This wherefore should I not reveal ?
Why wilt thou urge me to conceal ?↳
I know the Pacha's haughty mood
To thee hath never boded good;
And he so often storms at nought,
Allah forbid that e'er he ought!
And why I know not, but within
My heart concealment weighs like sin."
If then such secrecy be crime,

And such it feels while lurking here;
Oh, Selim! tell me yet in time,

Nor leave me thus to thoughts of fear.
Ah! yonder see the Tchocadar,1
My father leaves the mimic war;

I tremble now to meet his eye

Say, Selim, canst thou tell me why ?"

XIV.

"Zuleika-to thy tower's retreat
Betake thee-Giaffir I can greet:

And now with him I fain must prate
Of firmans, imposts, levies, state.

There's fearful news from Danube's banks,
Our Vizier nobly thins his ranks

i. This vow I should no more conceal

And wherefore should I not reveal!—[MS.]

ii. My breast is consciousness of sin

But when and where and what the crime

I almost feel is lurking here.-[MS.]

440

450

I. "Tchocadar "— —one of the attendants who precedes a man of authority.

[See D'Ohsson's Tableau Générale, etc., 1787, ii. 159, and Plates 87, 88. The Turks seem to have used the Persian word chawki-där, an officer of the guard-house, a policeman (whence our slang word "chokey"), for a "valet de pied," or, in the case of the Sultan, for an apparitor. The French spelling points to D'Ohsson as Byron's authority.]

For which the Giaour may give him thanks!

Our Sultan hath a shorter way

Such costly triumph to repay.

But, mark me, when the twilight drum

460

Hath warned the troops to food and sleep,

Unto thy cell with Selim come;

Then softly from the Haram creep

Where we may wander by the deep:
Our garden battlements are steep;
Nor these will rash intruder climb
To list our words, or stint our time;
And if he doth, I want not steel

Which some have felt, and more may feel.
Then shalt thou learn of Selim more
Than thou hast heard or thought before:

Trust me, Zuleika-fear not me!
Thou know'st I hold a Haram key."

"Fear thee, my Selim! ne'er till now
Did words like this-

L
"Delay not thou; ↳
I keep the key-and Haroun's guard
Have some, and hope of more reward.
To-night, Zuleika, thou shalt hear
My tale, my purpose, and my fear :
I am not, love! what I appear."

i. Be silent thou.-[MS.]

470

480

VOL. III,

N

CANTO THE SECOND.i

I.

THE winds are high on Helle's wave,
As on that night of stormy water
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young-the beautiful--the brave-
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter.
Oh when alone along the sky
Her turret-torch was blazing high,
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,

And shrieking sea-birds warned him home;

And clouds aloft and tides below,

With signs and sounds, forbade to go,
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw that light of Love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
"Ye waves, divide not lovers long!"-
That tale is old, but Love anew 1

1

May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

i. Nov. 9h 1813.—[MS.]

490

500

1. [Vide Ovid, Heroïdes, Ep. xix.; and the De IIerone atque Leandro of Musæus.]

II.

The winds are high and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,
The desert of old Priam's pride;

The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All-save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!

III.

Oh! yet-for there my steps have been;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore,
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne-
Minstrel with thee to muse, to mourn,

To trace again those fields of

Believing every hillock green

yore,

Contains no fabled hero's ashes,

And that around the undoubted scene

510

Thine own "broad Hellespont"1 still dashes,

Be long my lot! and cold were he

Who there could gaze denying thee!

520

1. The wrangling about this epithet, "the broad Hellespont" or the "boundless Hellespont," whether it means one or the other, or what it means at all, has been beyond all possibility of detail. I have even heard it disputed on the spot; and not foreseeing a speedy conclusion to the controversy, amused myself with swimming across it in the mean time; and probably may again, before the point is settled. Indeed, the question as to the truth of " the tale of Troy divine" still continues, much of it resting upon the talismanic word "Teιpos:" probably Homer had the same notion of distance that a coquette has of time; and when he talks of boundless, means half a mile; as the latter, by a like figure, when she says eternal attachment, simply specifies three weeks.

66

[For a defence of the Homeric areípwv, and for a résumé of the "wrangling of the topographers, Jean Baptiste Le Chevalier (1752-1836) and Jacob Bryant (1715-1804), etc., see Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 179-185.]

IV.

The Night hath closed on Helle's stream,
Nor yet hath risen on Ida's hill

That Moon, which shone on his high theme:
No warrior chides her peaceful beam,

But conscious shepherds bless it still.
Their flocks are grazing on the Mound

Of him who felt the Dardan's arrow:
That mighty heap of gathered ground
Which Ammon's son ran proudly round,1
By nations raised, by monarchs crowned,
Is now a lone and nameless barrow !
Within-thy dwelling-place how narrow ! 2
Without-can only strangers breathe
The name of him that was beneath :
Dust long outlasts the storied stone;
But Thou-thy very dust is gone!

v.

Late, late to-night will Dian cheer
The swain, and chase the boatman's fear;

Till then-no beacon on the cliff

May shape the course of struggling skiff;

530

540

1. Before his Persian invasion, and crowned the altar with laurel, etc. He was afterwards imitated by Caracalla in his race. It is believed that the last also poisoned a friend, named Festus, for the sake of new Patroclan games. I have seen the sheep feeding on the tombs of Ayietes and Antilochus: the first is in the centre of the plain.

[Alexander placed a garland on the tomb of Achilles, and "went through the ceremony of anointing himself with oil, and running naked up to it."-Plut. Vita, "Alexander M.," cap. xv. line 25, Lipsia, 1814, vi. 187. For the tombs of Æsyetes, etc., see Travels in Albania, ii. 149-151.]

2. [Compare-

"Or narrow if needs must be,

Outside are the storms and the strangers."

Never the Time, etc., lines 19, 20, by Robert Browning.]