For there-the Rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale, (1)
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, unchill'd by snows,
Far from the winters of the west,
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by Nature given
In softest incense back to heaven;
And grateful 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 for rest,
That holds the pirate for a guest;
Whose bark in sheltering cove below
Lurks for the passing peaceful prow,
Till the gay mariner's guitar (2)
Is heard, and seen the evening star;
Then stealing with the muffled oar,
Far shaded by the rocky shore,
Rush the night-prowlers on the prey,
And turn to groans his roundelay.
Strange-that where Nature loved to trace,
As if for gods, a dwelling-place,

And every charm and grace hath mix'd
Within the paradise she fix'd,
There man, enamour'd of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness,

And trample, brute-like, o'er each flower
That tasks not one laborious hour;
Nor claims the culture of his hand
To bloom along the fairy land,
But springs as to preclude his care,
And sweetly woos him-but to spare!

The whole of this passage, from line 7 down to line 167, "Who heard it first had cause to grieve," was not in the first edition. -E.

(1) The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.-[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones:

"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing,
Thyself the rose, and he the bird of spring:
Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.

Be gay too soon the flowers of spring will fade."—E. (2) The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night: with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.

(3) If once the public notice is drawn to a poet, the talents

Strange-that 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 prevail'd
Against the seraphs they assail'd,

And, fix'd on heavenly thrones, should dwell
The freed inheritors of hell;

So soft the scene, so form'd for joy,

So curst the tyrants that destroy!

He who hath bent him o'er the dead (3)

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 mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that 's there,
The fix'd yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but 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 (4)
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, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd! (5)
Such is the aspect of this shore;

'T is Greece, but living Greece no more! (6) So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start, for soul is wanting there.

he exhibits on a nearer view, the weight his mind carries with it in his every-day intercourse, somehow or other are reflected around on his compositions, and co-operate in giving a collateral force to their impression on the public. To this we must assign some part of the impression made by the Giaour. The thirtyfive lines, beginning He who hath bent him o'er the dead,' are so beautiful, so original, and so utterly beyond the reach of any one whose poetical genius was not very decided and very rich, that they alone, under the circumstances explained, were sufficient to secure celebrity to this poem." Sir E. Brydges.-E. (4) Ay, but to die and go we know not where, To be in cold obstruction!"

Measure for Measure. (5) I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description, but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character: but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last.

(6) In Dallaway's Constantinople, a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from

Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave,
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Strine of the mighty! can it be,
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopyla?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free!-
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis! (2)
These scenes, their story not 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,
Bequeath'd 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 nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their 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 splendour to disgrace;

Gillies's History of Greece, which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life." Moore.-E.

(1) "There is infinite beauty and effect, though of a painful and almost oppressive character, in this extraordinary passage; in which the author has illustrated the beautiful, but still and meiancholy, aspect of the once-busy and glorious shores of Greece, by an image more true, more mourn ul, and more exquisitely finished, than any that we can recollect in the whole compass of poetry." Jeffrey.-E.

(2) The isle of Salamis lies in the Saronic Gulf, on the southern coast of Attica, nearly opposite to Eleusis. It belonged to the

Enough-no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

What can he tell who treads thy shore? No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the Muse might soar
High as thine own in 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,
Slaves--nay, the bondsmen of a slave, (3)
And callous, save to crime;
Stain'd 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 they waft
Proverbial wiles, and ancient craft;
In this the subtle Greek is found,
For this, and this alone, renown'd.
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.

Who thundering comes on blackest steed, (4) With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed?

Athenians, though, from its situation between Athens and Megara, the inhabitants of the latter city contested its possession for some time with the Athenians. The name, says Gillies, in his History of Greece, is associated with the honourable battle fought on the 20th October, 480 years before Christ, between the Persians under Xerxes, when he invaded Attica, and the Greeks, who successfully defended their country with a force of only 380 ships against 2,000, of which they destroyed about 200).—E.

(3) Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga (the slave of the seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Way wode A pander and eunuch-these are not polite, yet true appellations.. now governs the governor of Athens!

(4) The reciter of the tale is a Turkish fisherman, who has been employed during the day in the Gulf of Ægina, and in the

Beneath the clattering iron's sound The cavern'd echoes wake around In lash for lash, and bound for bound; The foam that streaks the courser's side Seems gather'd from the ocean-tide: Though weary waves are sunk to rest, There's none within his rider's breast; And though to-morrow's tempest lower, 'T is calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!(1) 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 meteor-like thou glidest by, Right well I view and deem thee one Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun. On-on he hasten'd, and he drew My gaze of wonder as he flew : Though like a demon of the night He pass'd, and vanish'd from my sight, His aspect and his air impress'd 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 1 ween unwelcome he Whose glance is fix'd on those that flee; And not a star but shines too bright On him who takes such timeless flight. He wound along; but ere he pass'd One glance he snatch'd, as if his last, A moment check'd his wheeling steed, A moment breathed him from his speed, A moment on his stirrup stoodWhy 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 the far tophaike, (2)

The flashes of each joyous peal

Are seen to prove the Moslem's zeal.

evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates who infest the coast of Altica, lands with his boat on the harbour of Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the eye-witness of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one of them is a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and particularly to his religious prejudices, that we are indebted for some of the most forcible and splendid parts of the poem." George Ellis.

(1) In Dr. Clarke's Travels, this word, which means Infidel, is always written according to its English pronunciation, Djour. Lord Byron adopted the Italian spelling usual among the Franks

of the Desert.-E.

(2) "Tophaike," musket.-The Bairam is announced by the cannon at sunset; the illumination of the mosques, and the firing

To-night, set Rhamazani's sun;
To-night, the Bairam feast 's begun;
To-night-but who and what art thou
Of foreign garb and fearful brow?
And what are these to thine or thee,
That thou shouldst 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, (3)
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 delay'd,

Here loud his raven charger neigh'd

Down glanced that hand, and grasp'd 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 hurl'd on high jerreed (4) ́
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. (5)
'T was but an instant he restrain'd
That fiery barb, so sternly rein'd;
'T was but a moment that he stood,
Then sped as if by Death pursued;
But in that instant o'er his soul
Winters of Memory seem'd 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 ponder'd o'er his fate,
Oh, who its dreary length shall date!
Though in Time's record nearly nought,
It was Eternity to Thought!

of all kinds of small-arms, loaded with ball, proclaim it during the night.

(3) "Hasty blush."-For hasty all the editions, till the twelfth read "darkening blush."-E.

darted from horseback with great force and precision. It is a fa (4) Jerreed, or Djerrid, a blunted Turkish javelin, which i vourite exercise of the Mussulmans; but I know not if it can b called a manly one, since the most expert in the art are the bla eunuchs of Constantinople. I think, next to these, a Mamlouk a Smyrna was the most skilful that came within my observation. (5) Every gesture of the impetuous horseman is full of anxiety and passion. In the midst of his career, whilst in full view of the astonished spectator, he suddenly checks his steed, and, rising

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,(1)
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 vanish'd 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 haram bower;
And in the fortress of his power
The owl usurps the beacon-tower;
The wild-dog 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. 'T was 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.

on his stirrup, surveys, with a look of agonising impatience, the distant city illuminated for the feast of Bairam; then, pale with anger, raises his arm as if in menace of an invisible enemy; but, awakened from his trance of passion by the neighing of his charger, again hurries forward, and disappears." George Ellis.-E. (1) The blast of the desert, fatal to every thing living, and often alluded to in eastern poetry.-[Abyssinian Bruce gives, perhaps, the liveliest account of the appearance and effects of the suffocating blast of the desert:-" At eleven o'clock," he says, "while we contemplated with great pleasure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with plenty of good water, Idris, our guide, cried out with a loud voice, 'Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom.' I saw from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not Occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly; for I scarce could turn to fall upon the ground, with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw, was indeed passed, but the light air, which still blew, was of a heat to threaten suffocation. For iny part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it; nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterwards." See Bruce's Life and Travels, p. 470. edit. 1830.-E.]

And oft had Hassan's childhood play'd
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 fill'd that fount is fled-
The blood that warm'd his heart is shed!
And here no more shall human voice
Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice.
The last sad note that swell'd the gale
Was woman's wildest funeral wail:
That quench'd 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 close its clasp again. (2)
On desert sands 't were joy to scan
The rudest steps of fellow-man,
So here the very voice of Grief
Might wake an echo like relief-
At least 't would say, "All are not gone;
There lingers life, though but in one”—
For many a gilded chamber 's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear; (3)
Within that dome as yet Decay
Hath slowly work'd her cankering way—
But doom is gather'd 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." (4)

(2) This part of the narrative not only contains much brilliant and just description, but is managed with unusual taste. The fisherman has, hitherto, related nothing more than the extraordinary phenomenon which had excited his curiosity, and of which it is his immediate object to explain the cause to his hearers; but, instead of proceeding to do so, he stops to vent his execrations on the Giaour, to describe the solitude of Hassan's once-luxurious haram, and to lament the untimely death of the owner, and of Leila, together with the cessation of that hospitality which they had uniformly experienced. He reveals, as if unintentionally and unconsciously, the catastrophe of his story; but he thus prepares his appeal to the sympathy of his audience, without much diminishing their suspense." George Ellis.

(3) "I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof. Among the lines on Hassan's serai is this—

• Unmeet for Solitude to share.'

Now, to share implies more than one, and Solitude is a single gentleman; it must be thus

For many a gidded chamber's there, Which Solitude might well forbear;' and so on. Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a Stilton cheese from me for your trouble.-P. S. I leave this to your discretion: if any body thinks the old line a good one, or the cheese a bad one, don't accept of either." B. Letters, Stilton, Oct. 3, 1813.

(4) To partake of food, to break bread and salt with your host,

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! (1)

I hear the sound of coming feet,
But not a voice mine ear to greet;
More near-each turban I can scan,
And silver-sheathed ataghan; (2)
The foremost of the band is seen
An emir, by his garb of green: (3)

"Ho! who art thou ?"-"This low salam (4) Replies of Moslem faith I am.”.

"The burthen 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: thy skiff unmoor, And waft us from the silent shore; Nay, leave the sail still furl'd, and ply The nearest oar that 's scatter'd by, And midway to those rocks where sleep The channel'd waters dark and deep. Rest from your task-so-bravely done, Our course has been right swiftly run; Yet 't is the longest voyage, I trow, That one of

Which, trembling in their coral caves, They dare not whisper to the waves.

As rising on its purple wing
The insect-queen (5) 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 full-grown 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 betray'd,
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 woo'd its stay
Hath brush'd 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, And maddening in her ire,

Is like the scorpion girt by fire, (6) In circle narrowing as it glows, The flames around their captive close, Till inly search'd by thousand throes,

(1) I need hardly observe, that charity and hospitality are the first duties enjoined by Mahomet; and, to say truth, very generally practised by his disciples. The first praise that can be bestowed on a chief is a panegyric on his bounty; the next, on his valour. (2) The ataghan, a long dagger worn with pistols in the belt, in a metal scabbard, generally of silver; and among the wealthier, gilt, or of gold.

(3) Green is the privileged colour of the Prophet's numerous pretended descendants; with them, as here, faith (the family inhe ritance) is supposed to supersede the necessity of good works: they are the worst of a very indifferent brood.

(4) "Salam aleikoum! aleikoum salam! peace be with you; be with you peace-the salutation reserved for the Faithful:-to a

serula;" good morn, good even; and sometimes, "may your end be happy ;" are the usual salutes.

(5) The blue-winged butterfly of Kashmeer, the most rare and beautiful of the species.

(6) Mr. Dallas says, that Lord Byron assured him that the paragraph containing the simile of the scorpion was imagined in his sleep. It forms, therefore, a pendant to the “ 'psychological curiosity," beginning with those exquisitely musical lines: