Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race:
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims, ere they yet expire,
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are wither'd on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name-
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallow'd hand shall tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,

Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn;
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!

Wet with thine own best blood shall drip*
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go-and with Ghouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!

'How name ye yon lone Caloyer?

His features I have scann'd before In mine own land: 'tis many a year, Since, dashing by the lonely shore, I saw him urge as fleet a steed As ever served a horseman's need. But once I saw that face, yet then It was so marked with inward pain, I could not pass it by again; It breathes the same dark spirit now, As death were stamp'd upon his brow.'

'Tis twice three years at sunimer tide Since first among our freres he came; And here it soothes him to abide

For some dark deed he will not name.

But never at our vesper prayer,
Nor c'er before confession chair,
Kneels he, nor recks he when arise
Incense or anthem to the skies,
But broods within his cell alone,
His faith and race alike unknown.

Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find that Broucolokas' is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation-at least is so applied to Arsenius, who, according to the Greeks, was a ter his death animated by the devil. The moderns, however, use the word I mention.

The freshness of the face, and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly atrested.

The sea from Paynim land he crost,
And here ascended from the coast;
Yet seems he not of Othman race,
But only Christian in his face:
I'd judge him some stray renegade,
Repentant of the change he made,
Save that he shuns our holy shrine,
Nor tastes the sacred bread and wine.
Great largess to these walls he brought,
And thus our abbot's favour bought;

But were I prior, not a day

Should brook such stranger's further stay,
Or pent within our penance cell
Should doom him there for aye to dwell.
Much in his visions mutters he

Of maiden whelm'd beneath the sea:
Of sabres clashing, foemen flying,
Wrongs avenged, and Moslem dying,
On cliff he hath been known to stand,
And rave as to some bloody hand,
Fresh sever'd from its parent limb,
Invisible to all but him,

Which beckons onward to his grave,
And lures to leap into the wave.'

Dark and unearthly is the scowl
That glares beneath his dusky cowl:
The flash of that dilating eye
Reveals too much of times gone by;
Though varying, indistinct its hue,
Oft will his glance the gazer rue,
For in it lurks that nameless spell,
Which speaks, itself unspeakable,
A spirit yet unquell'd and high,
That claims and keeps ascendancy;
And like the bird whose pinions quake,

But cannot fly the gazing snake,

Will others quail beneath his look,

Nor 'scape the glance they scarce can brook.
From him the half-affrighted friar
When met alone would fain retire,
As if that high and bitter smile
Transferr'd to others fear and guile:
Not oft to smile descendeth he;
And when he doth, 'tis sad to see
That he but mocks at Misery.
How that pale lip will curl and quiver!
Then fix once more as if for ever;
As if his sorrow or disdain
Forbade him e'er to smile again,
Well were it so-such ghastly mirth,
From joyaunce ne'er derived its birth.
But sadder still it were to trace
What once were feelings in that face;
Time hath not yet the features fix'd,
But brighter traits with evil mix'd;
And there are hues not always faded,
Which speak a mind not all degraded,
Even by the crimes through which it waded,
The common crowd but see the gloom
Of wayward deeds, and fitting doom:
The close observer can espy
A noble soul, and lineage high:

Alas! though both bestow'd in vain,
Which Grief could change, and Guilt could stain,
It was no vulgar tenement

To which such lofty gifts were lent,
And still with little less than dread
On such the sight is riveted.
The roofless cot, decay'd and rent,
Will scarce delay the passer-by;
The tower by war or tempest bent,
While yet may frown one battlement,

Demands and daunts the stranger's eye;
Each ivied arch, and pillar lone,
Pleads haughtily for glories gone!

'His floating robe around him folding,

Slow sweeps he through the column d aisle ; With dread beheld, with gloom beholding The rites that sanctify the pile.

But when the anthem shakes the choir,
And kneel the monks, his steps retire;
By yonder lone and wavering torch
His aspect glares within the porch;
There will he pause till all is done-
And hear the prayer, but utter none.
See-by the half-illumined wall

His hood fly back, his dark hair fall,
That pale brow wildly wreathing round,
As if the Gorgon there had bound
The sablest of the serpent-braid
That o'er her fearful forehead stray'd;
For he declines the convent oath,
And leaves those locks' unhallow'd growth,
But wears our garb in all beside;
And, not from piety but pride,
Gives wealth to walls that never heard
Of his one holy vow nor word.
Lo mark ye, as the harmony
Peals louder praises to the sky,
That livid cheek, that stony air
Of mix'd defiance and despair!
Saint Francis, keep him from the shrine !
Else may we dread the wrath divine
Made manifest by awful sign.

If ever evil angel bore

The form of mortal, such he wore :
By all my hope of sins forgiven,

Such looks are not of earth nor heaven!'

To love the softest hearts are prone,
But such can ne'er be all his own;
Too timid in his woes to share,
Too meek to meet or brave despair:
And sterner hearts alone may feel
The wound that time can never heal.
The rugged metal of the mine
Must burn before its surface shine,
But plunged within the furnace-flame,

It bends and melts-though still the same;
Then, temper'd to thy want, or will,
"Twill serve thee to defend or kill:

A breastplate for thine hour of need,
Or blade to bid thy foeman bleed;
But if a dagger's form it hear.

Let those who shape its edge beware!
Thus passion's fire, and woman's art,

Can turn and tame the sterner heart; From these its form and tone are ta'en, And what they make it, must remain, But break-before it bend again.

If solitude succeed to grief,
Release from pain is sight relief;
The vacant bosom's wilderness

Might thank the pang that made it less.
We loathe what none are left to share:
Even bliss-twere woe alone to bear;
The heart once left thus desolate
Must fly at last for ease to hate.
It is as if the dead could feel
The icy worm around them steal,
And shudder, as the reptiles creep
To revel o'er their rotting sleep,
Without the power to scare away
The cold consumers of their clay!
It is as if the desert-bird.*

Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famish'd nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferr'd,
Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemploy'd.
Who would be doom'd to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun!
Less hideous far the tempest's roar
Than ne er to brave the billows more-
Thrown, when the war of winds is o er,
A lonely wreck on fortune's shore,
'Mid sullen calm, and silent bay,
Unseen to drop by dull decay ;-
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!

Father thy days have pass'd in peace, 'Mid counted beads, and countless prayer: To bid the sins of others cease,

Thyself without a crime or care,
Save transient ills that all must bear,
Has been thy lot from youth to age;
And thou wilt bless thee from the rage
Of passions fierce and uncontroll ́d,
Such as thy penitents unfold,
Whose secret sins and sorrows rest
Within thy pure and pitying breast.
My days, though few, have pass'd below
In much of joy, but more of woe;

Yet still, in hours of love or strife,

I've 'scaped the weariness of life:

Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes,

I loathed the languor of repose.

Now nothing left to love or hate,

No more with hope or pride elate,

The pelican is, I believe, the bird so libelled, by the imputation of feeding her chickens with her blood,

I'd rather be the thing that crawls
Most noxious o'er a dungeon's walls,
Than pass my dull, unvarying days,
Condemn'd to meditate and gaze.
Yet lurks a wish within my breast
For rest-but not to feel 'tis rest.
Soon shall my fate that wish fulfil:

And I shall sleep without the dream Of what I was, and would be still.

Dark as to thee my deeds may seem: My memory now is but the tomb

Of joys long dead; my hope, their doom:
Though better to have died with those
Than bear a life of lingering woes.
My spirit shrunk not to sustain
The searching throes of ceaseless pain;
Nor sought the self-accorded grave
Of ancient fool and modern knave:
Yet death I have not fear'd to meet;
And in the field it had been sweet,
Had danger woo'd me on to move
The slave of glory, not of love.

I've braved it—not for honour's boast;
I smile at laurels won or lost;
To such let others carve their way,
For high renown, or hireling pay:
But place again before my eyes
Aught that I deem a worthy prize-
The maid I love, the man I hate-
And I will hunt the steps of fate,
To save or slay, as these require,
Through rending steel and rolling fire:

Nor need'st thou doubt this speech from one
Who would but do-what he hath done.
Death is but what the haughty brave,
The weak must bear, the wretch must crave:
Then let life go to Him who gave;
I have not quail'd to danger's brow
When high and happy-need I now?

'I loved her, Friar! nay, adored

But these are words that all can use-
I proved it more in deed than word;
There's blood upon that dinted sword,
A stain its steel can never lose :
'Twas shed for her, who died for me,

It warm d the heart of one abhorr'd:
Nay, start not-no-nor bend thy knee,
Nor 'midst my sins such act record:
Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,
For he was hostile to thy creed:
The very name of Nazarene
Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen.
Ungrateful fool! since but for brands
Well wielded in some hardy hands,
And wounds by Galileans given,
The surest pass to Turkish heaven,
For him his Houris still might wait
Impatient at the Prophet's gate.
I loved her-love will find its way
Through paths where wolves would fear to
prey;

And if it dares enough, 'twere hard
If passion met not some reward-
No matter how, or where, or why,
I did not vainly seek, nor sigh:
Yet sometimes, with remorse, in vain
I wish she had not loved again.
She died-I dare not tell thee how:
But look-'tis written on my brow!
There read of Cain the curse and crime,
In characters unworn by time:
Still, ere thou dost condemn me, pause:
Not mine the act, though I the cause.
Yet did he but what I had done.
Had she been false to more than one.
Faithless to him, he gave the blow;
But true to me, I laid him low:
Howe'er deserved her doom might be,
Her treachery was truth to me ;
To me she gave her heart, that all
Which tyranny can ne'er enthrall;
And I, alas, too late to save!
Yet all I then could give, I gave-
'Twas some relief-our foe a grave.
His death sits lightly; but her fate
Has made me what thou well may'st hate.
His doom was seal'd-he knew it well,
Warn'd by the voice of stern Taheer
Deep in whose darkly boding ear*
The deathshot peal'd of murder near,

As filed the troop to where they fell!

The

This superstition of a second-hearing (for I never met with downright second-sight in the East) fell once under my own observation. On my third journey to Cape Colonna, early in 1811, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratía and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri riding rather out of the path, and leaning his head upon his hand, as if in pain. I rode up and inquired. We are in peril, he answered. What peril? we are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Messalunghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us, well armed, and the Choriates have not courage to be thieves.' True, Affendi, but nevertheless the shot is ringing in my ears.' shot! not a tophaike has been fired this morning.' I hear it, notwithstanding-Bom-Bom-as plainly as I hear your voice. Psha! As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be.' I left this quick-eared predestinarian, and rode up toBasili, his Christian com. patriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence. We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely. saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer. Romaic, Arnaut, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman. While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns. I thought he was deranged into an antiquarian, and asked him if he had become a ⚫ Palac castro man? No,' said he, but these pillars will be useful in making a stand;' and added other remarks, which at least evinced his own belief in his troublesome faculty of fore-hearing. On our return to Athens we heard from Leoné (a prisoner set ashore some days after) of the intended attack of the Mainotes, mentioned, with the cause of its not taking place, in the notes to Childe Harold, Canto 11. I was at some pains to question the man, and he described the dresses, arms,and marks of the horses of our party so accurately that, with other circumstances, we could not doubt of his being in villanous company, and ourselves in a bad neighbourhood. Dervish became a soothsayer for life, and I daresay he is now hearing more musketry

He died too in the battle broil,

A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;
One cry to Mahomet for aid,
One prayer to Allah all he made:

He knew and crossed me in the fray---
I gazed upon him where he lay,
And watch'd his spirit ebb away:
Though pierced like pard by hunters' steel,
He felt not half that now I feel.

I search'd, but vainly search'd, to find
The workings of the wounded mind;
Each feature of that sullen corse
Betray'd his rage, but no remorse.
Oh, what had Vengeance given to trace
Despair upon his dying face!

The late repentance of that hour,
When Penitence hath lost her power
To tear one terror from the grave,
And will not soothe, and cannot save.

'The cold in clime are cold in blood,

Their love can scarce deserve the name: But mine was like the lava flood,

That boils in Ætna's breast of flame.
I cannot prate in puling strain
Of ladye-love, and beauty's chain :

If changing cheek, and scorching vein,
Lips taught to writhe, but not complain,
If bursting heart, and madd'ning brain,
And daring deed, and vengeful steel,
And all that I have felt and feel,
Betoken love-that love was mine,
And shown by many a bitter sign
'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh,
I knew but to obtain or die.

I die-but first, I have possess'd,

And come what may, I have been bless'd.
Shall I the doom I sought upbraid?
No-reft of all, yet undismay'd,
But for the thought of Leila slain,
Give me the pleasure with the pain,
So would I live and love again.
I grieve-but not, my holy guide.
For him who dies, but her who died!
She sleeps beneath the wandering wave-
Ah! had she but an earthly grave,
This breaking heart and throbbing head
Should seek and share her narrow bed.
She was a form of life and light,
That, seen, became a part of sight,

than ever will be fired, to the great refreshment of the Arnauts of Berat, and his native mountains. I shall mention one trait more of this singular race. In March 1811, a remarkably stout and active Arnaut came (I believe the fiftieth on the same errand) to offer himself as an attendant, which was declined Well, Affendi,' quoth he, may you live !-you would have found me useful. I shall leave the town for the hills to-morrow; in the winter I return; perhaps you will then receive me. Dervish, who was present, remarked as a thing of course, and of no consequence, 'In the meantime he will join the Klephtes' (robbers), which was true to the letter. If not cut off, they come down in the winter, and pass it unmolested in some town, where they are often as well known as their exploits.

And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The Morning-star of Memory!

'Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven:
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given

To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A Ray of Him who form'd the whole;
A Glory circling round the soul !

I grant my love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, hers was not guilt!
She was my life's unerring light:

That quench'd, what beam shall break my night?
Oh! would it shone to lead me still,
Although to death or deadliest ill!
Why marvel ye, if they who lose

This present joy, this future hope,
No more with sorrow meekly cope;
In frenzy then their fate accuse :
In madness do those fearful deeds

That seem to add but guilt to woe?
Alas! the breast that inly bleeds

Hath nought to dread from outward blow:
Who falls from all he knows of bliss,
Cares little into what abyss.

Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now
To thee, old man, my deeds appear:

I read abhorrence on thy brow,
And this too was I born to bear!
'Tis true, that, like that bird of prey,
With havoc have I mark'd my way:
But this was taught me by the dove,
To die-and know no second love.
This lesson yet hath man to learn,
Taught by the thing he dares to spurn!
The bird that sings within the brake,
The swan that swims upon the lake,
One mate, and one alone, will take.
And let the fool still prone to range,
And sneer on all who cannot change,
Partake his jest with boasting boys;
I envy not his varied joys,

But deem such feeble, heartless man,
Less than yon solitary swan;
Far, far beneath the shallow maid
He left believing and betray'd.
Such shame at least was never mine--
Leila each thought was only thine!
My good, my guilt, my weal, my woe,
My hope on high-my all below.
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same.
The very crimes that mar my youth,
This bed of death-attest my truth!
'Tis all too late-thou wert, thou art
The cherish'd madness of my heart!