Of passions fierce and uncontroll'd,
Such as thy penitents unfold,
Whose secret sins and sorrows rest
Within thy pure and pitying breast.'" P. 30.
He then goes on to explain his own principles of action, and the state in which they had left him.
"My days, though few, have pass'd below
In much of joy, but more of wo;
Yet still in hours of love or strife
I've scap'd the weariness of life;
Now leagu'd with friends, now girt by foes,
I loath'd the languor of repose;
Now nothing left to love or hate,
No more with hope or pride elate;
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 't is rest-
Soon shall my fate that wish fulfil;
And I shall sleep without the dream
Of what I was--and would be still,
Though Hope hath long withdrawn her beam."" P. 30, 31.
But the whole energy of the character, and of the author's genius, bursts out in the following fragments.
"I lov'd her, friar! nay, adored
But these are words that all can use-
I prov'd 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 warmed the heart of one abhorred:
Nay, start not-no-nor bend thy knee,
Nor midst my sins such act record,
Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,'" &c. P. 31, 32.
"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 mine* 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 deserv'd her doom might be,
Her treachery was truth to me.
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!" P. 33, 34.
"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 Etna'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 possest,
And come what may, I have been blest;
Even now alone, yet undismay'd,
(I know no friend, and ask no aid,)
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.""
These, in our opinion, are the most beautiful passages of the poem-and some of them of a beauty which it would not be easy
* It should be "though I the cause"-mine has no meaning, or quite a different one from what the author obviously intended.
to eclipse by many citations in the language. Different readers, however, may think differently; and some will probably be better pleased with the following parallel of hunting butterflies and courting beauties. The idea is not quite original-and the parallel is pushed too far into detail; but it is written not only with great elegance and ingenuity, but with a degree of feeling that does not always appear in those plays of the imagination.
"As rising on its purple wing
The insect queen of eastern spring,
O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flower to flower
A weary chase and wasted hour,
Then leaves him, as it soars on high,
With panting heart and tearful eye:
So Beauty lures the full-grown child
With hue as bright, and wing as wild;
A chase of idle hopes and fears,
Begun in folly, closed in tears.
If won, to equal ills betrayed,
Wo waits the insect and the maid,
A life of pain, the loss of peace,
From infant's play, and man's caprice:
The lovely toy so fiercely sought
Has lost its charm by being caught,
For every touch that wooed its stay
Has brush'd its brightest hues away,
Till charm, and hue, and beauty gone,
"Tis left to fly or fall alone.
With wounded wing, or bleeding breast,
Ah! where shall either victim rest?
Can this with faded pinion soar
From rose to tulip as before?
Or beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No: gayer insects fluttering by
Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die,
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every wo a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame." P. 6-8.
The sentiment of the following passage is striking and original; but the image by which it is illustrated is not of a poetical character, nor introduced with much elegance of language; while the minuteness into which it is pursued is still more objectionable than in the preceding example.
"To love the softest hearts are prone,
But such can n'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 plung'd within the furnace-flame,
It bends and melts-though still the same;
Then tempered to thy want, or will,
"Twill serve thee to defend or kill;
A breastplate for thine hour of need,
Or blade to bid thy foemau bleed;
But if a dagger's form it bear,
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 is ta'en,
And what they make it, must remain,
But break-before it bend again."
We shall add but one other exceptionable passage; in which also, though there is much force both of conception and expression, the same ambition of originality has produced a degree of harshness in the diction, and an air of studied ingenuity in the thought, which is very remote from the general style either of the piece or its author.
"The Mind, that broods o'er guilty woes,
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly search'd by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourish'd for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain.-
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt by fire :
So writhes the mind by conscience riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!" P. 8, 9.
There is infinite beauty and effect, though of a painful and
almost oppressive character, in the following extraordinary passage; in which the author has illustrated the beautiful, but still and melancholy aspect, of the once busy and glorious shores of Greece, by an image more true, more mournful, and more exquisitely finished, than any that we can now recollect in the whole compass of poetry.
"He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled;
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress;
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers;)
And mark'd the mild angelic air-
The rapture of repose that's there--
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now-→→
And but for that chill changeless brow,
Whose touch thrills with mortality,
And curdles to the gazer's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon→→
Yes but for these and these alone,
Some moments-aye-one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,
So fair-so calm-so softly seal'd
The first-last look-by death reveal'd!
Such is the aspect of this shore-
'Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start-for soul is wanting there.
Her's is the loveliness in death,
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb-
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling past away!
Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birth-
Which gleams-but warms no more its cherish'd earth! P. 3-5,
The oriental costume is preserved, as might be expected, with admirable fidelity through the whole of this poem; and the Turkish original of the tale is attested, to all but the bolder sceptics of literature, by the great variety of untranslated words which perplex the unlearned reader in the course of these fragments. Kiosks,
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