In court or cottage, wheresoe'er her home, There's one in the next field—of sweet sixteen— The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire. There is a woman, widowed, gray, and old, Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept, And on the margin of yon orchard hill Are marks where time-worn battlements have been; DEATH'S FIRST DAY. [The following beautiful descriptive lines are the best in Byron's Giaour (Jour, an infidel;—applied by the Turks to disbelievers in Mohammedanism.-Webster.) His note annexed to the succeding passages gives an accurate idea of Byron's prose style: "I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after the spirit is not there.' It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of langour, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab, the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity. and the mind its bias, to the last."] H E who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled, The last of danger and distress, (Before Decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers), The rapture of repose that's there, The fix'd yet tender traits that streak The langour of the placid cheek, That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, Where cold Obstructions's apathy The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; That parts not quite with parting breath; A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling passed away! Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth! |