And the powerless moon beholds them flow,
Heedless if she come or go:

430

Calm or high, in main or bay,

On their course she hath no sway.

The rock unworn its base doth bare,

And looks o'er the surf, but it comes not there;
And the fringe of the foam may be seen below,
On the line that it left long ages ago:

A smooth short space of yellow sandi. 1
Between it and the greener land.

He wandered on along the beach,

Till within the range of a carbine's reach

Of the leaguered wall; but they saw him not,

Or how could he 'scape from the hostile shot ?ii.

Did traitors lurk in the Christians' hold?

440

Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts waxed cold?

I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall iii.
There flashed no fire, and there hissed no ball,
Though he stood beneath the bastion's frown,
That flanked the seaward gate of the town;
Though he heard the sound, and could almost tell

The sullen words of the sentinel,

450

As his measured step on the stone below

Clanked, as he paced it to and fro;

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their Carnival,2

i. A little space of light grey sand.--[MS. G. erased.]
ii. Or would not waste on a single head

The ball on numbers better sped.-[MS. G. erased.]

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

1. [Compare The Island, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12—

"A narrow segment of the yellow sand

On one side forms the outline of a strand."]

2. [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the

Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ;

And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,1 460

As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew

dull,

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they

fed;

So well had they broken a lingering fast

With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band:
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,2

All the rest was shaven and bare.

The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,

The hair was tangled round his jaw:

But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

470

editor of The Works of Lord Byron, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, “Lord Byron gave Mr. Gifford carte blanche to strike out or alter anything at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention whatever to the august "reader's "suggestions and strictures. The sheets on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January 2, 1817.]

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

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

Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

XVII.

Alp turned him from the sickening sight:
Never had shaken his nerves in fight;

i. 1

480

But he better could brook to behold the dying,
Deep in the tide of their warm blood lying, '
Scorched with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,
Than the perishing dead who are past all pain.. 2
There is something of pride in the perilous hour,
Whate'er be the shape in which Death may lower;
For Fame is there to say who bleeds,

And Honour's eye on daring deeds!

But when all is past, it is humbling to tread iii.

O'er the weltering field of the tombless dead, 4 490
And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air,
Beasts of the forest, all gathering there;

All regarding man as their prey,

All rejoicing in his decay.iv.

i. Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying.—[MS. G. Copy.]
ii. Than the rotting dead --[MS. G. erased.]

iii. And when all -. —[MS. G.]

iv. All that liveth on man will prey,
All rejoicing in his decay,

or, Nature rejoicing in his decay.

All that can kindle dismay and disgust

Follow his frame from the bier to the dust.-[MS. G. erased.]

I. ["Than the mangled corpse in its own blood lying."GIFFORD.]

2. [Strike out

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

perishing dead"?-GIFFORD.]

3. [Lines 487, 488 are inserted in the copy in Byron's handwriting.] 4. ["O'er the weltering limbs of the tombless dead."—GIFFORD.]

XVIII.

There is a temple in ruin stands,
Fashioned by long forgotten hands;
Two or three columns, and many a stone,
Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown!
Out upon Time! it will leave no more

Of the things to come than the things before! i. 1
Out upon Time! who for ever will leave

But enough of the past for the future to grieve

500

O'er that which hath been, and o'er that which must be:

What we have seen, our sons shall see ;

Remnants of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone, reared by creatures of clay !".

XIX.

He sate him down at a pillar's base,"
And passed his hand athwart his face;
Like one in dreary musing mood,
Declining was his attitude;

i.

it hath left no more

Of the mightiest things that have gone before.—

ii. After this follows in the MS. erased

Monuments that the coming age

Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage—

Till Ruin makes the relics scarce,

Then Learning acts her solemn farce,

And, roaming through the marble waste,

Prates of beauty, art, and taste.

XIX.

ii.

510

[MS. G. erased.]

That Temple was more in the midst of the plain

or, What of that shrine did yet remain

Lay to his left more in midst of the plain.-[MS. G.]

1. [Omit this couplet.-GIFFORD.]

2. [From this all is beautiful to

"He saw not-he knew not-but nothing is there."-GIFFORD. For "pillar's base," compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza x. line 2, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 105.]