Ere his very thought could pray,

Unanealed he passed away,

Without a hope from mercy's aid,

To the last a renegade

The assault is carried on, and the besieged retire to the church, foland avenges himlowed by the Turks. Here Minotti, springs a mine, self and his countrymen, although he cannot save them :

So near they came, the nearest stretched
To grasp the spoil he almost reached,

When old Minotti's hand

Touched with the torch the train-
'Tis fired!

Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turbaned victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurled on high with the shivered fane,

In one wild roar expired!

The shattered town-the walls thrown down-
The waves a moment backward bent-
The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake passed-

The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast—

Proclaimed 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,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again,
Like a cinder strewed 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,

Scattered o'er the isthmus lay;

4 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 deemed 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 scattered scalp or bone:
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,
Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blackened there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth-shock disappeared:
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 bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;
The wolves yelled on the caverned hill
Where echo rolled in thunder still;
The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,
Bayed from afar complainingly,
With a mixed 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 seemed so dun;
Their smoke assailed his startled beak,

And made him higher soar and shriek-
Thus was Corinth lost and won!

In the same volume with The Siege of Corinth' was printed a poem

called ・ Parisina.' The subject of this tale is one which has been rarely attempted, and never approved of, in modern times. It canuot be questioned, that, as it is well calculated to excite pity and terror, it is fitted for the talents of a real poet, and, above all, for such a poet as Lord Byron. He has invented circumstances which lessen the horror of the crime, and which display so much of worth and woe in the guilty persons as excites deep commiseration for their sufferings and their sins. It is in vain that authors who choose such subjects call in, to excuse themselves, the authority of the elder Greek dramatists; the same reasons which justified or allowed the undisguised handling of incestuous love exists no longer. There is another and a better proof of the great mistake which is made by a poet who chooses them in the disgust which they excite. For this reason Parisina,' although one of the best of Lord Byron's poems, is one of those least read, and most frequently censured.

The following passage in Gibbon's Antiquities of the House of Brunswick' furnished the groundwork of the tale. The name of Azo has been substituted for that of Nicholas, for the sake of euphony. The passage alluded to is as follows:

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 Parisina, 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 the justice of a parent.' A beautiful description of a tranquil summer's night begins the poem: It is the hour when from the boughs

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."

The Duchess of Este, Parisina, is waiting in her bower the coming of her lover, who is the gallant Hugo, her husband's illegitimate son, He comes, and is at her feet; their raptures are told in the following passionate stanzas:

And what unto them is the world beside,
With all its change of time and tide ?volut
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 feared in such an hour?

Or thought how brief such moments last ? 1
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.

Parisina goes to her injured husband's bed, and betrays her infidelity by murmuring in her sleep the name of Hugo, accompanied by some tender exclamations. The Duke, surprised and enraged beyond measure, checks his first impulse, which was to stab her as she lay by his side. He makes inquiries of her attendants, and soon finds the horrible confirmation of his worst suspicions. His outraged honour and his wounded feelings prompt him to do immediate justice on the guilty pair. He has them summoned before him to receive their doom. The scene which takes place here is in the last degree tragic; and the manner in which the poet has invented circumstances, which, if they do not palliate their crime, at least increase the interest we cannot but feel for the culprits, is exceedingly skilful.

The description of Parisina is full of beauty, and will remind the reader of Burke's celebrated allusion to the unfortunate late Queen of France, the suffering and murdered Maria Antoinette. Little did I dream,' said that truly eloquent orator, that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, she would ever be obliged to earry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that should threaten her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone!" Lord Byron has made the original idea of Burke much more elegant

How changed since last her speaking eye

Glanced gladness round the glittering room,

Where high-born men were proud to wait—
Where Beauty watched to imitate

Her gentle voice-her lovely mien

And gather from her air and gait i
The graces of its queen!