Minotti lifted his aged eye,
And made the sign of a cross with a sigh, Then seized a torch which blazed thereby ; And still he stood, while, with steel and flame, Inward and onward the Mussulman came.
The vaults beneath the mosaic stone
Contain❜d the dead of ages gone;
Their names were on the graven floor,
But now illegible with gore;
The carved crests, and curious hues,
The varied marble's veins diffuse,
Were smear'd, and slippery-stain'd, and strown
With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown :
There were dead above, and the dead below
Lay cold in many a coffin'd row;
You might see them piled in sable state,
By a pale light through a gloomy grate;
But War had enter'd their dark caves,
And stored along the vaulted graves
Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread
In masses by the fleshless dead :
Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine ;
To these a late-form'd train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource
Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.
XXXII.
The foe came on, and few remain
To strive, and those must strive in vain :
For lack of further lives, to slake
The thirst of vengeance now awake,
With barbarous blows they gash the dead,
And lop the already lifeless head,
And fell the statues from their niche,
And spoil the shrines of offerings rich,
And from each other's rude hands wrest
The silver vessels saints had bless’d.
To the high altar on they go;
Oh, but it made a glorious show!
On its table still behold
The cup of consecrated gold;
Massy and deep, a glittering prize,
Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes:
That morn it held the holy wine,
Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,
Which his worshippers drank at the break of day To shrive their souls ere they join'd in the fray.
Still a few drops within it lay;
And round the sacred table glow
Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,
From the purest metal cast;
A spoil-the richest, and the last.
So near they came, the nearest stretch'd To grasp the spoil he almost reach'd,
When old Minotti's hand
Touch'd with the torch the train
Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turban'd victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane,
In one wild roar expired!
The shatter'd town-the walls thrown down-
The waves a moment backward bent-
The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake pass'd-
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast-
Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er
On that too long afflicted shore:
Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorch'd and shrivell'd to a span,
When he fell to earth again
Like a cinder strew'd the plain :
Down the ashes shower like rain;
Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles
With a thousand circling wrinkles;
Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scatter'd o'er the isthmus lay;
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say!
When, in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deem'd she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.
Not the matrons that them bore
Could discern their offspring more;
That one moment left no trace
More of human form or face,
Save a scatter'd scalp or bone:
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,
Deeply dinted in the clay,
All blacken'd there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth-shock disappear'd;
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead ;
The camels from their keepers broke ;
The distant steer forsook the yoke-
The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bullfrog's note, from out the marsh,
Deepmouth'd arose, and doubly harsh
The wolves yell'd on the cavern'd hill,
Where echo roll'd in thunder still;
The jackal's troop, in gather'd cry,10
Bay'd from afar complainingly,
With a mix'd and mournful sound,
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,
And mounted nearer to the sun,
The clouds beneath him seem'd so dun ;
Their smoke assail'd his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek-
Thus was Corinth lost and won!
NOTES TO THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.
The Turcoman hath left his herd.
Page 166, line 38. The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.
Coumourgi-he whose closing scene.
Was it the wind, through some hollow stone.
Page 169, line 37.
I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recentAli Coumourgi, the favorite of three sultans, and ly, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, Grand Vizier to Achmet III. after recovering Pelo-I hope, is convinced that I have not been a 'wilful ponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains mortally wounded in the next, against the Ger- above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed mans, at the battle of Peterwaradin, (in the plain that he will not longer delay the publication of a of Carlowitz,) in Hungary, endeavoring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds, next day. His production, of which I can only add my mite of aplast order was the decapitation of General Brauner, probation to the applause of far more competent and some other German prisoners: and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs! a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."
There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea.
Page 169, line 91.
The reader need hardly be reminded that there
are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.
And their white tusks craunch'd o'er the whiter skull. Page 170, line 8. 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. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.
And each scalp nad a single long tuft of hair. Page 170, line 60. This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.
There is a light cloud by the moon.
Page 171, line 61.
I have been told that the idea expressed from lines 588 to 603 has been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it: but it is not orignal-at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of "Vathek," (I forget the precise page of the French,) a work to which I have before referred, and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.
The horsetails are pluck'd from the ground, and the
sword.
Page 171, line 106.
The horsetail fixed upon a lance, a Pacha's stand-
ard.
And since the day when in the strait.
Page 172, line 98.
In the naval battle, at the mouth of the Darda-
nelles between the Venetians and the Turks.
The jackal's troop, in gather'd cry.
Page 174, line 109.
I believe I have taken a poetical license to transplant the jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and follow armies.
SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES, ESQ.
THE FOLLOWING POEM IS INSCRIBED,
BY ONE WHO HAS LONG ADMIRED HIS TALENTS AND VALUED HIS FRIENDSHIP
THE following poem is grounded on a circumstance mentioned in Gibbon's "Antiquities of the House of Brunswick."-I am aware, that in modern imes the delicacy or fastidiousness of the reader may deem such subjects unfit for the purposes of voetry. The Greek dramatists, and some of the best of our old English writers, were of a different opinion as Alfieri and Schiller have also been, more recently, upon the continent. The following extract will explain the facts on which the story is founded. The name of Azo is substituted for Nicholas, as more metrical.
"Under the reign of Nicholas III. Ferrara was polluted with a domestic tragedy. By the testimony of an attendant, and his own observation, the Marquis of Este discovered the incestuous loves of his wife Parisini, and Hugo his bastard son, a beautiful and valiant youth. They were beheaded in the castle by the sentence of a father and husband, who published his shame, and survived their execution. He was unfortunate, if they were guilty; if they were innocent, he was still more unfortunate; nor is there any possible situation in which I can sincerely approve the last act of justice of a parent."Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. iii. p. 470, new edition.
It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word: And gentle winds, and waters near, Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.
But it is not to list to the waterfall
That Parisina leaves her hall,
And it is not to gaze on the heavenly light
That the lady walks in the shadow of night
And if she sits in Este's bower,
'Tis not for the sake of its full-blown flower-----
She listens-but not for the nightingale-
Though her ear expects as soft a tale.
There glides a step through the foliage thick,
And her cheek grows pale-and her heart beats
quick.
There whispers a voice through the rustling leaves
And her blush returns, and her bosom heaves:
A moment more—and they shall meet—
'Tis past-her lover's at her feet
And what unto them is the world beside,
With all its change of time and tide ?
Its living things-its earth and sky—
Are nothing to their mind and eye.
And heedless as the dead are they
Of aught around, above, beneath;
As if all else had passed away,
They only for each other breathe.
Their very sighs are full of joy
So deep, that did it not decay,
That happy madness would destroy
The hearts which feel its fiery sway:
Of guilt, of peril, do they deem
In that tumultuous tender dream?
Who that have felt that passion's power,
Or paused or fear'd in such an hour?
Or thought how brief such moments last?
But yet-they are already past!
Alas! we must awake before
We know such vision comes no more.
With many a lingering look they leave
The spot of guilty gladness past;
And though they hope, and vow, they grieve
As if that parting were the last.
The frequent sigh-the long embrace-
The lip that there would cling for ever,
While gleams on Parisina's face
The Heaven she fears will not forgive her,
As if each calmly conscious star
Beheld her frailty from afar-
The frequent sigh, the long embrace,
Yet binds them to their trysting-place ;
But it must come, and they must part
In fearful heaviness of heart,
With all the deep and shuddering chill
Which follows fast the deeds of ill.
V.
And Hugo is gone to his lonely bed,
To covet there another's bride;
But she must lay her conscious head
A husband's trusting heart beside.
But fever'd in her sleep she seems,
And red her cheek with troubled dreams,
And mutters she in her unrest
A name she dare not breathe by day,
And clasps her lord unto the breast
Which pants for one away:
And he to that embrace awakes,
And, happy in the thought, mistakes
That dreaming sigh, and warm caress,
For such as he was wont to bless;
And could in very fondness weep
O'er her who loves him even in sleep.
He clasp'd her sleeping to his heart,
And listen'd to each broken word:
He hears-Why doth Prince Azo start,
As if the Archangel's voice he heard?
And well he may-a deeper doom
Could scarcely thunder o'er his tomb,
When he shall wake to sleep no more,
And stand the eternal throne before.
And well he may-his earthly peace
Upon that sound is doom'd to cease:
That sleeping whisper of a name
Bespeaks her guilt and Azo's shame.
And whose that name? that o'er his pillow
Sounds fearful as the breaking billow,
Which rolls the plank upon the shore,
And dashes on the pointed rock
The wretch who sinks to rise no more,-
So came upon his soul the shock.
23
And whose that name? 'tis Hugo's,-his-
In sooth he had not deem'd of this!-
'Tis Hugo's,-he, the child of one
He loved-his own all-evil son-
The offspring of his wayward youth,
When he betrayed Bianca's truth,
The maid whose folly could confide
In him who made her not his bride.
He pluck'd his poniard in its sheath,
But sheath'd it ere the point was bare-
Howe'er unworthy now to breathe,
He could not slay a thing so fair-
At least, not smiling-sleeping-there-
Nay more: he did not wake her then,
But gazed upon her with a glance
Which, had she roused her from her trance,
Had frozen her sense to sleep again—
And o'er his brow the burning lamp
Gleam'd on the dew-drops big and damp.
She spake no more-but still she slumber'dWhile, in his thought, her days are number'd.
And with the morn he sought, and found,
In many a tale from those around,
The proof of all he fear'd to know,
Their present guilt, his future wo:
The long-conniving damsels seek
To save themselves, and would transfer
The guilt-the shame-the doom-to her:
Concealment is no more-they speak
All circumstance which may compel
Full credence to the tale they tell :
And Azo's tortured heart and ear
Have nothing more to feel or hear.
He was not one who brook'd delay:
Within the chamber of his state,
The chief of Este's ancient
sway
Upon his throne of judgment sate;
His nobles and his guards are there,-
Before him is the sinful pair;
Both young-and one how passing fair!
With swordless belt, and fetter'd hand,
Oh, Christ! that such a son should stand
Before a father's face!
Yet thus must Hugo meet his sire,
And hear the sentence of his ire,
The tale of his disgrace!
And yet he seems not overcome,
Although, as yet, his voice be dumb.
And still, and pale, and silently
Did Parisina wait her doom;
How changed since last her speaking eye
Glanced gladness round the glittering room
Where high-born men were proud to wait-
Where Beauty watch'd to imitate
Her gentle voice-her lovely mien-
And gather from her air and gait
The graces of its queen :
Then, had her eye in sorrow wept,
A thousand warriors forth had leapt,
A thousand swords had sheathless shone,
And made her quarrel all their own.
Now, what is she? and what are they?
Can she command, or these obey?
All silent and unheeding now,
With downcast eyes and knitting brow,
And folded arms, and freezing air,
And lips that scarce their scorn forbear,
Her knights, and dames, her court-is there.
And he, the chosen one, whose lance
Had yet been couch'd before her glance,
Who-were his arm a moment free-
Had died or gain'd her liberty;
The minion of his father's bride,-
He, too, is fetter'd by her side;
Nor sees her swollen and full eye swim
Less for her own despair than him :
Those lids-o'er which the violet vein
Wandering, leaves a tender stain,
Shining through the smoothest white
That e'er did softest kiss invite-
Now seem'd with hot and livid glow
To press, not shade, the orbs below;
Which glance so heavily, and fill,
As tear on tear grows gathering still.
And he for her had also wept,
But for the eyes that on him gazed: His sorrow, if he felt it, slept;
Stern and erect his brow was raised.
Whate'er the grief his soul avow'd,
He would not shrink before the crowd;
But yet he dared not look on her:
Remembrance of the hours that were-
His guilt-his love-his present state—
His father's wrath-all good men's hate-
His earthly, his eternal fate-
And her's, oh, her's !-he dared not throw
One look upon that deathlike brow!
Else had his rising heart betray'd
Remorse for all the wreck it made.
And Azo spake :-"But yesterday
I gloried in a wife and son;
That dream this morning pass'd away,
Ere day delines, I shall have none.
My life must linger on alone!
Well, let that pass,-there breathes not one
Who would not do as I have done:
Those ties are broken-not by me;
Let that too pass ;-The doom's prepared! Hugo, the priest awaits on thee,
And then-thy crime's reward!
Away! address thy prayers to Heaven,
Before its evening stars are met-
Learn if thou there canst be forgiven;
Its mercy may absolve thee yet.
But here, upon the earth beneath,
There is no spot where thou and I
Together, for an hour, could breathe:
Farewell! I will not see thee die-
But thou, frail thing! shalt view his head-
Away! I cannot speak the rest:
Go! woman of the wanton breast,
Not I, but thou his blood dost shed:
Go! if that sight thou canst outlive,
And joy thee in the life I give."
And here stern Azo hid his face-
For on his brow the swelling vein
Throbb'd as if back upon his brain
The hot blood ebb'd and flow'd again,
And therefore bow'd he for a space,
And pass'd his shaking hand along
His eye, to veil it from the throng;
While Hugo raised his chained hands,
And for a brief delay demands
His father's ear: the silent sire
Forbids not what his words require.
"It is not that I dread the death--
For thou hast seen me by thy side
All redly through the battle ride,
And that not once a useless brand
Thy slaves have wrested from my hand,
Hath shed more blood in cause of thine,
Than e'er can stain the axe of mine:
Theu gav'st, and may'st resume my breath,
A gift for which I thank thee not:
Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot,
Her slighted love and ruin'd name,
Her offspring's heritage of shame;
But she is in the grave, where he,
Her son, thy rival, soon shall be,
Her broken heart-my sever'd head-
Shall witness for thee from the dead
How trusty and how tender were
Thy youthful love-paternal care.
'Tis true, that I have done thee wrong-
But wrong for wrong :-this, deem'd thy bride,
The other victim of thy pride,
Thou know'st for me was destined long.
Thou saw'st, and covetedst her charms-
And with thy very crime-my birth,
Thou tauntedst me-as little worth;
A match ignoble for her arms,
Because, forsooth, I could not claim
The lawful heirship of thy name,
Nor sit on Este's lineal throne:
Yet, were a few short summers mine,
My name should more than Este's shine
With honors all my own.
I had a sword-and have a breast
That should have won as haught2 a crest
As ever waved along the line
Of all these sovereign sires of thine.
Not always knightly spurs are worn
The brightest by the better born;
And mine have lanced my courser's flank
Before proud chiefs of princely rank,
When charging to the cheering cry
OfEste and of Victory!'
I will not plead the cause of crime,
Nor sue thee to redeem from time
A few brief hours or days that must
At length roll o'er my reckless dust;-
Such maddening moments as my past,
They could not and they did not, last-
Albeit my birth and name be base,
And thy nobility of race
Disdain'd to deck a thing like me-
Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father's face,
And in my spirit-all of thee.
From thee-this tamelessness of heart
From thee-nay, wherefore dost thou start ?---
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