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Then temper'd to thy want, or will,
"Twill serve thee to defend or kill;
A breast-plate 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-'t were 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(1)
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!
It is as if the desert-bird,(2)

Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famish'd nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferr'd,
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 unemploy'd.
Who would be doom'd 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!

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it.

The Giaour is certainly a bad character, but not dan. gerous; and I think his fate and his feelings will meet with few proselytes."-L. E.

The passage referred to by the Reviewers is in the poem entitled Resentment; and the following is the part which Lord Byron is accused of having imitated:-

"Those are like wax-apply them to the fire,
Melting, they take the impression you desire;
Easy to mould and fashion as you please,

And again moulded with an equal ease;
Like smelted iron these the forms retain,
But once impress'd will never melt again."-P. E.

(1) Mr. Galt, in his life of Lord Byron, alluding to this and the following five lines, points out a coincidence be

Has been thy lot from youth to age;
And thou wilt bless thee from the rage
Of passions fierce and uncontroll'd,
Such as thy penitents unfold,
Whose secret sins and sorrows rest
Within thy pure and pitying breast.
My days, though few, have pass'd 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,
Condemn'd 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 self-accorded grave Of ancient fool and modern knave; Yet death I have not fear'd to meet; And in the field it had been sweet, Had danger woo'd 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 needst 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 quail'd to danger's brow
When high and happy--need I now?

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tween them and some verses of his own. "I do not claim," says he, "any paternity in these lines; but not the most judicious action of all my youth was to publish certain dramatic sketches, and his Lordship had the printed book in his possession long before the Giaour was published, and may have read the following passage in a dream which was intended to be very hideous:

Then did I hear around
The churme and chirruping of busy reptiles
At hideous banquet on the royal dead;-
Full soon methought the loathsome epicures
Came thick on me, and underneath my shroud

I felt the many-foot and beetle creep

And on my breast the cold worm coil and crawl.'"-P. E.

(2) The pelican is, I believe, the bird so libelled, by the imputation of feeding her chickens with her blood.

"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 warm'd the heart of one abhorr'd:
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, 't were 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 't is 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 enthrall;
And I, alas! too late to save!
Yet all I then could give, I gave,
"Twas some relief, our foe a grave.

(1) This superstition of a second hearing (for I never met with downright second-sight in the East) fell once under my own observation. On my third journey to Cape Colonna, early in 1811, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratia and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri riding rather out of the path, and leaning his head upon his hand, as if in pain. I rode up and inquired. "We are in peril," he answered. "What peril? we are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Messalunghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us, well armed, and the Choriates have not courage to be thieves."— "True, Affendi, but nevertheless the shot is ringing in my ears."—" The shot! not a tophaike has been fired this morn ing."-"I hear it notwithstanding-bom-bom-as plainly as I hear your voice."-" Psha !"-" As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be."-I left this quick-eared predestinarian, and rode up to Basili, his Christian compatriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence. We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely, saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer. Romaic, Arnaout, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman. While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns. I thought he was deranged into an antiquarian, and asked him if he had become a "Palao

His death sits lightly; but her fate
Has made me what thou well mayst hate.
His doom was seal'd-he knew it well,
Warn'd by the voice of stern Taheer,
Deep in whose darkly-boding ear (1)
The death-shot peal'd 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 Alla all he made:
He knew and cross'd me in the fray-

I gazed upon him where he lay,
And watch'd his spirit ebb away:
Though pierced like pard by hunters' steel,
He felt not half that now I feel.

I search'd, but vainly search'd, to find
The workings of a wounded mind;
Each feature of that sullen corse
Betray'd his rage, but no remorse.
Oh, what had Vengeance given to trace
Despair upon his dying face!
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 the lava flood

That boils in Etna's breast of flame. I cannot prate in puling strain Of ladye-love, and beauty's chain: If changing cheek, and scorching 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 possess'd,

And, come what may, I have been blest.

castro" man? "No," said he, "but these pillars will be useful in making a stand;" and added other remarks, which at least evinced his own belief in his troublesome faculty of forehearing. On our return to Athens we heard from Leone (a prisoner set ashore some days after) of the intended attack of the Mainotes, mentioned, with the cause of its not taking place, in the notes to Childe Harold, Canto 2d. I was at some pains to question the man, and he described the dresses, arms, and marks of the horses of our party so accurately, that, with other circumstances, we could not doubt of his having been in "villanous company," and ourselves in a bad neighbourhood. Dervish became a soothsayer for life, and I dare say is now hearing more musketry than ever will be fired, to the great refreshment of the Arnaouts of Berat, and his native mountains.-1 shall mention one trait more of this singular race. In March, 181i, a remarkably stout and active Arnaout came (I believe the fif tieth on the same errand) to offer himself as an attendant, which was declined: "Well, Affendi," quoth he, "may you live-you would have found me useful. I shall leave the town for the hills to-morrow, in the winter I return, perhaps you will then receive me."-Dervish, who was present, remarked, as a thing of course and of no consequence, "In the mean time he will join the Klephtes" (robbers), which was true to the letter. If not cut off, they come down in the winter, and pass it unmolested in some town, where they are often as well known as their exploits.

Shall I the doom I sought upbraid?
No-reft of all, yet undismay'd
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.(1)
She was a form of life and light,(2)
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The morning-star of Memory!

"Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; (3) A spark of that immortal fire

With angels shared, by Alla 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 form'd 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 quench'd, 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 frenzy 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.

(1) "These, in our opinion, are the most beautiful pas sages of the poem; and some of them of a beauty which it would not be easy to eclipse by many citations in the language." Jeffrey.—L. E.

(2) This and the three following lines were added after the poem had gone through several editions.-P. E.

(3) The hundred and twenty-six lines which follow, down to "Tell me no more of fancy's gleam," first appeared in the fifth edition In returning the proof, Lord Byron says: "I bave, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month. It is now fearfully long. being more than a canto and a half of Childe Harold. The last lines Hodgson likes. It is not often he does; and when he don't, he tells me with great energy, and I fret, and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel; and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself. Do you know any body who can stopI mean, point-commas, and so forth? for 1 am, 1 hear, a sad hand at your punctuation." Among the Giaour MSS. is the first draught of this passage, which we subjoin:

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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 mark'd 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 betray'd.
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. (4)
The very crimes that mar my youth,
This bed of death-attest my truth!
"Tis all too late-thou wert, thou art
The cherish'd madness of my heart!

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(4) These beautiful lines were probably suggested by the following passage which occurs in Byron's Diary:-Tonight I saw both the sisters of my God! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale so like as to remind, so different as to be painful. One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction."--P. E.

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. (1)
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 forest-cave 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 absorb'd 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-1 then could smile-
When Prudence would his voice assume,
And warn-I reck'd not what-the while:
But now remembrance whispers o'er
Those accents scarcely mark'd 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 wither'd frame, the ruin'd mind,
The wreck by passion left behind;
A shrivell'd scroll, a scatter'd leaf,
Sear'd by the autumn blast of grief!

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I wish'd but for a single tear,
As something welcome, new, and dear:
I wish'd 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, (2)
As through yon pale grey cloud the star
Which now I gaze on as on her,
Who look'd and looks far lovelier;
Dimly I view its trembling spark;
To-morrow'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 wish'd to hold.
Alas! around a shadow prest
They shrink upon my lonely breast;
Yet still 't is there! In silence stands,
And beckons with beseeching hands!
With braided hair, and bright-black eye-

I knew 't was 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 roll'd above
The face I view, the form I love;
They told me-'
-'twas a hideous tale!
I'd tell it, but my tongue would fail :
If true, and from thine ocean-cave
Thou comest 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!

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(1) The circumstance to which the above story relates was not very uncommon in Turkey. A few years ago the wife of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity; he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night! One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original. For the contents of some of the notes I am indebted partly to D'Herbelot, and partly to that most Eastern, and, as Mr. Weber justly entitles it, "sublime tale," the Caliph Vathek. I do not know from what source the author of

He pass'd-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. (2)

that singular volume may have drawn his materials; some of his incidents are to be found in the Bibliothèque Orien tale; but for correctness of costume, beauty of description. and power of imagination, it far surpasses all European imitations; and bears such marks of originality, that those who bave visited the East will find some difficulty in believ ing it to be more than a translation. As an Eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it; his "Happy Valley" will not bear a comparison with the "Hall of Eblis."

(2) "In this poem, which was published after the two first cantos of Childe Harold, Lord Byron began to show his powers. He had now received encouragement which set free his daring hands, and gave his strokes their natural force. Here, then, we first find passages of a tone peculiar to Lord Byron; but still this appearance was not uniform: he often returned to his trammels, and reminds us of the manner of some favourite predecessor; among these, I think we sometimes catch the notes of Sir Walter Scott. But the internal tempest-the deep passion, sometimes buried, and sometimes blazing from some incidental touch—the intensity of agonising reflection, which will always distinguish Lord Byron from other writers- now began to display them. selves." Sir Egerton Brydges.-L. E.

The Bride of Abydos,

A TURKISH TALE. (1)

"Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,

Never met or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken-hearted.”—Burns.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD HOLLAND,

This Tale is Inscribed,

WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF regard and RESPECT, BY HIS GRATEFULLY OBLIGED AND SINCERE FRIEND, BYRON.

CANTO I

I.

KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle (2)

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their cline, Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?

(1) The Bride of Abydos was published in the beginning of December, 1813. The mood of mind in which it was struck off is thus stated by Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Gifford "You have been good enough to look at a thing of mine in MS.-a Turkish story-and I should feel gratified if you would do it the same favour in its probationary state of printing. It was written, I cannot say for amusement, nor obliged by hunger and request of friends,' but in a state of mind, from circumstances which occasionally ocenr to us youth,' that rendered it necessary for me to apply my mind to something, any thing, but reality; and under this not very brilliant inspiration it was composed. Send it either to the flames, or

A hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of winds to fly or fall abroad.'

It deserves no better than the first, as the work of a week, and scribbled stans pede in uno' (by the by, the only foot I have to stand on); and I promise never to trouble

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume,

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul (3) in her bloom;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute:

you again under forty cantos, and a voyage between each.” -L. E.

Murray tells me that Croker asked him why the thing is called the Bride of Abydos?' It is an awkward question, being unanswerable: she is not a bride; only about to be one. I don't wonder at his finding out the bull; but the detection is too late to do any good. I was a great fool to have made it, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman." B. Diary, Dec. 6, 1813.-L. E.

(2) To the Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron made many additions during its progress through the press, amounting to about two hundred lines; and, as in the case of the Giaour, the passages so added will be seen to be some of the most splendid in the whole poem. These opening lines, which are among the new insertions, are supposed to have been suggested by a song of Goethe's

"Kennst du das land wo die citronen blühn."-L. E. (3) "Gul," the rose.

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