply
With all a hermit's board would scarce deny.
But while he shuns the grosser joys of sense,
His mind seems nourish'd by that abstinence.
'Steer to that shore! ' they
sail. 'Do this!' '
tis done:
'Now form and follow me!' the
spoil is won.
Thus prompt his accents and his actions still,
And all obey and few inquire his will;
So To such, brief answer and contemptuous eye
Convey reproof, nor further deign reply.


III.
'A sail! sail!
' a
promised prize to Hope!
Her nation flag
how
speaks the telescope?
No prize, alas! but yet a welcome sail:
The bloodred
signal glitters in the gale.
Yes she
is ours a
home returning
bark Blow
fair thou breeze! she
anchors ere the dark.
Already doubled is the cape our
bay
Receives that prow which proudly spurns the spray.
How gloriously her gallant course she goes!
Her white wings flying never
from her foesShe
walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife.
Who would not brave the battlefire,
the wreck,
To move the monarch of her peopled deck?
IV.
Hoarse o'er her side the rustling cable rings;
The sails are furl'd; and anchoring round she swings;

And gathering loiterers on the land discern
Her boat descending from the latticed stem.
'Tis mann'dthe
oars keep concert to the strand,
Till grates her keel upon the shallow sand.
Hail to the welcome shout! the
friendly speech!
When hand grasps hand uniting on the beach;
The smile, the question, and the quick reply,
And the heart's promise of festivity!


V.
The tidings spread, and gathering grows the crowd;
The hum of voices, and the laughter loud,
And woman's gentler anxious tone is heard Friends',
husbands', lovers' names in each dear word:
'Oh! are they safe? we ask not of success But
shall we see them? will their accents bless?
From where the battle roars, the billows chafe
They doubtless boldly did but
who are safe?
Here let them haste to gladden and surprise,
And kiss the doubt from these delighted eyes!'
VI.
'Where is our chief? for him we bear report And
doubt that joy which
hails our coming short;
Yet thus sincere, 'tis cheering, though so brief;
But, Juan! instant guide us to our chief:
Our greeting paid, we'll feast on our return,
And all shall hear what each may wish to learn.'
Ascending slowly by the rockhewn
way,
To where his watchtower
beetles o'er the bay,
By bushy brake, and wild flowers blossoming,
And freshness breathing from each silver spring,
Whose scatter'd streams from granite basins burst,
Leap into life, and sparkling woo your thirst;
From crag to cliff they mount Near
yonder cave,
What lonely straggler looks along the wave?
In pensive posture leaning on the brand,
Not oft a restingstaff
to that red hand?
'Tis he 'tis Conrad here,
as wont, alone;
On Juan!
on
and
make our purpose known.
The bark he views and
tell him we would greet
His ear with tidings he must quickly meet:
We dare not yet approachthou
know'st his mood
When strange or uninvited steps intrude.'
VII.
Him Juan sought, and told of their intent;He
spake not, but a sign express'd assent.
These Juan calls they
come to
their salute
He bends him slightly, but his lips are mute.
'These letters, Chief, are from the Greek the
spy,
Who still proclaims our spoil or peril nigh:

Whate'er his tidings, we can well report,
Much that' '
Peace, peace! ' he
cuts their prating short.
Wondering they turn, abash'd, while each to each
Conjecture whispers in his muttering speech:
They watch his glance with many a stealing look
To gather how that eye the tidings took;
But, this as if he guess'd, with head aside,
Perchance from some emotion, doubt, or pride,
He read the scroll '
My tablets, Juan' hark Where
is Gonsalvo?'
'In the anchor'd bark'
'There let him stay to
him this order bear Back
to your duty for
my course prepare:
Myself this enterprise tonight
will share.'


'Tonight,
Lord Conrad!'
'Ay! at set of sun:
The breeze will freshen when the day is done.
My corslet, cloak one
hour and we are gone.
Sling on thy bugle see
that free from rust
My carbinelock
springs worthy of my trust.
Be the edge sharpen'd of my boardingbrand,
And give its guard more room to fit my hand.
This let the armourer with speed dispose
Last time, it more fatigued my arm than foes:
Mark that the signalgun
be duly fired,
To tell us when the hour of stay's expired.'


VIII.
They make obeisance, and retire in haste,
Too soon to seek again the watery waste:
Yet they repine not so
that Conrad guides;
And who dare question aught that he decides?
That man of loneliness and mystery
Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh;
Whose name appals the fiercest of his crew,
And tints each swarthy cheek with sallower hue;
Still sways their souls with that commanding art
That dazzles, leads, yet chills the vulgar heart.
What is that spell, that thus his lawless train
Confess and envy, yet oppose in vain?
What should it be, that thus their faith can bind?
The power of Thought the
magic of the Mind!
Link'd with success, assumed and kept with skill,
That moulds another's weakness to its will;
Wields with their hands, but, still to these unknown,
Makes even their mightiest deeds appear his own
Such hath it been shall be beneath
the sun
The many still must labour for the one!
'Tis Nature's doom but
let the wretch who toils
Accuse not, hate not him who wears the spoils.
Oh! if he knew the weight of splendid chains,

How light the balance of his humbler pains!

IX.
Unlike the heroes of each ancient race,
Demons in act, but Gods at least in face,
In Conrad's form seems little to admire,
Though his dark eyebrow shades a glance of fire:
Robust but not Herculean to
the sight
No giant frame sets forth his common height;
Yet, in the whole, who paused to look again,
Saw more than marks the crowd of vulgar men;
They gaze and marvel how and
still confess
That thus it is, but why they cannot guess.
Sunbumt
his cheek, his forehead high and pale
The sable curls in wild profusion veil;
And oft perforce his rising lip reveals
The haughtier thought it curbs, but scarce conceals
Though smooth his voice, and calm his general mien'
Still seems there something he would not have seen
His features' deepening lines and varying hue
At times attracted, yet perplex'd the view,
As if within that murkiness of mind
Work'd feelings fearful, and yet undefined
Such might it be that
none could truly tell Too
close inquiry his stern glance would quell.
There breathe but few whose aspect might defy
The full encounter of his searching eye;
He had the skill, when Cunning's gaze would seek
To probe his heart and watch his changing cheek
At once the observer's purpose to espy,
And on himself roll back his scrutiny,
Lest he to Conrad rather should betray
Some secret thought, than drag that chief's to day.
There was a laughing Devil in his sneer,
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell,
Hope withering fled, and Mercy sigh'd farewell!
X.
Slight are the outward signs of evil thought,
Withinwithin'
twas there the spirit wrought!
Love shows all changesHate,
Ambition, Guile,
Betray no further than the bitter smile;
The lip's least curl, the lightest paleness thrown
Along the govern'd aspect, speak alone
Of deeper passions; and to judge their mien,
He, who would see, must be himself unseen.
Thenwith
the hurried tread, the upward eye,
The clenched hand, the pause of agony,
That listens, starting, lest the step too near
Approach intrusive on that mood of fear;
Thenwith
each feature working from the heart,

With feelings, loosed to strengthennot
depart,
That rise, convulse, contendthat
freeze, or glow
Flush in the' cheek, or damp upon the brow;
Then, Stranger! if thou canst, and tremblest not
Behold his soulthe
rest that soothes his lot!
Mark how that lone and blighted bosom sears
The scathing thought of execrated years!
Beholdbut
who hath seen, or e'er shall see,
Man as himselfthe
secret spirit free?

XI.
Yet was not Conrad thus by Nature sent
To lead the guiltyguilt's
worse instrumentHis
soul was changed, before his deeds had driven
Him forth to war with man and forfeit heaven
Warp'd by the world in Disappointment's school,
In words too wise, in conduct there a fool;
Too firm to yield, and far too proud to stoop,
Doom'd by his very virtues for a dupe,
He cursed those virtues as the cause of ill,
And not the traitors who betray'd him still;
Nor deem'd that gifts bestow'd on better men
Had left him joy, and means to give again
Fear'd, shunn'd, belied, ere youth had lost her force,
He hated man too much to feel remorse,
And thought the voice of wrath a sacred call,
To pay the injuries of some on all.
He knew himself a villainbut
he deem'd
The rest no better than the thing he seem'd
And scorn'd'the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
He knew himself detested, but he knew
The hearts that loath'd him, crouch'd and dreaded too.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt;
His name could sadden, and his acts surprise;
But they that fear'd him dared not to despise;
Man spurns the worm, but pauses ere he wake
The slumbering venom of the folded snake:
The first may turn, but not avenge the blow;
The last expires, but leaves no living foe;
Fast to the doom'd offender's form it clings,
And he may crushnot
conquerstill
it stings!
XII.
None are all evilquickening
round his heart
One softer feeling would not yet depart
Oft could he sneer at others as beguiled
By passions worthy of a fool or child;
Yet 'gainst that passion vainly still he strove,
And even in him it asks the name of Love!
Yes, it was loveunchangeableunchanged,

Felt but for one from whom he never ranged;
Though fairest captives daily met his eye,
He shunn'd, nor sought, but coldly pass'd them by;
Though many a beauty droop'd in prison'd bower,
None ever sooth'd his most unguarded hour.
Yesit
was Loveif
thoughts of tenderness
Tried in temptation, strengthen'd by distress
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yetoh
more than all! untired by time;
Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile,
Could render sullen were she near to smile,
Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent
On her one murmur of his discontent;
Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part,
Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart;
Which nought removed, nor menaced to removeIf
there be love in mortalsthis
was love!
He was a villainay,
reproaches shower
On himbut
not the passion, nor its power,
Which only proved, all other virtues gone,
Not guilt itself could quench this loveliest one!


XIII.
He paused a momenttill
his hastening men
Pass'd the first winding downward to the glen.
'Strange tidings!many
a peril have I pass'd
Nor know I why this next appears the last!
Yet so my heart forebodes, but must not fear
Nor shall my followers find me falter here.
'Tis rash to meet, but surer death to wait
Till here they hunt us to undoubted fate;
And, if my plan but hold, and Fortune smile,
We'll furnish mourners for our funeral pile.
Ay, let them slumberpeaceful
be their dreams!
Morn ne'er awoke them with such brilliant beams
As kindle high toflight
(but blow, thou breeze!)
To warm these slow avengers of the sea
Now to MedoraOh!
my sinking heart,
Long may her own be lighter than thou art!
Yet was I bravemean
boast where all are brave!
Ev'n insects sting for aught they seek to save.
This common courage which with brutes we share
That owes its' deadliest efforts to despair,
Small merit claimsbut
'twas my nobler hope
To teach my few with numbers still to cope;
Long have I led themnot
to vainly bleed:
No medium nowwe
perish or succeed;
So let it beit
irks not me to die;
But thus to urge them whence they cannot fly.
My lot hath long had little of my care,
But chafes my pride thus baffled in the snare:
Is this my skill? my craft? to set at last

Hope, power, and life upon a single cast?
Oh' Fate!accuse
thy folly, not thy fate!
She may redeem thee still, not yet too late.'


XIV.
Thus with himself communion held he, till
He reach'd the summit of his towercrown'd hill:
There at the portal pausedor
wild and soft
He heard those accents never heard too oft
Through the high lattice far yet sweet they rung,
And these the notes his bird of beauty sung:
1.
'Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before
2.
'There, in its centre' a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal, but unseen;
Which not the darkness of despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.
3.
'Remember meOh!
pass not thou my grave
Without one thought whose relics there recline
The only pang my bosom dare not brave
Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.
4.
'My fondest, faintest, latest accents hearGrief
for the dead not virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever ask'da
tear,
The firstlastsole
reward of so much love!'
He pass'd the portal, cross'd the corridor,
And reach'd the chamber as the strain gave o'er:
'My own Medora! sure thy song is sad'
'In Conrad's absence wouldst thou have it glad?
Without thine ear to listen to my lay,
Still must my song my thoughts, my soul betray:
Still must each action to my bosom suit,
My heart unhush'd, although my lips were mute!
Oh! many a night on this lone couch reclined,
My dreaming fear with storms hath wing'd the wind,
And deem'd the breath that faintly fann'd thy sail
The murmuring prelude of the ruder gale;
Though soft, it seem'd the low prophetic dirge,
That mourn'd thee floating on the savage surge;
Still would I rise to rouse the beacon fire,
Lest spies less true should let the blaze expire;



And many a restless hour outwatch'd each star,
And morning cameand
still thou wert afar.
Oh! how the chill blast on my bosom blew,
And day broke dreary on my troubled view,
And still I gazed and gazedand
not a prow
Was granted to my tears, my truth, my vow!
At length 'twas noonI
hail'd and blest the mast
That met my sightit
near'dAlas!
it pass'd!
Another cameOh
God! 'twas thine at last!
Would that those days were over! wilt thou ne'er,
My Conrad! learn the joys of peace to share?
Sure thou hast more than wealth, and many a home
As bright as this invites us not to roam:
Thou know'st it is not peril that I fear,
I only tremble when thou art not here;
Then not for mine, but that far dearer life,
Which flies from love and languishes for strifeHow
strange that heart, to me so tender still,
Should war with nature and its better will!'


'Yea, strange indeedthat
heart hath long been changed;
Wormlike
'twas trampled, adderlike
avenged,
Without one hope on earth beyond thy love,
And scarce a glimpse of mercy from above.
Yet the same feeling which thou dost condemn,
My very love to thee is hate to them,
So closely mingling here, that disentwined,
I cease to love thee when I love mankind:
Yet dread not this the
proof of all the past
Assures the future that my love will last;
But oh,
Medora! nerve thy gentler heart;
This hour againbut
not for longwe
part.'


'This hour we partmy
heart foreboded this:
Thus ever fade my fairy dreams of bliss.
This hourit
cannot bethis
hour away!
Yon bark hath hardly anchor'd in the bay:
Her consort still is absent, and her crew
Have need of rest before they toil anew:
My love! thou mock'st my weakness; and wouldst steel
My breast before the time when it must feel;
But trifle now no more with my distress,
Such mirth hath less of play than bitterness.
Be silent, Conrad! dearest!
come and share
The feast these hands delighted to prepare;
Light toil! to cull and dress thy frugal fare!
See, I have pluck'd the fruit that promised best,
And where not sure, perplex'd, but pleased, I guess'd
At such as seem'd the fairest; thrice the hill
My steps have wound to try the coolest rill;
Yes! thy sherbet tonight will sweetly flow,
See how it sparkles in its vase of snow!



The grapes' gay juice thy bosom never cheers;
Thou more than Moslem when the cup appears:
Think not I mean to chidefor
I rejoice
What others deem a penance is thy choice.
But come, the board is spread; our silver lamp
Is trimm'd, and heeds not the sirocco's damp:
Then shall my handmaids while the time along,
And join with me the dance, or wake the song;
Or my guitar, which still thou lov'st to hear'
Shall soothe or lullor,
should it vex thine ear
We'll turn the' tale, by Ariosto told,
Of fair Olympia loved and left of old.
Why, thou wert worse than he who broke his vow
To that lost damsel, shouldst thou leave me now;
Or even that traitor chiefI've
seen thee smile,
When the dear sky show'd Ariadne's Isle,
Which I have pointed from these cliffs the while:
And thus half sportive, half in fear, I said,
Lest time should rake that doubt to more than dread,
Thus Conrad, too, win quit me for the main;
And he deceived mefor
he came again!'


'Again, againand
oft againmy
love!
If there be life below, and hope above,
He will returnbut
now, the moments bring
The time of parting with redoubled wing:
The why, the where what
boots it now to tell?
Since all must end in that wild word farewell!
Yet would I faindid
time allow discloseFear
notthese
are no formidable foes
And here shall watch a more than wonted guard,
For sudden siege and long defence prepared:
Nor be thou lonely, though thy lord 's away,
Our matrons and thy handmaids with thee stay;
And this thy comfortthat,
when next we meet,
Security shall make repose more sweet.
List!'
tis the bugle! 'Juan
shrilly blew'
One kissone
moreanotherOh!
Adieu!'


She roseshe
sprungshe
clung to his embrace,
Till his heart heaved beneath her hidden face:
He dared not raise to his that deepblue
eye,
Which downcast droop'd in tearless agony.
Her long fair hair lay floating o'er his arms,
In all the wildness of dishevell'd charms;
Scarce beat that bosom where his image dwelt
So fullthat
feeling seem'd almost Unfelt!
Harkpeals
the thunder of the signalgun
It told 'twas sunset, and he cursed that sun.
Againagainthat
form he madly press'd,
Which mutely clasp'd, imploringly caress'd!
And tottering to the couch his bride he bore,



One moment gazed, as if to gaze no more;
Felt that for him earth held but her alone,
Kiss'd her cold foreheadturn'dis
Conrad gone?


XV.
'And is he gone?' on sudden solitude
How oft that fearful question will intrude
'Twas but an instant past, and here he stood!
And now 'without
the portal's porch she rush'd,
And then at length her tears in freedom gush'd;
Big, bright, and fast, unknown to her they fell;
But still her lips refused to send'
Farewell!'
For in that wordthat
fatal wordhowe'er
We promise, hope, believe, there breathes despair.
O'er every feature of that still, pale face,
Had sorrow fix'd what time can ne'er erase:
The tender blue of that large loving eye
Grew frozen with its gaze on vacancy,
TillOh?
how far!it
caught a glimpse of him,
And then it flow'd, and phrensied seem'd to swim
Through those' long, dark, and glistening lashes dew'd
With drops of sadness oft to be renew'd.
'He's gone! 'against
her heart that hand is driven,
Convulsed and quickthen
gently raised to heaven:
She look'd and saw the heaving of the main;
The white sail set she dared not look again;
But turn'd with sickening soul within the gate
'It is no dream and
I am desolate!'
XVI.
From crag to crag descending, swiftly sped
Stern Conrad down, nor once he turn'd his head;
But shrunk whene'er the windings of his way
Forced on his eye what he would not survey,
His lone but lovely dwelling on the steep,
That hail'd him first when homeward from the deep
And shethe
dim and melancholy star,
Whose ray of beauty reach'd him from afar
On her he must not gaze, he must not think,
There he might restbut
on Destruction's brink:
Yet once almost he stopp'd, and nearly gave
His fate to chance, his projects to the wave:
But noit
must not bea
worthy chief
May melt, but not betray to woman's grief.
He sees his bark, he notes how fair the wind,
And sternly gathers all his might of mind:
Again he hurries onand
as he hears
The dang of tumult vibrate on his ears,
The busy sounds, the bustle of the shore,
The shout, the signal, and the dashing oar;
As marks his eye the seaboy on the mast,
The anchors rise, the sails unfurling fast,

The waving kerchiefs of the crowd that urge
That mute adieu to those who stem the surge;
And more than all, his bloodred
flag aloft,
He marvell'd how his heart could seem so soft.
Fire in his glance, and wildness in his breast
He feels of all his former self possest;
He bounds he
fliesuntil
his footsteps reach
The verge where ends the cliff, begins the beach,
There checks his speed; but pauses less to breathe
The breezy freshness of the deep beneath,
Than there his wonted statelier step renew;
Nor rush, disturb'd by haste, to vulgar view:
For well had Conrad learn'd to curb the crowd,
By arts that veil and oft preserve the proud;
His was the lofty port, the distant mien,
That seems to shun the sightand
awes if seen:
The solemn aspect, and the highborn
eye,
That checks low mirth, but lacks not courtesy;
All these he wielded to command assent:
But where he wish'd to win, so well unbent
That kindness cancell'd fear in those who heard,
And others' gifts show'd mean beside his word,
When echo'd to the heart as from his own
His deep yet tender melody of tone:
But such was foreign to his wonted mood,
He cared not what he soften'd, but subdued:
The evil passions of his youth had made
Him value less who lovedthan
what obey'd.


XVII.
Around him mustering ranged his ready guard,
Before him Juan stands '
Are all prepared?'
They are nay
more embark'd:
the boats
Waits but my Chief'
My sword, and my capote.'
Soon firmly girded on, and lightly slung,
His belt and cloak were o'er his shoulders flung:
'Call Pedro here!' He comes and
Conrad bends,
With all the courtesy he deign'd his friends;
'Receive these tablets, and peruse with care,
Words of high trust and truth are graven there;
Double the guard, and when Anselmo's bark
Arrives, let him alike these orders mark:
In three days (serve the breeze) the sun shall shine
On our return till
then all peace be thine!'
This said, his brother Pirate's hand he wrung,
Then to his boat with haughty gesture sprung.
Flash'd the dipt oars, and sparkling with the stroke,
Around the waves' phosphoric brightness broke;
They gain the vessel on
the deck he stands, Shrieks
the shrill whistle, ply the busy hands He
marks how well the ship her helm obeys,

How gallant all her crew, and deigns to praise.
His eyes of pride to young Gonsalvo turn Why
doth he start, and inly seem to mourn?
Alas! those eyes beheld his rocky tower
And live a moment o'er the parting hour;
She his
Medora did
she mark the prow?
Ah! never loved he half so much as now!
But much must yet be done ere dawn of day Again
he mans himself and turns away;
Down to the cabin with Gonsalvo bends,
And there unfolds his plan, his means, and ends;
Before them burns the lamp, and spreads the chart,
And all that speaks and aids the naval art;
They to the midnight watch protract debate;
To anxious eyes what hour is ever late?
Meantime, the steady breeze serenely blew,
And fast and falconlike
the vessel flew;
Pass'd the high headlands of each clustering isle,
To gain their port long
long
ere morning smile:
And soon the nightglass
through the narrow bay
Discovers where the Pacha's galleys lay.
Count they each sail, and mark how there supine
The lights in vain o'er heedless Moslem shine.
Secure, unnoted, Conrad's prow pass'd by,
And anchor'd where his ambush meant to lie;
Screen'd from espial by the jutting cape,
That rears on high its rude fantastic shape.
Then rose his band to duty not
from sleep Equipp'd
for deeds alike on land or deep;
While lean'd their leader o'er the fretting flood,
And calmly talk'dand
yet he talk'd of blood!


CANTO THE SECOND


'Conoscestci dubiosi desiri?'~Dante


I.
IN Coron's bay floats many a galley light,
Through Coron's lattices the lamps are bright
For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast tonight:
A feast for promised triumph yet to come,
When he shall drag the fetter'd Rovers home;
This hath he sworn by Allah and his sword,
And faithful to his firman and his word,
His summon'd prows collect along the coast,
And great the gathering crews, and loud the boast;
Already shared the captives and the prize,
Though far the distant foe they thus despise
'Tis but to sail no
doubt tomorrow's
Sun
Will see the Pirates bound, their haven won!
Meantime the watch may slumber, if they will,

Nor only wake to war, but dreaming kill.
Though all, who can, disperse on shore and seek
To flesh their glowing valour on the Greek;
How well such deed becomes the turban'd brave To
bare the sabre's edge before a slave!
Infest his dwelling but
forbear to slay,
Their arms are strong, yet merciful today,
And do not deign to smite because they may!
Unless some gay caprice suggests the blow,
To keep in practice for the coming foe.
Revel and rout the evening hours beguile,
And they who wish to wear a head must smile
For Moslem mouths produce their choicest cheer,
And hoard their curses, till the coast is clear.


II.
High in his hall reclines the turban'd Seyd;
Aroundthe
bearded chiefs he came to lead.
Removed the banquet, and the last pilaff Forbidden
draughts, 'tis said, he dared to quaff,
Though to the rest the sober berry's juice
The slaves bear round for rigid Moslems' use;
The long chibouque's dissolving cloud supply,
While dance the Almas to wild minstrelsy.
The rising morn will view the chiefs embark;
But waves are somewhat treacherous in the dark:
And revellers may more securely sleep
On silken couch than o'er the rugged deep:
Feast there who can nor
combat till they must,
And less to conquest than to Korans trust:
And yet the numbers crowded in his host
Might warrant more than even the Pacha's boast.
III.
With cautious reverence from the outer gate
Slow stalks the slave, whose office there to wait,
Bows his bent head, his hand salutes the floor,
Ere yet his tongue the trusted tidings bore:
'A captive Dervise, from the Pirate's nest
Escaped, is here himself
would tell the rest.'
He took the sign from Seyd's assenting eye,
And led the holy man in silence nigh.
His arms were folded on his darkgreen
vest,
His step was feeble, and his look deprest;
Yet worn he seem'd of hardship more than years,
And pale his cheek with penance, not from fears.
Vow'd to his God his
sable locks he wore,
And these his lofty cap rose proudly o'er:
Around his form his loose long robe was thrown
And wrapt 'a breast bestow'd on heaven alone;
Submissive, yet with selfpossession
mann'd,
He calmly, met the curious eyes that scann d;

And question of his coming fain would seek,
Before the Pacha's will allow'd to speak.

IV.
Whence com'st thou, Dervise?'
'From the outlaw's den,
A fugitive '
'Thy capture where and when?'
From Scalanova's port to Scio's isle,
The Saick was bound; but Allah did not smile
Upon our course the
Moslem merchant's gains
The Rovers won; our limbs have worn their chains.
I had no death to fear, nor wealth to boast
Beyond the wandering freedom which I lost;
At length a fisher's humble boat by night
Afforded hope, and offer'd chance of flight;
I seized the hour, and find my safety here With
thee most
mighty Pacha! who can fear?'
'How speed the outlaws? stand they well prepared,
Their plunder'd wealth, and robber's rock, to guard?
Dream they of this our preparation, doom'd
To view with fire their scorpion nest consumed?'


'Pacha! the fetter'd captive's mourning eye,
That weeps for flight, but ill can play the spy;
I only heard the reckless waters roar
Those waves that would not bear me from the shore;
I only mark'd the glorious sun and sky,
Too bright, too blue, or my captivity;
And felt that all which Freedom's bosom cheers
Must break my chain before it dried my tears.
This may'st thou judge, at least, from my escape,
They little deem of aught in peril's shape;
Else vainly had I pray'd or sought the chance
That leads me here if
eyed with vigilance
The careless guard that did not see me fly
May watch as idly when thy power is nigh.
Pacha! my limbs are faint and
nature craves
Food for my hunger, rest from tossing waves:
Permit my absence peace
be with thee! Peace
With all around! now
grant repose release.'


'Stay, Dervise! I have more to question stay,
I do command thee sit
dost
hear? obey!
More I must ask, and food the slaves shall bring
Thou shalt not pine where all are banqueting:
The supper done prepare
thee to reply,
Clearly and full I
love not mystery.'
'Twere vain to guess what shook the pious man,
Who look'd not lovingly on that Divan;
Nor show'd high relish for the banquet prest,



And less respect for every fellow guest.
'Twas but a moment's peevish hectic pass'd
Along his cheek, and tranquillised as fast:
He sate him down in silence, and his look
Resumed the calmness which before forsook:
This feast was usher'd in, but sumptuous fare
He shunn'd as if some poison mingled there.
For one so long condemn'd to toil and fast,
Methinks he strangely spares the rich repast.


'What ails thee, Dervise? eat dost
thou suppose
This feast a Christian's? or my friends thy foes?
Why dost thou shun the salt? that sacred pledge,
Which once partaken, blunts the sabre's edge,
Makes ev'n contending tribes in peace unite,
And hated hosts seem brethren to the sight!'


'Salt seasons daintiesand
my food is still
The humblest root, my drink the simplest rill;
And my stern vow and order's laws oppose
To break or mingle bread with friends or foes;
It may seem strange if
there be aught to dread,
That peril rests upon my single head;
But for thy sway nay
more thy
Sultan's throne,
I taste nor bread nor banquet save
alone;
Infringed our order's rule, the Prophet's rage
To Mecca's dome might bar my pilgrimage.'


'Well as
thou wilt ascetic
as thou art One
question answer; then in peace depart.
How many ? Ha!
it cannot sure be day?
What star what
sun is bursting on the bay?
It shines a lake of fire ! away
away!
Ho! treachery! my guards! my scimitar!
The galleys feed the flames and
I afar!
Accursed Dervise! these
thy tidings thou
Some villain spyseize
cleave him slay
him now!'


Up rose the Dervise with that burst of light,
Nor less his change of form appall'd the sight:
Up rose that Dervise not
in saintly garb,
But like a warrior bounding on his barb,
Dash'd his high cap, and tore his robe away Shone
his mail'd breast, and flash'd his sabre's ray!
His dose but glittering casque, and sable plume,
More glittering eye, and black brow's sabler gloom,
Glared on the Moslems' eyes some Afrit sprite,
Whose demon deathblow
left no hope for fight.
The wild confusion, and the swarthy glow
Of flames on high, and torches from below;
The shriek of terror, and the mingling yell For
swords began to dash' and shouts to swell



Flung o'er that spot of earth the air of hell!
Distracted, to and fro, the flying slaves
Behold but bloody shore and fiery waves;
Nought heeded they the Pacha's angry cry,
They seize that Dervise!seize
on Zatanai!
He saw their terrorcheck'd
the first dispair
That urged him but to stand and perish there,
Since far too early and too well obey'd,
The flame was kindled ere the signal made;
He saw their terror from
his baldric drew
His
buglebrief
the blastbut
shrilly blew;
'Tis answered'
Well ye speed, my gallant crew!
Why did I doubt their quickness of career?
And deem design had left me single here?'
Sweeps his long armthat
sabre's whirling sway
Sheds fast atonement for its first delay;
Completes his fury what their fear begun,
And makes the many basely quail to one.
The cloven turbans o'er the chamber spread,
And scarce an arm dare rise to guard its head:
Even Seyd, convulsed, o'erwhelm'd, with rage surprise,
Retreats before him, though he still defies.
No craven he and
yet he dreads the blow,
So much Confusion magnifies his foe!
His blazing galleys still distract his sight,
He tore his beard, and foaming fled the fight;
For now the pirates pass'd the Haram gate,
And burst within and
it were death to wait
Where wild Amazement shrieking kneeling
throws
The sword aside in
vain the blood o'erflows!
The Corsairs pouring, haste to where within
Invited Conrad's bugle, and the din
Of groaning victims, and wild cries for life,
Proclaim'd how well he did the work of strife.
They shout to find him grim and lonely there,
A glutted tiger mangling in his lair!
But short their greeting, shorter his reply
'Tis well but Seyd escapes, and he must dieMuch
hath been done, but more remains to do Their
galleys blaze why
not their city too?'


V.
Quick at the word they seized him each a torch'
And fire the dome from minaret to porch.
A stern delight was fix'd in Conrad's eye,
But sudden sunk for
on his ear the cry
Of women struck, and like a deadly knell
Knock'd at that heart unmoved by battle's yell.
'Oh! burst the Haram wrong
not on your lives
One female form remember we
have wives.
On them such outrage Vengeance will repay;
Man is our foe, and such 'tis ours to slay:

But still we spared must
spare the weaker prey.
Oh! I forgot but
Heaven will not forgive
If at my word the helpless cease to live;
Follow who will I
go we
yet have time
Our souls to lighten of at least a crime.'
He climbs the crackling stair, he bursts the door,
Nor feels his feet glow scorching with the floor;
His breath choked gasping with the volumed smoke,
But still from room to room his way he broke.
They search they
find they
save: with lusty arms
Each bears a prize of unregarded charms;
Calm their loud fears; sustain their sinking frames
With all the care defenceless beauty claims
So well could Conrad tame their fiercest mood,
And check the very hands with gore imbrued.
But who is she? whom Conrad's arms convey
From reeking pile and combat's wreck away Who
but the love of him he dooms to bleed?
The Haram queen but
still the slave of Seyd!


VI.
Brief time had Conrad now to greet Gulnare,
Few words to reassure
the trembling fair
For in that pause compassion snatch'd from war,
The foe before retiring, fast and far,
With wonder saw their footsteps unpursued,
First slowlier fled then
rallied then
withstood.
This Seyd perceives, then first perceives how few?
Compared with his, the Corsair's roving crew,
And blushes o'er his error, as he eyes
The ruin wrought by panic and surprise.
Alla il Alla! Vengeance swells the cry Shame
mounts to rage that must atone or die!
And flame for flame and blood for blood must tell,
The tide of triumph ebbs that flow'd too well When
wrath returns to renovated strife,
And those who fought for conquest strike for life
Conrad beheld the danger he
beheld
His followers faint by freshening foes repell'd:
'One effort one
to
break the circling host!'
They form unite
charge
waver
all
is lost!
Within a narrower ring compress'd, beset,
Hopeless, not heartless, strive and struggle yet Ah!
now they fight in firmest file no more,
Hemm'd in, cut off, cleft down, and trampled o'er,
But each strikes singly, silently, and home,
And sinks outwearied rather than o'ercome,
His last faint quittance rendering with his breath,
Till the blade glimmers in the grasp of death!
VII.
But first, ere came the rallying host to blows,

And rank to rank, and hand to hand oppose,
Gulnare and all her Haram handmaids freed,
Safe in the dome of one who held their creed,
By Conrad's mandate safely were bestow'd
And dried those tears for life and fame that flow'd:
And when that darkeyed
lady, young Gulnare
Recall'd those thoughts late wandering in despair
Much did she marvel o'er the courtesy
That smooth'd his accents, soften'd in his eye:
'Twas strangethat
robber thus with gore bedew'd
Seem'd gentler then than Seyd in fondest mood.
The Pacha woo'd as if he deem'd the slave
Must seem delighted with the heart he gave
The Corsair vow'd protection, soothed affright
As if his homage were a woman's right.
'The wish is wrongnay,
worse for female vain:
Yet much I long to view that chief again;
If but to thank for, what my fear forget,
The life my loving lord remember'd not!'


VIII.
And him she saw, where thickest carnage spread,
But gather'd breathing from the happier dead;
Far from his band, and battling with a host
That deem right dearly won the field he lost,
Fell'd bleeding
baffled
of the death he sought,
And snatch'd to expiate all the ills he wrought;
Preserved to linger and to live in vain,
While Vengeance ponder'd o'er new plans of pain,
And stanch'd the blood she saves to shed again But
drop for drop, for Seyd's unglutted eye
Would doom him ever dying ne'er
to die!
Can this be he? triumphant late she saw
When his red hand's wild gesture waved a law!
'Tis he indeed disarm'd
but undeprest,
His sole regret the life he still possest;
His wounds too slight, though taken with that will,
Which would have kiss'd the hand that then could kill.
Oh were there none, of all the many given,
To send his soul he
scarcely ask'd to heaven?
Must he alone of all retain his breath,
Who more than all had striven and struck for death?
He deeply felt what
mortal hearts must feel,
When thus reversed on faithless fortune's wheel,
For crimes committed, and the victor's threat
Of lingering tortures to repay the debt He
deeply, darkly felt; but evil pride
That led to perpetrate, now serves to hide.
Still in his stern and selfcollected
mien
A conqueror's more than captive's air is seen
Though faint with wasting toil and stiffening wound,
But few that saw so
calmly gazed around:

Though the far shouting of the distant crowd,
Their tremors o'er, rose insolently loud,
The better warriors who beheld him near,
Insulted not the foe who taught them fear;
And the grim guards that to his durance led,
In silence eyed him with a secret dread


IX.
The Leech was sentbut
not in mercy there,
To note how much the life yet left could bear;
He found enough to load with heaviest chain,
And promise feeling for the wrench of pain;
Tomorrow
yea
tomorrow's
evening gun
Will sinking see impalement's pangs begun'
And rising with the wonted blush of morn
Behold how well or ill those pangs are borne.
Of torments this the longest and the worst,
Which adds all other agony to thirst,
That day by day death still forbears to slake,
While famish'd vultures flit around the stake.
'Oh! Water water!
' smiling Hate denies
The victim's prayer, for if he drinks he dies.
This was his doom; the
Leech, the guard were gone,
And left proud Conrad fetter'd and alone.
X.
'Twere vain to paint to what his feelings grew It
even were doubtful if their victim knew.
There is a war, a chaos of the mind,
When all its elements convulsed, combined,
Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force,
And gnashing with impenitent Remorse That
juggling fiend, who never spake before
But cries 'I warn'd thee!' when the deed is o'er.
Vain voice! the spirit burning but unbent
May writhe, rebel the
weak alone repent!
Even in that lonely hour when most it feels,
And, to itself; all, all that self reveals,No
single passion, and no ruling thought
That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought,
But the wild prospect when the soul reviews,
All rushing through their thousand avenues Ambition's
dreams expiring, love's regret,
Endanger'd glory, life itself beset;
The joy untasted, the contempt or hate
'Gainst those who fain would triumph in our fate
The hopeless' past, the hasting future driven
Too quickly on to guess of hell or heaven;
Deeds, thoughts, and words, perhaps remember'd not
So keenly till that hour, but ne'er forgot;
Things light or lovely in their acted time,
But now to stern reflection each a crime;

The withering sense of evil unreveal'd,
Not cankering less because the more con ceal'd All,
in a word, from which all eyes must start,
That opening sepulchre the
naked heart
Bares with its buried woes, till Pride awake,
To snatch the mirror from the souland
break.
Ay, Pride can veil, and Courage brave it all All
all
before
beyond
the
deadliest fall.
Each hath some fear, and he who least betrays,
The only hypocrite deserving praise:
Not the loud recreant wretch who boasts and flies;
But he who looks on deathand
silent dies.
So steel'd by pondering o'er his far career,
He halfway
meets him should he menace near!


XI.
In the high chamber of his highest tower
Sate Conrad, fetter'd in the Pacha's power.
His palace perish'd in the flame this
fort
Contain'd at once his captive and his court.
Not much could Conrad of his sentence blame,
His foe, if vanquish'd, had but shared the same:Alone
he satein
solitude had scann'd
His guilty bosom, but that breast he mann'd:
One thought alone he could not dared
not meet '
Oh, how these tidings will Medora greet?'
Then only
then his
clanking hands he raised,
And strain'd with rage the chain on which he gazed
But soon he found, or feign'd, or dream'd relief,
And smiled in selfderision
of his grief,
'And now come torture when it will or
may,
More need of rest to nerve me for the day!'
This said, with languor to his mat he crept,
And, whatsoe'er his visions, quickly slept
'Twas hardly midnight when that fray begun,
For Conrad's plans matured, at once were done:
And Havoc loathes so much the waste of time,
She scarce had left an uncommitted crime.
One hour beheld him since the tide he stemm'd Disguised,
discover'd, conquering, ta'en, condemn'd A
chief on land, an outlaw on the deep
Destroying, saving, prison'd, and asleep!


XII.
He slept in calmest seeming, for his breath
Was hush'd so deep Ah!
happy if in death!
He slept Who
o'er his placid slumber bends?
His foes are gone, and here he hath no friends;
Is it some seraph sent to grant him grace?
No, 'tis an earthly form with heavenly face!
Its white arm raised a lamp yet
gently hid,

Lest the ray flash abruptly on the lid
Of that closed eye, which opens but to pain,
And once unclosed but
once may close again
That form, with eye so dark, and cheek so fair,
And auburn waves of gemm'd and braided hair;
With shape of fairy lightness naked
foot,
That shines like snow, and falls on earth as mute Through
guards and dunnest night how came it there?
Ah! rather ask what will not woman dare?
Whom youth and pity lead like thee, Gulnare!
She could not sleep and
while the Pacha's rest
In muttering dreams yet saw his pirateguest
She left his side his
signetring
she bore
Which oft in sport adorn'd her hand before And
with it, scarcely question'd, won her way
Through drowsy guards that must that sign obey.
Worn out with toil, and tired with changing blows
Their eyes had' envied Conrad his repose;
And chill and nodding at the turret door,
They stretch their listless limbs, and watch no more;
Just raised their heads to hail the signetring,
Nor ask or what or who the sign may bring.


XIII.
She gazed in wonder, 'Can he calmly sleep,
While other eyes his fall or ravage weep?
And mine in restlessness are wandering here What
sudden spell hath made this man so dear?
True'
tis to him my life, and more, I owe,
And me and mine he spared from worse than woe:
'Tis late to think but
soft, his slumber breaks How
heavily he sighs! he
starts awakes!'
He raised his head, and dazzled with the light,
His eye seem'd dubious if it saw aright:
He moved his hand the
grating of his chain
Too harshly told him that he lived again.
'What is that form? if not a shape of air,
Methinks, my jailor's face shows wondrous fair!'
'Pirate! thou know'st me notbut
I am one,
Grateful for deeds thou hast too rarely done;
Look on me and
remember her, thy hand
Snatch'd from the flames, and thy more fearful band.
I come through darkness and I scarce know why Yet
not to hurt I
would not see thee die'
'If so, kind lady! thine the only eye
That would not here in that gay hope delight:
Theirs is the chance and
let them use their right.
But still I thank their courtesy or thine,
That would confess me at so fair a shrine!'


Strange though it seem yet
with extremest grief



Is link'd a mirth it
doth not bring relief That
playfulness of Sorrow ne'er beguiles,
And smiles in bitterness but
still it smiles;
And sometimes with the wisest and the best,
Till even the scaffold echoes with their jest!
Yet not the joy to which it seems akin It
may deceive all hearts, save that within.
Whate'er it was that flash'd on Conrad, now
A laughing wildness half unbent his brow
And these his accents had a sound of mirth,
As if the last he could enjoy on earth;
Yet 'gainst his nature for
through that short life,
Few thoughts had he to spare from gloom and strife.


XIV.
'Corsair! thy doom is named but
I have power
To soothe the Pacha in his weaker hour.
Thee would I spare nay
more would
save thee now,
But this time
hope
nor
even thy strength allow;
But all I can, I will: at least, delay
The sentence that remits thee scarce a day.
More now were ruin even
thyself were loth
The vain attempt should bring but doom to both.'
'Yes! loth indeed:my
soul is nerved to all,
Or fall'n too low to fear a further fall:
Tempt not thyself with peril me
with hope
Of flight from foes with whom I could not cope:
Unfit to vanquish, shall I meanly fly,
The one of all my band that would not die?
Yet there is one to whom my memory clings,
Till to these eyes her own wild softness springs.
My sole resources in the path I trod
Were these my
bark, my sword, my love, my God!
The last I left in youth! he
leaves me now And
Man but works his will to lay me low.
I have no thought to mock his throne with prayer
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough I
breathe, and I can bear.
My sword is shaken from the worthless hand
That might have better kept so true a brand;
My bark is sunk or captive but
my love For
her in sooth my voice would mount above:
Oh! she is all that still to earth can bind And
this will break a heart so more than kind,
And blight a form till
thine appear'd, Gulnare!
Mine eye ne'er ask'd if others were as fair.'


'Thou lov'st another then? but
what to me
Is this '
tis nothing nothing
e'er can be:
But yet thou
lov'st and
Oh!
I envy those
Whose hearts on hearts as faithful can repose,



Who never feel the voidthe
wandering thought
That sighs o'er vision~such as mine hath wrought.'


'Lady methought thy love was his, for whom
This arm redeem'd thee from a fiery tomb.


'My love stern Seyd's! Oh No
No
not
my love Yet
much this heart, that strives no more, once strove
To meet his passion but it would not be.
I felt I
feel love
dwells with with
the free.
I am a slave, a favour'd slave at best,
To share his splendour, and seem very blest!
Oft must my soul the question undergo,
Of '
Dost thou love?' and burn to answer, 'No!'
Oh! hard it is that fondness to sustain,
And struggle not to feel averse in vain;
But harder still the heart's recoil to bear,
And hide from one perhaps
another there.
He takes the hand I give not, nor withhold Its
pulse nor check'd, nor quicken'dcalmly
cold:
And when resign'd, it drops a lifeless weight
From one I never loved enough to hate.
No warmth these lips return by his imprest,
And chill'd remembrance shudders o'er the rest.
Yes had
lever proved that passion's zeal,
The change to hatred were at least to feel:
But still he goes unmourn'd, returns unsought,
And oft when present absent
from my thought.
Or when reflection comes and
come it must I
fear that henceforth 'twill but bring disgust;
I am his slave but,
in despite of pride,
'Twere worse than bondage to become his bride.
Oh! that this dotage of his breast would cease:
Or seek another and give mine release,
But yesterday I
could have said, to peace!
Yes, if unwonted fondness now I feign,
Remember captive! 'tis to break thy chain;
Repay the life that to thy hand I owe
To give thee back to all endear'd below,
Who share such love as I can never know.
Farewell, morn breaks, and I must now away:
'Twill cost me dear but
dread no death today!'


XV.
She press'd his fetter'd fingers to her heart,
And bow'd her head, and turn'd her to de part,
And noiseless as a lovely dream is gone.
And was she here? and is he now alone?
What gem hath dropp'd and sparkles o'er his chain?
The tear most sacred, shed for others' pain,
That starts at once bright
pure
from
Pity's mine
Already polish'd by the hand divine!

Oh! too convincing deangerously
dear In
woman's eye the unanswerable tear
That weapon of her weakness she can wield,
To save, subdue at once her spear and shield:
Avoid it Virtue
ebbs and Wisdom errs,
Too fondly gazing on that grief of hers!
What lost a world, and bade a hero fly?
The timid tear in Cleopatra's eye.
Yet be the soft triumvir's fault forgiven;
By this how
many lose not earth but
heaven!
Consign their souls to man's eternal foe,
And seal their own to spare some wanton's woe!


XVI.
'Tis morn, and o'er his alter'd features play
The beams without
the hope of yesterday.
What shall he be ere night? perchance a thing
O'er which the raven flaps her funeral wing
By his closed eye unheeded and unfelt;
While sets that sun, and dews of evening melt,
Chin wet, and misty round each stiffen'd limb,
Refreshing earth reviving
all but him!
CANTO THE THIRD

'Come vedi ancor
non m'abbandona'~Dante

I.
Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light!
O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows.
On old Ægina's rock and Idra's isle,
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering, loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast the mountain shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf; unconquer'd Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expanse
More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;
Tm, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep.
On such an eve, his palest beam he cast,
When Athens!
here thy Wisest look'd his last.
How watch'd thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murder'd sage's latest day!
Not yet not
yet Sol
pauses on the hill



The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonising eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes:
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seem'd to pour,
The land, where Phoebus never frown'd before;
But ere he sank below Cithæron's head,
The cup of woe was quaff'd the
spirit fled
The soul of him who scorn'd to fear or fly Who
lived and died, as none can live or die!


But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The queen of night asserts her silent reign.
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, nor girds her glowing form:
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams
play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And, bright around with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret:
The groves of olive scatter'd dark and wide
Where meek Cephisus pours his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And, dun and sombre 'mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane yon solitary palm,
All tinged with varied hues arrest the eye And
dull were his that pass'd them heedless by.


Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long array of sapphire and of gold,
Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown where
gentler ocean seems to smile.


II.
Not now my themewhy
turn my thoughts to thee?
Oh! who can look along thy native sea.
Nor dwell upon thy name, whate'er the tale
So much its magic must o'er all prevail?
Who that beheld that Sun upon thee set,
Fair Athens! could thine evening face for get?
Not he whose
heart nor time nor distance frees,
Spellbound
within the clustering Cyclades!
Nor seems this homage foreign to its strain,
His Corsair's isle was once thine own domain Would
that with freedom it were thine again!
III.
The Sun hath sunk and,
darker than the night,
Sinks with its beam upon the beacon height
Medora's heart the
third day's come and gone With
it he comes not sends
not faithless
one!

The wind was fair though light; and storms were none. 70
Last eve Anselmo's bark return'd, and yet
His only tidings that they had not met!
Though wild, as now, far different were the tale
Had Conrad waited for that single sail.
The nightbreeze
freshens she
that day had pass'd
In watching all that Hope proclaim'd a mast;
Sadly she sate on high Impatience
bore
At last her footsteps to the midnight shore,
And there she wander'd, heedless of the spray
That dash'd her garments oft, and warn'd away:
She saw not, felt not this nor
dared depart,
Nor deem'd it cold her
chill was at her heart;
Till grew such certainty from that suspense
His very sight had shock'd from life or sense!


It came at last a
sad and shatter'd boat,
Whose inmates first beheld whom first they sought;
Some bleeding all
most wretched these
the few Scarce
knew they how escaped this
all they knew.
In silence, darkling, each appear'd to wait
His fellow's mournful guess at Conrad's fate:
Something they would have said; but seem'd to fear
To trust their accents to Medora's ear.
She saw at once, yet sunk not trembled
not Beneath
that grief, that loneliness of lot;
Within that meek fair form were feelings high,
That deem'd not, till they found, their energy
While yet was Hope they soften'd, flutter'd wept All
lost that
softness died not but
it slept;
And o'er its slumber rose that Strength which said,
'With nothing left to love, there's nought to dread.'
'Tis more than nature's; like the burning 'night
Delirium gathers from the fever's height.


'Silent you stand nor
would I hear you tell
What speak
not breathe
not for
I know it well Yet
would I ask almost
my lip denies
The quick
your answer tell
me where he lies.'


'Lady! we know not scarce
with life we fled
But here is one denies that he is dead:
He saw him bound: and bleeding but
alive.'


She heard no further '
twas in vain to strive So
throbb'd each vein each
thought till
then withstood;
Her own dark soul these
words at once subdued:
She totters falls
and
senseless had the wave
Perchance but snatched her from another grave,
But that with hands though rude, yet weeping eyes,
They yield such aid as Pity's haste supplies:
Dash o'er her deathlike cheek the ocean dew,



Raise, fan, sustaintill
life returns anew;
Awake her handmaids, with the matrons leave
That fainting form o'er which they gaze and grieve;
Then seek Anselmo's cavern, to report
The tale too tedious when
the triumph short.


IV.
In that wild council words wax'd warm and strange
With thoughts of ransom, rescue, and revenge;
All, save repose or flight: still lingering there
Breathed Conrad's spirit, and forbade despair
Whate'er his fate the
breasts he form'd and led
Will save him living, or appease him dead
Woe to his foes! there yet survive a few
Whose deeds are daring, as their hearts are true.
V.
Within the Haram's Secret chamber sate
Stern Seyd, still pondering o'er his Captive's fate;
His thoughts on love and hate alternate dwell,
Now with Gulnare, and now in Conrad's cell;
Here at his feet the lovely slave reclined
Surveys his brow would
soothe his gloom of mind;
While many an anxious glance her large dark eye
Sends in its idle search for sympathy,
His only bends in seeming o'er his beads,
But inly views his victim as he bleeds.
'Pacha! the day is time; and on thy crest
Sits Triumph Conrad
taken fall'n
the rest!
His doom is fix'd he
dies; and well his fate
Was earn'd yet
much too worthless for thy hate:
Methinks, a short release, for ransom told
With all his treasure, not unwisely sold;
Report speaks largely of his piratehoard
Would
that of this my Pacha were the lord!
While baffled, weaken'd by this fatal fray Watch'd
follow'd
he
were then an easier prey;
But once cut off the
remnant of his band
Embark their wealth, and seek a safer strand.'
'Gulnare! if
for each drop of blood a gem
Were offer'd rich as Stamboul's diadem;
If for each hair of his a massy mine
Of virgin ore should supplicating shine;
If all our Arab tales divulge or dream
Of wealth were here that
gold should not redeem!
It had not now redeem'd a single hour,
But that I know him fetter'd, in my power;
And, thirsting for revenge, I ponder still
On pangs that longest rack, and latest kill.'


'Nay, Seyd! I seek not to restrain thy rage,



Too justly moved for mercy to assuage;
My thoughts were only to secure for thee
His riches thus
released, he were not free:
Disabled, shorn of half his might and band,
His capture could but wait thy first command.'
His capture could! shall I then resign
One day to him the
wretch already mine?
Release my foe!at
whose remonstrance? thine!
Fair suitor! to
thy virtuous gratitude,
That thus repays this Giaour's relenting mood,
Which thee and thine alone of all could spare,
No doubt regardless
if the prize were fair,
My thanks and praise alike are due now
hear!
I have a counsel for thy gentler ear:
I do mistrust thee, woman! and each word
Of thine stamps truth on all Suspicion heard.
Borne in his arms through fire from yon Serai Say,
wert thou lingering there with him to fly?
Thou need'st not answer thy
confession speaks
Already reddening on thy guilty cheeks;
Then, lovely dame, bethink thee! and beware:
'Tis not his: life alone may claim such care!
Another word and nay
I
need no more.
Accursed was the moment when he bore
Thee from the flames, which better far but
no I
then had mourn'd thee with a lover's woe Now
'tis thy lord that warns deceitful
thing!
Know'st thou that I can clip thy wanton wing?
In words alone I am not wont to chafe:
Look to thyself nor
deem thy falsehood safe!'


He rose and
slowly, sternly thence withdrew,
Rage in his eye and threats in his adieu:
Ah! little reck'd that chief of womanhood Which
frowns ne'er quell'd, nor menaces subdued
And little deem'd he what thy heart, Gulnare!
When soft could feel, and when incensed could dare.
His doubts appear'd to wrong nor
yet she knew
How deep the root from whence compassion grew She
was a slave from
such may captives claim
A fellowfeeling,
differing but in name;
Still half unconscious heedless
of his wrath,
Again she ventured on the dangerous path,
Again his rage repell'd until
arose
That strife of thought, the source of woman's woes!


VI.
Meanwhile, long, anxious, weary, still the same
Roll'd day and night: his soul could terror tame This
fearful interval of doubt and dread,
When every hour might doom him worse than dead,
When every step that echo'd by the gate,

Might entering lead where axe and stake await;
When every voice that grated on his ear
Might be the last that he could ever hear;
Could terror tame that
spirit stern and high
Had proved unwilling as unfit to die;
'Twas worn perhaps
decay'd yet
silent bore
That conflict, deadlier far than all before:
The heat of fight, the hurry of the gale,
Leave scarce one thought inert enough to quail;
But bound and fix'd in fetter'd solitude,
To pine, the prey of every changing mood;
To gaze on thine own heart; and meditate
Irrevocable faults, and coming fate Too
late the last to shun the
first to mend To
count the hours that struggle to thine end,
With not a friend to animate, and tell
To other ears that death became thee well;
Around thee foes to forge the ready lie,
And blot life's latest scene with calumny;
Before thee tortures, which the soul can dare,
Yet doubts how well the shrinking flesh may bear
But deeply feels' a single cry would shame To
valour's praise thy last and dearest claim;
The life thou leav'st below, denied above
By kind monopolists of heavenly love;
And more than doubtful paradise thy
heaven
Of earthly hope thy
loved one from thee riven.
Such were the thoughts that outlaw must sustain,
And govern pangs surpassing mortal pain:
And those sustain'd he boots
it well or ill?
Since not to sink beneath, is something still!


VII.
The first day pass'd he
saw not her Gulnare
The
second, thirdand
still she came not there;
But what her words avouch'd, her charms had done,
Or else he had not seen another sun.
The fourth day roll'd along, and with the night
Came storm and darkness in their mingling might.
Oh! how he listen'd to the rushing deep,
That ne'er till now so broke upon his sleep;
And his wild spirit wilder wishes sent,
Roused by the roar of his own element!
Oft had he ridden on that winged wave,
And loved its roughness for the speed it gave;
And now its dashing echo'd on his ear,
Along known voice alas!
too vainly near!
Loud sung the wind above; and, doubly
Shook o'er his turret cell the thundercloud;
And flash'd the lightning by the latticed bar,
To him more genial thanthe midnight star:
Close to the glimmering grate he dragg'd his chain

And hoped that peril might not prove in vain.
He raised his iron hand to Heaven, and pray'd
One pitying flash to mar the form it made:
His steel and impious prayer attract alike The
storm roll'd onward, and disdain'd to strike;
Its peal wax'd fainter eased
he
felt alone,
As if some faithless friend had spurn'd his groan!


VIII.
The midnight pass'd, and to the massy door
A light step came it
paused it
moved once more;
Slow turns the grating bolt and sullen key:
'Tis as his heart foreboded that
fair she!
Whate'er her sins, to him a guardian saint,
And beauteous still as hermit's hope can paint;
Yet changed since last within that cell she came,
More pale her cheek, more tremulous her frame:
On him she cast her dark and hurried eye,
Which spoke before her accents '
Thou must die!
Yes, thou must die there
is but one resource
The last the
worst if
torture were not worse.'
'Lady! I look to none; my lips proclaim
What last proclaim'd they Conrad
still the same:
Why shouldst thou seek an outlaw's life to spare,
And change the sentence I deserve to bear?
Well have I earn'd nor
here alone the
meed
of Seyd's revenge, by many a lawless deed.'


'Why should I seek? Because Oh!
didst thou not
Redeem my life from worse than slavery's lot?
Why should I seek? hath
misery made thee blind
To the fond workings of a woman's mind?
And must I say? albeit
my heart rebel
With all that woman feels, but should not tell Because,
despite thy crimes, that heart is moved:
It fear'd thee, thank'd thee, pitied, madden'd, loved.
Reply not, tell not now thy tale again,
Thou lov'st another, and I love in vain:
Though fond as mine her bosom, form more fair,
I rush through peril which she would not dare.
If that thy heart to hers were truly dear,
Were I thine own thou wert not lonely here:
An outlaw's spouse and leave her lord to roam!
What hath such gentle dame to do with home?
But speak not now o'er
thine and o'er my head
Hangs the keen sabre by a single thread;
If thou hast courage still, and wouldst be free,
Receive this poniard rise
and follow me!'


Ay in
my chains! my steps will gently tread,
With these adornments, o'er each slumbering head!



Thou hast forgot is
this a garb for flight?
Or is that instrument more fit for fight?'


'Misdoubting Corsair! I have gain'd the guard,
Ripe for revolt, and greedy for reward.
A single word of mine removes that chain:
Without some aid how here could I remain?
Well, since we met, hath sped my busy time,
If in aught evil, for thy sake the crime:
The crime '
tis none to punish those of Seyd.
That hated tyrant, Conrad he
must bleed!
I see thee shudder, but my soul is changed Wrong'd,
spurn'd, reviled, and it shall be avenged Accused
of what till now my heart ' disdain'd Too
faithful, though to bitter bondage chain'd.
Yes, smile! but
he had little cause to sneer,
I was not treacherous then, nor thou too dear:
But he has said it and
the jealous well Those
tyrants, teasing, tempting to rebel Deserve
the fate their fretting lips foretell.
I never loved he
bought me somewhat
high Since
with me came a heart he could not buy.
I was a slave unmurmuring; he hath said,
But for his rescue I with thee had fled.
'Twas false thou know'st but
let such augurs rue,
Their words are omens insult renders true.
Nor was thy respite granted to my prayer;
This fleeting grace was only to prepare
New torments for thy life, and my despair.
Mine too he threatens; but his dotage still
Would fain reserve me for his lordly will:
When wearier of these fleeting charms and me,
There yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea!
What, am I then a toy for dotard's play,
To wear but till the gilding frets away?
I saw thee loved
thee owe
thee all would
save,
If but to show how grateful is a slave.
But had he not thus menaced fame and life (
And well he keeps his oaths pronounced in strife) I
still had saved thee, but the Pacha spared.
Now I am all thine own, for all prepared:
Thou lov'st me not, nor know'st or
but the worst.
Alas! this love that
hatred are
the first Oh!
couldst thou prove my truth, thou wouldst not start,
Nor fear the fire that lights an Eastern heart;
'Tis now the beacon of thy safety now
It points within the port a Mainote prow:
But in one chamber, where our path must lead,
There sleeps he
must not wake the
oppressor Seyd!'


'Gulnar~GulnareI
never felt till now
My abject fortune, wither'd fame so low:



Seyd is mine enemy; had swept my band
From earth with ruthless but with open hand,
And therefore came I, in my bark of war,
To smite the smiter with the scimitar;
Such is my weapon not
the secret knife;
Who spares a woman's seeks not slumber's life.
Thine saved I gladly, Lady not
for this;
Let me not deem that mercy shown amiss.
Now fare thee well more
peace be with thy breast!
Night wears apace, my last of earthly rest!'


'Rest! rest! by sunrise must thy sinews shake,
And thy limbs writhe around the ready stake.
I heard the order saw
I
will not see If
thou wilt perish, I will fall with thee.
My life, my love, my hatred all
below
Are on this cast Corsair!
'tis but a blow!
Without it flight were idle how
evade
His sure pursuit? my
wrongs too unrepaid,
My youth disgraced, the long, long wasted years,
One blow shall cancel with our future fears;
But since the dagger suits thee less than brand,
I'll try the firmness of a female hand.
The guards, are gain'd one
moment all were o'er Corsair!
we meet in safety or no more;
If errs my feeble hand, the morning cloud
Will hover o'er thy scaffold, and my shroud


IX.
She turn'd, and vanish'd ere he could reply,
But his glance follow'd far with eager eye;
And gathering, as he could, the links that bound
His form, to curl their length, and curb their sound,
Since bar and bolt no more his steps preclude,
He, fast as fetter'd limbs allow, pursued.
'Twas dark and winding, and he knew not where
That passage led; nor lamp nor guard was there:
He sees a dusky glimmeringshall
he seek
Or shun that ray so indistinct and weak?
Chance guides his steps a
freshness seems to bear
Full on his brow, as if from morning air;
He reach'd an open gallery on
his eye
Gleam'd the last star of night, the clearing sky:
Yet scarcely heeded these another
light
From a lone chamber struck upon his sight.
Towards it he moved; a scarcely closing door
Reveal'd the ray within, but nothing more.
With hasty step a figure outward pass'd,
Then paused, and turn'd and
paused '
tis she at last!
No poniard in that hand, nor sign of ill '
Thanks to that softening heart she
could not kill!'
Again he look'd, the wildness of her eye

Starts from the day abrupt and fearfully.
She stopp'd threw
back her dark farfloating
hair,
That nearly veil'd her face and bosom fair,
As if she late had bent her leaning head
Above some object of her doubt or dread.
They meet upon
her brow unknown,
forgot Her
hurrying hand had left '
twas but a spot
Its hue was all he saw, and scarce withstood Oh!
slight but certain pledge of crime '
tis blood!


X.
He had seen battle he
had brooded lone
O'er promised pangs to sentenced guilt foreshown;
He had been tempted, chasten'd, and the chain
Yet on his arms might ever there remain:
But ne'er from strife, captivity, remorse From
all his feelings in their inmost force So
thrill'd, so shudder'd every creeping vein
As now they froze before that purple stain.
That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak,
Had banish'd all the beauty from her cheek!
Blood he had view'd, could view unmoved but
then
It flow'd in combat, or was shed by men!
XI.
'Tis donehe
nearly waked but
it is done.
Corsair! he perish'd thou
art dearly won.
All words would now be vain away
away!
Our bark is tossing '
tis already day.
The few gain'd over, now are wholly mine
And these thy yet surviving band shall join:
Anon my voice shall vindicate my hand,
When once our sail forsakes this hated strand.'
XII.
She clapp'd her hands, and through the gallery pour,
Equipp'd for flight, her vassa1s Greek
and Moor;
Silent but quick they stoop, his chains un bind;
Once more his limbs are free as mountain wind!
But on his heavy heart such sadness sate,
As if they there transfer'd that iron weight.
No words are utter'd at
her sign, a door
Reveals the secret passage to the shore:
The city lies behind they
speed, they reach
The glad waves dancing on the yellow beach;
And Conrad following, at her beck , obey'd,
Nor cared he now if rescued or betray'd;
Resistance were as useless as if Seyd
Yet lived to view the doom his ire decreed.
XIII.
Embark'd, the sail unfurl'd, the light breeze blew www.
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How much had Conrad's memory to review!
Sunk be in contemplation, till the cape
Where last he anchor'd rear'd its giant shape.
Ah! since that fatal night, though brief the time,
Had swept an age of terror, grief, and crime.
As its far shadow frown'd above the mast,
He veil'd his face, and sorrow'd as he pass'd;
He thought of all Gonsalvo
and his band,
His fleeting triumph and his failing hand;
He thought on her afar, his lonely bride:
He turn'd and saw Gulnare,
the homicide!


XIV.
Sbe watch'd his features till she could not bear
Their freezing aspect and averted air;
And that strange fierceness, foreign to her eye,
Fell quench'd in tears, too late to shed or dry.
She knelt beside him and his hand she press'd,
'Thou may'st forgive, though Allah's self detest;
But for that deed of darkness what wert thou?
Reproach me but
not yet Oh!
spare me now!
I am not what I seem this
fearful night
My brain bewilder'd do
not madden quite
If I had never loved though less my guilt,
Thou hadst not lived to hate
me if
thou wilt.'
XV.
She wrongs his thoughts, they more himself upbraid
Than her, though undesign'd' the wretch be made;
But speechless all, deep, dark, and unexprest,
They bleed within that silent cell his
breast
Still onward, fair the breeze, nor rough the surge,
The blue waves sport around the stern they urge;
Far on the horizon's verge appears a speck
A spot a
mast a
sail an
armed deck!
Their little bark her men of watch descry,
And ampler canvas woos the wind from high;
She bears her down majestically near,
Speed on her prow, and terror in her tier;
A flash is seen the
ball beyond their bow
Booms harmless, hissing to the deep below.
Uprose keen Conrad from his silent trance,
A long, long absent gladness in his glance;
'Tis minemy
bloodred
flag! Again again
I
am not all deserted on the main!'
They own the signal, answer to the ball,
Hoist out the boat at once, and slacken sail.
'Tis Conrad! Conrad!' shouting from the deck,
Command nor duty could their transport check!
With light alacrity and gaze of pride,
They view him mount once more his vessel's side;
A smile relaxing in each rugged face,

Their arms can scarce for bear a rough embrace.
He, half forgetting danger and defeat,
Returns their greeting as a chief may greet,
Wrings with a cordial grasp Anselmo's hand,
And feels he yet can conquer and command!


XVI.
These greetings o'er, the feelings that o'erflow,
Yet grieve to win him back without a blow;
They sail'd prepared for vengeance had
they known
A woman's hand secured that deed her own,
She were their queen less
scrupulous are they
Than haughty Conrad how they win their way.
With many an asking smile, and wondering stare,
They whisper round, and gaze upon Gulnare;
And her at
once above beneath
her sex
Whom blood appall'd not, their regards perplex.
To Conrad turns her faint imploring eye,
She drops her veil, and stands in silence by;
Her arms are meekly folded on that breast,
Which Conrad
safe to
fate resign'd the rest.
Though worse than frenzy could that bosom fill,
Extreme in love or hate, in good or ill,
The worst of crimes had left her woman still!
XVII.
This Conrad mark'd, and felt ah!
could he less? Hate
of that deed, but grief for her distress;
What she has done no tears can wash away,
And Heaven must punish on its angry day:
But it
was done: he knew, whate'er her guilt,
For him that poniard smote, that blood was spilt;
And he was free! and she for him had given
Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!
And now he turn'd him to that darkeyed
slave
Whose brow was bow'd beneath the glance he gave,
Who now seem'd changed and humbled, faint and meek,
But varying oft the colour of her cheek
To deeper shades of paleness all
its red
That fearful spot which stain'd it from the dead!
He took that hand it
trembled now
too late So
soft in love, so wildly nerved in hate;
He clasp'd that hand it
trembled and
his own
Had lost its firmness, and his voice its tone. 540
'Gulnare! ' but
she replied not '
dear Gulnare!'
She raised her eye her
only answer there At
once she sought and sunk in his embrace:
If he had driven her from that restingplace,
His had been more or less than mortal heart,
But good
or ill it
bade her not depart.
Perchance, but for the bodings of his breast,
His latest virtue then had join'd the rest.

Yet even Medora might forgive the kiss
That ask'd from form so fair no more than this,
The first, the last that Frailty stole from Faith To
lips where Love had lavish'd all his breath
To lips whose
broken sighs such fragrance fling,
As he had fann'd them freshly with his wing!


XVIII.
They gain by twilight's hour their lonely isle
To them the very rocks appear to smile;
The haven hums with many a cheering sound,
The beacons him their wonted stations round,
The boats are darting o'er the curly bay,
And sportive dolphins bend them through the spray;
Even the hoarse seabird's
shrill, discordant shriek
Greets like the welcome of his tuneless beak!
Beneath each lamp that through its lattice gleams,
Their fancy paints the friends that trim the beams
Oh! what can sanctify the joys of home,
Like Hope's gay glance from Ocean's troubled foam?
XIX.
The lights are high on beacon and from bower,
And 'midst them Conrad seeks Medora's tower:
He looks in vain '
tis strange and
all remark,
Amid so many, hers alone is dark
'Tis strange of yore its welcome never fall'd,
Nor now, perchance, extinguish'd, only veil'd.
With the first boat descends he for the shore, 573
And looks impatient on the lingering oar.
Oh! for a wing beyond the falcon's flight,
To bear him like an arrow to that height!
With the first pause the resting rowers gave,
He waits not, looks not leaps
into the wave,
Strives through the surge, bestrides the beach, and high
Ascends the path familiar to his eye.
He reach'd his turret door he
paused no
sound
Broke from within; and all was night around
He knock'd, and loudly footstep
nor reply
Announced that any heard or deem'd him nigh;
He knock'd, but faintly for
his trembling hand
Refused to aid his heavy heart's demand.
The portal opens tis
a wellknown
face,
But not the form he panted to embrace.
Its lips are silent twice
his own essay'd,
And fail'd to frame the question they delay'd;
It quits his grasp expiring in the fall.
He would not wait for that reviving ray As
soon could he have linger'd there for day;
But, glimmering through the dusky corridor,
Another chequers o'er the shadow'd floor.



His steps the chamber gain his
eyes behold
All that his heart believed not yet
fortold!

XX.
He turn'd not spoke
not sunk
not fix'd
his look,
And set the anxious frame that lately shook:
He gazed how
long we gaze despite of pain,
And know, but dare not own, we gaze in vain!
In life it self she was so still and fair,
That death with gender aspect wither'd there;
And the cold flowers her colder hand contain'd,
In that last grasp as tenderly were strain'd
As if she scarcely felt, but feign'd asleep,
And made it almost mockery yet to weep:
The long dark lashes fringed her lids of snow
And veil'd thought
shrinks from all that lurk'd below Oh!
o'er the eye Death most exerts his might,
And hurls the spirit from her throne of light;
Sinks those blue orbs in that long last eclipse,
But spares, as yet, the charm around her lips Yet,
yet they seem as they forbore to smile,
And wish'd repose, but
only for awhile;
But the white shroud, and each extended tress?
Long, fairbut
spread in utter lifelessness,
Which, late the sport of every summer wind,
Escaped the baffled wreath that strove to bind;
These and
the pale pure cheek, became the bier But
she is nothing wherefore
is he here?
XXI.
He ask'd no questionall
were answer'd now
By the first glance on that still, marble brow.
It was enough she
died what
reck'd it how?
The love of youth, the hope of better years,
The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears,
The only living thing he could not hate,
Was reft at once and
he deserved his fate,
But did not feel it less;the
good explore,
For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar:
The proud, the wayward who
have fix'd below
Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe,
Lose in that one their all perchance
a mite But
who in patience parts with all delight?
Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern
Mask hearts where grief hath little left to learn;
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost
In smiles tha't least befit who wear them most.
XXII.
By those, that deepest feel, Is ill exprest
The indistinctness of the suffering breast;
Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one,

Which seeks from all the refuge found in none;
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.
On Conrad's stricken soul exhaustion prest,
And stupor almost lull'd it into rest;
So feeble now his
mother's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept:
It was the very weakness of his brain,
Which thus confess'd without relieving pain.
None saw his trickling tears perchance
if seen,
That useless flood of grief had never been:
Nor long they flow'd he
dried them to
In helpless hopeless
brokenness
of heart:
The sun goes forth, but Conrad's day is dim;
And the night cometh ne'er
to pass from him.
There is no darkness like the cloud of mind,
On Grief's vain eye the
blindest of the blind!
Which may not dare
not see but turns aside
To blackest shade nor
will endure a guide!


XXIII.
His heart was form'd for softness warp'd
to wrong;
Betray'd too early, and beguiled too long;
Each feeling pure as
falls the dropping dew
Within the grot like
that had harden'd too;
Less clear perchance, its earthly trials pass'd,
But sunk, and chill'd, and petrified at last.
Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock;
If such his heart, so shatter'd it the shock.
There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow,
Though dark the shade it
shelter'd saved
till now.
The thunder came that
bolt hath blasted both,
The Granite's firmness, and the Lily' growth:
The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell
Its tale, but shrunk and wither'd where it fell
And of its cold protector, blacken round
But shiver'd fragments on the barren ground!
XXIV.
'Tis morn to
venture on his lonely hour
Few dare; though now Anselmo sought his tower.
He was not there, nor seen along the shore;
Ere night, alarm'd, their isle is traversed o'er:
Another morn another
bids them seek,
And shout his name till echo waxeth weak;
Mount: grotto, cavern, valley search'd in vain,
They find on shore a seaboat's
broken chain:
Their hope revivesthey
follow o'er the main.
'Tis idle all moons
roll on moons away,
And Conrad comes not, came not since that day:
Nor trace, nor tidings of his doom declare
Where lives his grief, or perish'd his despair!

Long mourn'd his band whom none could mourn beside;
And fair the monument they gave his bride:
For him they raise not the recording stone His
death yet dubious, deeds too widely known;
He left a Corsair's name to other times,
Link'd with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.

The Conquest

The Son of Love and Lord of War I sing;
Him who bade England bow to Normandy
And left the name of conqueror more than king
To his unconquerable dynasty.
Not fann'd alone by Victory's fleeting wing,
He rear'd his bold and brilliant throne on high:
The Bastard kept, like lions, his prey fast,
And Britain's bravest victor was the last.