That latest conqueror of Greece,
Till Christian hands to Greece restore
The freedom Venice gave of yore?
A hundred years have rolled away
Since he refixed the Moslem's sway;
And now he led the Mussulman,
And gave the guidance of the van
To Alp, who well repaid the trust
By cities levelled with the dust;
And proved, by many a deed of death,
How firm his heart in novel faith.
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them poured the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin;
And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb;
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell's volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flashed
The flame, as loud the ruin crashed,
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven; ".
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,
With volumed smoke that slowly grew i
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.
i. And death-like rolled --[MS. G. erased.]
ii. Like comets in convulsion riven.—[MS. G. Copy erased.]
iii. Impervious to the powerless sun,
Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew.—
But not for vengeance, long delayed,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
His skill to pierce the promised breach: 180 Within these walls a Maid was pent
His hope would win, without consent
Of that inexorable Sire,
Whose heart refused him in its ire,
When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin hand aspired to claim.
In happier mood, and earlier time,
While unimpeached for traitorous crime,
Gayest in Gondola or Hall,
He glittered through the Carnival;
And tuned the softest serenade
That e'er on Adria's waters played
At midnight to Italian maid."
And many deemed her heart was won;
For sought by numbers, given to none,
Had young Francesca's hand remained
Still by the Church's bonds unchained:
And when the Adriatic bore
Lanciotto to the Paynim shore,
Her wonted smiles were seen to fail,
And pensive waxed the maid and pale;
More constant at confessional,
More rare at masque and festival;
Or seen at such, with downcast eyes,
Which conquered hearts they ceased to prize:
i. In midnight courtship to Italian maid.―[MS. G.]
With listless look she seems to gaze:
With humbler care her form arrays;
Her voice less lively in the song;
Her step, though light, less fleet among
The pairs, on whom the Morning's glance
Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.
Sent by the State to guard the land,
(Which, wrested from the Moslem's hand,1
While Sobieski tamed his pride
By Buda's wall and Danube's side,'
The chiefs of Venice wrung away
From Patra to Euboea's bay,)
Minotti held in Corinth's towers i
The Doge's delegated powers,
While yet the pitying eye of Peace
Smiled o'er her long forgotten Greece:
And ere that faithless truce was broke
Which freed her from the unchristian yoke,
With him his gentle daughter came;
Nor there, since Menelaus' dame
Forsook her lord and land, to prove
What woes await on lawless love,
Had fairer form adorned the shore
Than she, the matchless stranger, bore.
i. By Buda's wall to Danube's side.—[MS. G.]
ii. Pisani held —.—[MS. G.]
iii. Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore.—[MS. G. erased.] 1. [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]
The wall is rent, the ruins yawn;
And, with to-morrow's earliest dawn,
O'er the disjointed mass shall vault
The foremost of the fierce assault.
The bands are ranked-the chosen van
Of Tartar and of Mussulman,
The full of hope, misnamed "forlorn," 1
Who hold the thought of death in scorn,
And win their way with falchion's force,
Or pave the path with many a corse,
O'er which the following brave may rise,
Their stepping-stone-the last who dies !1
'Tis midnight on the mountains brown
The cold, round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
i. By stepping o'er -.—[MS. G.]
ii. Bespangled with her isles
1. [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see Childe Harold, Canto II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]
2. ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight. Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]
3. ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in The Pleasures of Hope, Part II.
"The seraph eye shall count the starry train,
Like distant isles embosomed on the main."
And "isles" to "stars by Byron, in The Island, Canto II. stanza xi. lines 14, 15
"The studded archipelago,
O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining
And turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmured meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillowed on the waves ;
The banners drooped along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill,
And echo answered from the hill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer;
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone Spirit's o'er the plain:
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.1
It seemed to those within the wall
A cry prophetic of their fall:
i. And take a dark unmeasured tone.-[MS. G.]
And make a melancholy moan,
To mortal voice and ear unknown.-[MS. G. erased.]
For other "star-similes," see Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii. line 9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]
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