Thee and thine, thy crown and realm,
One last wreck shall overwhelm.
Woe is me, Alhama!
'He who holds no laws in awe,
He must perish by the law;
And Granada must be won,
And thyself with her undone.'
Woe is me, Alhama !
Fire flashed from out the old Moor's eyes,
The Monarch's wrath began to rise,
Because he answered, and because
He spake exceeding well of laws.
Woe is me, Alhama !
'There is no law to say such things
As may disgust the ear of kings:'
Thus, snorting with his choler, said
The Moorish King, and doom'd him dead.
Woe is me, Alhama!
Moor Alfaqui! Moor Alfaqui!
Though thy beard so hoary be,
The King hath sent to have thee seized,
For Alhama's loss displeased.
Woe is me, Alhama!
And to fix thy head upon
High Alhambra's loftiest stone;
That this for thee should be the law,
And others tremble when they saw.
Woe is me, Alhama!
'Cavalier, and man of worth!
Let these words of mine go forth!
Let the Moorish Monarch know,
That to him I nothing owe.
Woe is me, Alhama!
'But on my soul Alhama weighs,
And on my inmost spirit preys;
And if the King his land hath lost,
Yet others may have lost the most.
Woe is me, Alhama!
Sires have lost their children, wives
Their lords, and valiant men their lives;
One what best his love might claim
Hath lost, another wealth, or fame.
Woe is me, Alhama!
'I lost a damsel in that hour,
Of all the land the loveliest flower;
Doubloons a hundred I would pay,
And think her ransom cheap that day.'
Woe is me, Alhama!
And as these things the old Moor said,
They severed from the trunk his head;
And to the Alhambra's wall with speed
'Twas carried, as the King decreed.
Woe is me, Alhama!
And men and infants therein weep
Their loss, so heavy and so deep;
Granada's ladies, all she rears
Within her walls, burst into tears.
Woe is me, Alhama!
And from the windows o'er the walls The sable web of mourning falls; The King weeps as a woman o'er His loss, for it is much and sore. Woe is me, Alhama!
THEY say that hope is happiness;
But genuine love must prize the past,
And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first-they set the last;
And all that Memory loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.
Alas! it is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
TO THOMAS MOORE.
My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee!
Here's a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasped upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
'Tis to thee that I would drink.
With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Should be-Peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore.
TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. ABSENT or present, still to thee, My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me,
In turn thy converse and thy song.
But when the dreaded hour shall come,
By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And MEMORY' o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will she then repay Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while ages roll away, Her name immortally with thing!
THE "Ode to Venice" was written during the period of Byron's residence in the "city of a hundred isles," n 1818. Shelley, who visited him at that period, used to say that all he observed of the workings of Byron's mind during his visit, gave him a far higher idea of its powers than he had ever before entertained.
The city, the history of which is so full of romantic and poetic incidents, suggested also the poet's two dramas, "Marino Faliero 'and the "Two Foscari." The lament for the lost glory of the Ocean Queen has happily not proved prophetic.
"There is no Hope for Nations," cannot be said of the ransomed Venetia, who shares the hopes, the energies, and the future of young Italy. There was something prosaic, and like this workaday nineteenth century, in the means employed for her deliverance; but the origin of her freedom may be traced back to the fields of Magenta and Solferino, red with the best blood of her brethren.-Edit.
OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?-anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers-as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping
Oh! agony-that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears,
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas-and to the busy hum
Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning.
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek:
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him, and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round, and shadows
busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,-and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.
There is no hope for nations!-Search the page
Of many thousand years—the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought, or little still we lean On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear Our strength away in wrestling with the air: For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts Are of as high an order-they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot plough-shares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed !
Save the few spirits who, despite of all,
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd,
Gushing from Freedom's fountains, when the crowd,
Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plough'd
The sand, or if there sprung the yellow grain,
'Twas not for them, their necks were too much
bow'd,
And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain:
Yes! the few spirits,-who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations-fair, when free-
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench her spirit; in her fate
All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled-with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship; even her crimes
Were of the softer order-born of Love,
She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead,
But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And call'd the 'kingdom' of a conquering foe,
But knows what all-and, most of all, we know—
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
For tyranny of iate is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science-
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
May strike to those whose red right hands have
bought
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still for
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering:-better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopyla,
Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!
TRANSLATION FROM VITTORELLI.
ON A NUN.
Sonnet composed in the name of a father, whose daughter had recently died shortly after her marriage; and addressed to the father of her who had lately taken the veil.
OF two fair virgins, modest, though admired,
Heaven made us happy; and now, wretched sires,
Heaven for a nobler doom their worth desires,
And gazing upon either, both required.
Mine, while the torch of Hymen newly fired
Becomes extinguish'd, soon-too soon-expires:
But thine, within the closing grate retired,
Eternal captive, to her God aspires.
But thou at least from out the jealous door,
Which shuts between your never-meeting eyes,
May'st hear her sweet and pious voice once more:
I to the marble, where my daughter lies,
Rush, the swoln flood of bitterness I pour,
And knock, and knock, and knock-but none replies.
THE subsequent poems were written at the request of my friend the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird for a Selection of Hebrew Melodies.
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.
SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
THE HARP THE MONARCH MINSTREL
THE harp the monarch minstrel swept,
The King of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music hallow'd while she wept
O'er tones her heart of hearts had given,
Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven !
It soften'd men of iron mould,
It gave them virtues not their own;
No ear so dull, no soul so cold,
That felt not, fired not to the tone,
Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne.
It told the triumphs of our King,
It wafted glory to our God;
It made our gladden'd valleys ring,
The cedars bow, the mountains nod;
Its sound aspired to heaven and there abode! Since then, though heard on earth no more,
Devotion and her daughter Love,
Still bid the bursting spirit soar
To sounds that seem as from above,
In dreams that day's broad light can not remove.
IF THAT HIGH WORLD.
IF that high world, which lies beyond Our own, surviving Love endears; If there the cherish'd heart be fond. The eye the same, except in tears→→→
How welcome those untrodden spheres!
How sweet this very hour to die!
To soar from earth, and find all fears
Lost in thy light-Eternity!
It must be so: 'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink; And striving to o'erleap the gulf, Yet cling to Being's severing link. Oh! in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares ; With them the immortal waters drink, And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!
THE WILD GAZELLE.
THE wild gazelle on Judah's hills
Exulting yet may bound,
And drink from all the living rills
That gush on holy ground:
Its airy step and glorious eye
May glance in tameless transport by:
A step as fleet, an eye more bright,
Hath Judah witness'd there;
And o'er her scenes of lost delight
Inhabitants more fair.
The cedars wave on Lebanon,
But Judah's statelier maids are gone!
More blest each palm that shades those plains Than Israel's scatter'd race;
For, taking root, it there remains
In solitary grace:
It cannot quit its place of birth,
It will not live in other earth.
But we must wander witheringly.
In other lands to die;
And where our fathers' ashes be,
Our own may never lie:
Our temple hath not left a stone,
And Mockery sits on Salem's throne.
OH WEEP FOR THOSE.
OH! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;
Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell;
Mourn-where their God hath dwelt, the godless
dwell!
And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet?
And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet?
And Judah's melody once more rejoice
The hearts that leap'd before its heavenly voice?
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest!
The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave, Mankind their country-Israel but the grave!
ON JORDAN'S BANKS.
ON Jordan's banks the Arab's camels stray,
On Sion's hill the False One's votaries pray,
The Baal-adorer bows on Sinai's steep-
Yet there even there-O God! Thy thunders sleep
There where Thy finger scorch'd the tablet stone!
There where Thy shadow to thy people shone!
Thy glory shrouded in its garb of fire:
Thyself-none living see and not expire!
Oh! in the lightning let thy glance appear;
Sweep from his shiver'd hand the oppressor's spear:
How long by tyrants shall Thy land be trod ?
How long Thy temple worshipless, O God!
JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.
SINCE our Country, our God-oh, my sire!
Demand that thy daughter expire;
Since thy triumph was bought by thy vow-
Strike the bosom that's bared for thee now !
And the voice of my mourning is o'er,
And the mountains behold me no more:
If the hand that I love lay me low,
There cannot be pain in the blow!
And of this, O my father! be sure-
That the blood of thy child is as pure
As the blessing I beg ere it flow,
And the last thought that soothes me below.
Though the virgins of Salem lament,
Be the judge and the hero unbent !
I have won the great battle for thee,
And my father and country are free!
When this blood of thy giving hath gush'd,
When the voice that thou lovest is hush'd,
Let my memory still be thy pride,
And forget not I smiled as I died!
Away! we know that tears are vain,
That death nor heeds nor hears distress:
Will this unteach us to complain?
Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou-who tell'st me to forget
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.
MY SOUL IS DARK. MY soul is dark-oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again: If in these eyes there lurk a tear, 'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence long; And now 'tis doom'd to know the worst, And break at once-or yield to song.
I SAW THEE WEEP.
I SAW thee weep-the big bright tear
Came o'er that eye of blue;
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew:
I saw thee sinile-the sapphire's blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;
It could not match the living rays
That fill'd that glance of thine.
As clouds from yonder sun receive
A deep and mellow dye,
Which scarce the shade of coming eve
Can banish from the sky,
Those smiles unto the moodiest mind
Their own pure joy impart;
Their sunshine leaves a g'ow behind
That lightens o'er the heart.
OH! SNATCH'D AWAY IN BEAUTY'S
BLOOM.
OH! snatch'd away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year;
And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:
And oft by yon blue gushing stream
Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head, And feed deep thought with many a dream, And lingering pause and lightly tread; Fond wretch as if her step disturb'd the dead!
THY DAYS ARE DONE.
THY days are done, thy fame begun ;
Thy country's strains record
The triumphs of her chosen son,
The slaughters of his sword!
The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored!
Though thou art fall'n, while we are free
Thou shalt not taste of death!
The generous blood that flow'd from thee
Disdain'd to sink beneath :
Within our veins its currents be,
Thy spirit on our breath!
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