On promise to return before The day when Giaffir's charge was o'er. XIX. The shallop of a trusty Moor I sought by turns, and saw them all: Is done, 'twill then be time more meet XX. 'Tis true, they are a lawless brood, That never sees with terror's eyes; The wisdom of the cautious Frank- And oft around the cavern fire To snatch the Rayahs from their fate.+ Ay let me like the ocean-Patriarch roam, But be the star that guides the wanderer, Thou! For thee in those bright isles is built a bower A thousand swords, with Selim's heart and hand, He makes a solitude, and calls it-peace! This first of voyages is one of the few with which the Mussulmans profess much acquaintance. The wandering life of the Arabs, Tartars, and Turkomans, will be found well detailed in any book of Eastern travels. That it possesses a charm peculiar to itself, cannot be denied. A young French renegado confessed to Chateaubriand, that he never found himself alone, galloping in the desert, without a sensation approaching to rapture, which was indescribable. Jannat al Aden,' the perpetual abode, the Mussulman paradise. And woman, more than man, when death or woe, Earth-sea alike-our world within our arms! To Love, whose deadliest bane is human Art: This hour bestows, or ever bars escape. Few words remain of mine my tale to close; XXI. 'His head and faith from doubt and death No deed they've done, nor deed shall do, But yet, though thou art plighted mine, XXII. Zuleika, mute and motionless, But ere her lip, or even her eye, Far, wide, through every thicket spread, XXIII. Dauntless he stood--"Tis come-soon past- But yet my band not far from shore Despair benumb'd her breast and eye!-- That sound hath drawn my foes more nigh Then forth my father's scimitar, Thou ne'er hast seen less equal war! Farewell, Zuleika !-Sweet! retire; Yet stay within-here linger safe, At thee his rage will only chafe. Stir not-lest even to thee perchance Some erring blade or ball should glance. Fear'st thou for him?-may I expire If in this strife I seek thy sire! No-though by him that poison pour'd; No-though again he call me coward! But tamely shall I meet their steel? No-as each crest save his may feel!' XXIV. One bound he made, and gain'd the sand. The foremost of the prying band, A gasping head, a quivering trunk : And almost met the meeting wave: They come 'tis but to add to slaughterHis heart's best blood is on the water! XXV. Escaped from shot, unharm'd by steel, For her his eye but sought in vain? Hath doom'd his death, or fix'd his chain. Sad proof, in peril and in pain, How late will Lover's hope remain ! Fast from his breast the blood is bubbling, XXVI. Morn slowly rolls the clouds away: Few trophies of the fight are there : The shouts that shook the midnight-bay Are silent; but some signs of fray That strand of strife may bear. May there be mark'd; nor far remote "Tis rent in twain-one dark-red stain And cast on Lemnos' shore: His head heaves with the heaving billow; The only heart, the only eye XXVII. By Helle's stream there is a voice of wail! Thy destined lord is come too late : The loud Wul-wulleh warn his distant ear? + Thy handmaids weeping at the gate, The Koran-chanters of the hymn of fate, The silent slaves with folded arms that wait, Sighs in the hall, and shrieks upon the gale, Tell him thy tale! Thou didst not view thy Selim fall! That fearful moment when he left the cave He was thy hope-thy joy-thy love-thine all- morse! [lies! And, oh! that pang where more than madness The worm that will not sleep-and never dies; Thought of the gloomy day and ghastly night, That dreads the darkness, and yet loathes the light, heart! That winds around, and tears the quivering Ah, wherefore not consume it-and depart! Woe to thee, rash and unrelenting chief! Vainly thou heap'st the dust upon thy head, Vainly the sackcloth o'er thy limbs doth spread; By that same hand Abdallah-Selim-bled. Now let it tear hy beard in idle grief: Thy pride of heart, thy bride for Osman's bed, She, whom thy sultan had but seen to wed, Thy Daughter's dead! Hope of thine age, thy twilight's lonely beam, The Star hath set that shone on Helle's stream. What quench'd its ray?-the blood that thou hast shed! Hark! to the hurried question of Despair: A turban is carved in stone above the graves of men only. The death-song of the Turkish women. The 'silent slaves are the men, whose notions of decorum forbid com. plaint in public. 'I came to the place of my birth, and cried, "The friends of my youth, where are they?" and an Echo answered "Where are they?"-From an Arabic MS. The above quotation (from which the idea in the test is XXVIII. Within the place of thousand tombs And withers not, though branch and leaf Are stamp'd with an eternal grief, Like early unrequited Love, Its lonely lustre, meek and pale: And yet, though storms and blight assail, And hands more rude than wintry sky May wring it from the stem-in vain- For well may maids of Helle deem Nor droops, though Spring refuse her shower, Nor woos the summer beam : To it the livelong night there sings A bird unseen--but not remote: But soft as harp that Houri strings It were the Bulbul; but his throat, Though mournful, pours not such a strain : For they who listen cannot leave The spot, but linger there and grieve, As if they loved in vain! And yet so sweet the tears they shed, "Tis sorrow so unmix'd with dread, taken) must be already familiar to every reader-it is given in the first annotation, p. 67, of The Pleasures of Memory; a poem so well known as to render a reference almost superfluous, but to whose pages all will be delighted to recur. They scarce can bear the morn to break And longer yet would weep and wake, But when the day-blush bursts from high, And some have been who could believe, "Tis from her cypress' summit heard, And hence extended by the billow, ་ "Tis named the Pirate-phantom's pillow !' Where first it lay, that mourning flower Hath flourish'd; flourisheth this hour, Alone and dewy, coldly pure and pale; As weeping Beauty's cheek at Sorrow's tale. And airy tongues that syllable men's names.'-MII TON. For a belief that the souls of the dead inhabit the form of birds, we need not travel to the East. Lord Lyttelton's ghost story, the belief of the Duchess of Kendal that George I. flew into her window in the shape of a raven (see Orford's Reini niscences), and many other instances, bring this superstition nearer home. The most singular was the whim of a Worcester lady, who, believing her daughter to exist in the shape of a singing bird, literally furnished her pew in the cathedral with cages full of the kind; and as she was rich, and a benefactress in beautifying the church, no objection was made to her harmless folly. For this anecdote, see Orford's Letters. THE CORSAIR 1814. I suoi pensieri in lui dormir non ponno." TASSO, Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto L MY DEAR Moore, TO THOMAS MOORE, ESQ. I DEDICATE to you the last production with which I shall trespass on public patience, and your indulgence, for some years; and I own that I feel anxious to avail myself of this latest and only opportunity of adorning my pages with a name consecrated by unshaken public principle, and the most undoubted and various talents. While Ireland ranks you among the firmest of her patriots; while you stand alone the first of her bards in her estimation, and Britain repeats and ratifies the decree, permit one whose only regret, since our first acquaintance, has been the years he had lost before it commenced, to add the humble but sincere suffrage of friendship to the voice of more than one nation. It will at least prove to you that I have neither forgotten the gratification derived from your society, nor abandoned the prospect of its renewal, whenever your leisure or inclination allows you to atone to your friends for too long an absence. It is said among those friends, I trust truly, that you are engaged in the composition of a poem whose scene will be laid in the East; none can do those scenes so much justice. The wrongs of your own country, the magnificent and fiery spirit of her sons, the beauty and feeling of her daughters, may there be found; and Collins, when he denominated his Oriental his Irish Eclogues, was not aware how true, at least, was a part of his parallel. Your imagination will create a warmer sun, and less clouded sky; but wildness, tenderness, and originality are part of your national claim of Oriental descent, to which you have already thus far proved your title more clearly than the most zealous of your country's antiquarians. May I add a few words on a subject on which all men are supposed to be fluent, and none agreeable?---Self. I have written much, and published more than enough to demand a longer silence than I now meditate; but, for some years to come, it is my intention to tempt no further the award of 'gods, men, nor columns.' In the present composition I have attempted not the most difficult, but perhaps the best adapted measure to our language, the good old and now neglected heroic couplet. The stanza of Spenser is perhaps too slow and dignified for narrative; though, I confess, it is the measure most after my own heart. Scott alone, of the present generation, has hitherto completely triumphed over the fatal facility of the octo-syllabic verse; and this is not the least victory of his fertile and mighty genius. In blank verse, Milton, Thomson, and our dramatists, are the beacons that shine along the deep, but warn us from the rough and barren rock on which they are kindled. The heroic couplet is not the most popular measure, certainly; but as I did not deviate into the other from a wish to flatter what is called public opinion, I shall quit it without further apology, and take my chance once more with that versification in which I have hitherto published nothing but compositions whose former circulation is part of my present, and will be of my future regret. With regard to my story, and stories in general, I should have been glad to have rendered my personages more perfect and amiable, if possible, inasmuch as I have been sometimes criticized, and considered no less responsible for their deeds and qualities than if all had been personal Be it so. If I have deviated into the gloomy vanity of 'drawing from self,' the pictures are probably like, since they are unfavourable; and if not, those who know me are undeceived, and those who do not, I have little interest in undeceiving. I have no particular desire that any but my acquaintance should think the author better than the beings of his imagining; but I cannot help a little surprise, and perhaps amusement, at some odd critical exceptions in the present instance, when I see several bards (far more deserving, I allow) in very reputable plight, and quite exempted from all participation in the faults of those heroes, who, nevertheless, might be found with little more morality than 'The Giaour,' and perhaps-but no-I must admit Childe Harold to be a very repulsive personage; and as to his identity, those who like it must give him whatever alias they please. |