SONNET.

TO GENEVRA.

THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe,1
And yet so lovely, that if Mirth could flush
Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush,
My heart would wish away that ruder glow :
And dazzle not thy deep-blue eyes-but, oh!
While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush,
And into mine my mother's weakness rush,
Soft as the last drops round Heaven's airy bow.
For, through thy long dark lashes low depending,
The soul of melancholy Gentleness

Gleams like a Seraph from the sky descending,
Above all pain, yet pitying all distress;
At once such majesty with sweetness blending,
I worship more, but cannot love thee less.

December 17, 1813. [MS. M. First published, Corsair, 1814 (Second Edition).]

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

"TU MI CHAMAS."

I.

I.

IN moments to delight devoted,1

i.

"My Life!" with tenderest tone, you cry;

Hope whispers not from woe.-[MS. M.]

["In moments to delight devoted

'My Life!' is still the name you give, Dear words! on which my heart had doted Had Man an endless term to live.

But, ah! so swift the seasons roll

That name must be repeated never,

Dear words on which my heart had doted,
If Youth could neither fade nor die.

2.

To Death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change "my Life !" into "my Soul !"
Which, like my Love, exists for ever.

[MS. M.]

ANOTHER VERSION.

You call me still your Life.-Oh! change the word-
Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh:
Say rather I'm your Soul; more just that name,
For, like the soul, my Love can never die.

[Stanzas 1, 2 first published, Childe Harold, 1814 (Seventh Edition). "Another Version," first published, 1832.]

For 'Life' in future say, 'My Soul,'

Which like my love exists for ever."

Byron wrote these lines in 1815, in Lady Lansdowne's album, at Bowood.--Note by Mr. Richard Edgecombe, Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, vii. 46.]

THE GIAOUR:

A FRAGMENT OF A TURKISH TALE.

"One fatal remembrance-one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes--
To which Life nothing darker nor brighter can bring,
For which joy hath no balm—and affliction no sting.'
MOORE.

["As a beam o'er the face," etc.-Irish Melodies.]

INTRODUCTION TO THE GIAOUR.

IN a letter to Murray, dated Pisa, December 12, 1821 (Life, p. 545), Byron avows that the "Giaour Story" had actually some foundation on facts." Soon after the poem appeared (June 5, 1813), "a story was circulated by some gentlewomen a little too close to the text" (Letter to Moore, September 1, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 258), and in order to put himself right with his friends or posterity, Byron wrote to his friend Lord Sligo, who in July, 1810, was anchored off Athens in "a twelve-gun brig, with a crew of fifty men" (see Letters, 1898, i. 289, note 1), requesting him to put on paper not so much the narrative of an actual event, but "what he had heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there." According to the letter which Moore published (Life, p. 178), and which is reprinted in the present issue (Letters, 1898, ii. 257), Byron interposed on behalf of a girl, who "in compliance with the strict letter of the Mohammedan law," had been sewn in a sack and was about to be thrown into the sea. "I was told," adds Lord Sligo, "that you then conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night to Thebes." The letter, which Byron characterizes as "curious," is by no means conclusive, and to judge from the designedly mysterious references in the Journal, dated November 16 and December 5, and in the second postscript to a letter to Professor Clarke, dated December 15, 1813 (Letters, 1898, ii. 321, 361, 311), "the circumstances which were the groundwork” are not before us. "An event," says John Wright (ed. 1832, ix. 145), "in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the