LXIX.

It came to pass, that when he did address
Himself to quit at length this mountain-land,
Combined marauders half-way barr'd egress,
And wasted far and near with glaive and brand;
And therefore did he take a trusty band
To traverse Acarnania's forest wide,

In war well season'd, and with labors tann'd,
Till he did greet white Achelous' tide,

And from his further bank Ætolia's wolds espied.
LXX.

Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,
And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
As winds come whispering lightly from the west,
Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene:-
Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene, [glean.
For many a joy could he from Night's soft presence
LXXI.

On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed,
The feast was done, the red wine circling fast,'
And he that unawares had there ygazed
With gaping wonderment had stared aghast;
For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past,
The native revels of the troop began;
Each Palikar his sabre from him cast,

And bounding hand in hand, man link'd to man, Yelling their uncouth dirge, long daunced the kirtled clan.s

LXXII.

Childe Harold at a little distance stood, And view'd, but not displeased, the revelry, Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude: In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee; And, as the flames along their faces gleam'd, Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, The long wild locks that to their girdles stream'd, While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half scream'd:*

1.

TAMBOURGI! Tambourgi thy larum afar Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!

1 The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, indeed, very few of the others.

2 Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person from Пaλikao, a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese who speak Romaic: it means, properly," a lad."

[The following is Mr. Hobhouse's animated description of this scene:-" In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations were made for feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted whole, and four fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers seated themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greatest part of them assembled round the largest of the fires, and, whilst ourselves and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced round the blaze, to their own songs, with astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some robbing exploits. One of them, which detained them more than an hour, began thus:- When we set out from Parga, there were sixty of us:' then came the burden of the verse,

Robbers all at Parga! Robbers all at Parga! * Κλεφτεις ποτε Παργα ! Κλεφτεις ποτε Παργα !

and as they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped, and rebounded from their knees, and again

2.

Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,
In his snowy camese and his shaggy capote?
To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,
And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.
3.

Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive
The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?
Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?
What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?

4.

Macedonia sends forth her invincible race;
For a time they abandon the cave and the chase:
But those scarfs of blood-red shall be redder, before
The sabre is sheath'd and the battle is o'er.

5.

Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves, And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar, And track to his covert the captive on shore.

6.

I ask not the pleasures that riches supply,
My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy;
Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair,
And many a maid from her mother shall tear.

7.

I love the fair face of the maid in her youth,
Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall sooth;
Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre,
And sing us a song on the fall of her sire.

8.

Remember the moment when Previsa fell,"
The shrieks of the conquer'd, the conquerors' yell;
The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared,
The wealthy we slaughter'd, the lovely we spared.
9.

I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear;

He neither must know who would serve the Vizier: Since the days of our prophet the Crescent ne'er saw A chief ever glorious like Ali Pashaw.

10.

Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped, Let the yellow-hair'd Giaours view his horse-tail1 with dread, [banks, When his Delhis" come dashing in blood o'er the How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks!

whirled round, as the chorus was again repeated. The rippling of the waves upon the pebbly margin where we were seated, filled up the pauses of the song with a milder, and not more monotonous music. The night was very dark; but, by the flashes of the fires, we caught a glimpse of the woods, the rocks, and the lake, which, together with the wild appearance of the dancers, presented us with a scene that would have made a fine picture in the hands of such an artist as the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho. As we were acquainted with the character of the Albanians, it did not at all diminish our pleasure to know, that every one of our guard had been robbers, and some of them a very short time before. It was eleven o'clock before we had retired to our room, at which time the Albanians, wrapping themselves up in their capotes, went to sleep round the fires."]

[For a specimen of the Albanian or Arnaout dialect of the Illyric, see Appendix to this Canto, Note [C.]] 5 Drummer.

These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposi tion of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian.

It was taken by storm from the French. Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians. • Infidel.

10 The insignia of a Pacha.

" Horsemen, answering to our forlorn hope.

11.

Selictar unsheath then our chief's scimitar:
Tambourgi! thy larum gives promise of war.
Ye mountains, that see us descend to the shore,
Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!

LXXIII.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!?
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth,
And long accustom'd bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In Meak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait-
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,

Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?

LXXIV.

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow3 Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, Couldst thou forbode the dismal hour which now Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain? Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, But every carle can lord it o'er thy land; Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmann'd.

LXXV.

In all save form alone, how changed! and who That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Who but would deem their bosoms burn'd anew With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty! And many dream withal the hour is nigh That gives them back their fathers' heritage: For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, [page. Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful

LXXVI.

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? no! True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom's altars flame. Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe! Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thine years of shame.

1 Sword-bearer.

* See some Thoughts on the present State of Greece and Turkey in the Appendix to this Canto, Notes [D] and [E.] 1 Parle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable remains; it was seized by Thrasybulus, previous to the expulsion of the Thirty.

When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Walabees, a sect yearly increasing.

*Of Constantinople Lord Byron says,-"I have seen the runs of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi; I have traversed great part of Turkey, and many other parts of Europe, and Mice of Asia; but I never beheld a work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side, from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn."] 1 The new of Constantinople," says Mr. Rose, which appeared intersected by groves of cypress, (for such is the fect of its great burial-grounds planted with these trees,) is guded domes and minarets reflecting the first rays of the sa; the deep blue sea in which it glassed itself,' and that sts covered with beautiful boats and barges darting in every

LXXVII.

The city won for Allah from the Giaour,
The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest;
And the Serai's impenetrable tower

Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest ;*

Or Wahab's rebel brood, who dared divest
The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,
May wind their path of blood along the West;
But ne'er will freedom seek this fated soil,

But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.

LXXVIII.

Yet mark their mirth-ere lenten days begin,
That penance which their holy rites prepare
To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin,
By daily abstinence and nightly prayer;
But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear,
Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,
To take of pleasaunce each his secret share,
In motley robe to dance at masking ball,
And join the mimic train of merry Carnival.
LXXIX.

And whose more rife with merriment than thine,
Oh Stamboul! once the empress of their reign?
Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine,
And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:
(Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)
Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,
All felt the common joy they now must feign,
Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song,
As woo'd the eye, and thrill'd the Bosphorus along.'
LXXX.

Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore, Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone, And timely echo'd back the measured oar, And rippling waters made a pleasant moan: The Queen of tides on high consenting shone, And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave, 'Twas, as if darting from her heavenly throne, A brighter glance her form reflected gave, [lave. Till sparkling billows seem'd to light the banks they

LXXXI.

Glanced many a light caique along the foam,
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
Ne thought had man or maid of rest or home,
While many a languid eye and thrilling hand
Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
Or gently press'd, return'd the pressure still:
Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,

These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill!

direction in perfect silence, amid sea-fowl, who sat at rest upon the waters, altogether conveyed such an impression as I had never received, and probably never shall again receive, from the view of any other place." The following sonnet, by the same author, has been so often quoted, that, but for its exquisite beauty, we should not have ventured to reprint it here:

"A glorious form thy shining city wore,

'Mid cypress thickets of perennial green,
With ninaret and golden dome between,
While thy sea softly kiss'd its grassy shore:
Darting across whose blue expanse was seen

Of sculptured barques and galleys many a score ;
Whence noise was none save that of plashing oar;
Nor word was spoke, to break the calmn serene.
Unheard is whisker'd boatman's hail or joke;

Who, mute as Sinbad's man of copper, rows,
And only intermits the sturdy stroke,
When fearless gull too nigh his pinnace goes.
I, hardly conscious if I dream'd or woke,
Mark'd that strange piece of action and repose."]

LXXXII.

But, midst the throng in merry masquerade, Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain, Even through the closest searment half betray'd? To such the gentle murmurs of the main Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain ; To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd Is source of wayword thought and stern disdain : How do they loathe the laughter idly loud, And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!

LXXXIII.

This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast : Not such as prate of war, but skulk in peace, The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost, Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost, And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most; Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!

LXXXIV.

When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then mayst thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust; and when
Can man its shatter'd splendor renovate,

LXXXVI.

Save where some solitary column mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave ;2 Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave; Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the gray stones and unmolested grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh “Alas!"

LXXXVII.

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honey'd wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

LXXXVIII.

Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone:

LXXXV.

And yet how lovely in thine age of wo,
Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,'
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now;
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,

So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth;

1 On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains, even in winter.

2 Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, formed by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of time.

3 In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the Egean deep;" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's Shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten, in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell:

"Here in the dead of night by Lonna's steep, The seaman's cry was heard along the deep." This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was less striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners, subsequently rausomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at

LXXXIX.

The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lordPreserves alike its bounds and boundless fame The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, As on the morn to distant Glory dear, When Marathon became a magic word; Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career,

hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resist. I ance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; "The hireling artist plants his paltry desk, And makes degraded nature picturesque."

there

(See Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, &c.) But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances.

4 [The following passage in Harris's Philosophical Inquiries, contains the pith of this stanza :-" Notwithstanding the various fortunes of Athens as a city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey. Human institutions perish, bnt Nature is permanent." I recollect having once pointed out this coincidence to Lord Byron. but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of Harris's.-MOORE.]

"Siste Viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci ;-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, &c. were! found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas-"Expende-quot libras in duce summo-invenies!"-was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight.

XC.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below;
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene-what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,

[around. The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns XCI.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendor past
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fil with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate and hards adore,

As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The original MS. closes with this stanza. The rest was added while the canto was passing through the press.]

? This stanza was written October 11, 1811; upon which

day the poet, in a letter to a friend, says "I have been agan shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to eta happier times; but I have almost forgot the taste of grief and supped full of horrors,' till I have become calons; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I all be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other

Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.

All thou couldst have of mine, steru Death! thou hast;

The parent, friend, and now the more than friend: Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to lend.

XCVII.

Then must I plunge again into the crowd, And follow all that Peace disdains to seek! Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek, To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak; Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique; Smiles form the channel of a future tear, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.

XCVIII.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. Before the Chastener humbly let be bow, O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroy'd: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd, And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy'd.

men can always take refuge in their families: I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my friends. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility." In reference to this stanza, “Surely," said Professor Clarke to the author of the Pursuits of Literature, Lord Byron cannot have experienced such keen anguish as these exquisite allusions to what older men may have felt seem to denote."-"I fear he has," answered Matthias;-" he could not otherwise have wr tten such a poem."]

[In a hitherto unpublished letter, dated Verona, November 6, 1816, Lord Byron says-" By the way, Ada's name (which I found in our pedigree, under king John's reign) is the same with that of the sister of Charlemagne, as I redde, the other day, in a book treating of the Rhine.")

2 [Lord Byron quitted England, for the second and last time, on the 25th of April, 1816, attended by William Fletcher and Robert Rushton, the "yeoman" and "page" of Canto I.; his physician, Dr. Polidori; and a Swiss valet.]

$["could grieve or glad my gazing eye."-MS.] [In the Two Noble Kinsmen" of Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the following passage:-

Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling,
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V.

He, who grown aged in this world of wo,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell

Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rise
With airy images, and shapes which dwell

Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

VI.

"Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give

The life we image, even as I do now.

What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth.

VII.

Yet must I think less wildly:-I have thought Too long and darkly, till my brain became, In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame: And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, My springs of life were poison'd. "Tis too late! Yet am I changed; though still enough the same In strength to bear what time cannot abate, And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

VIII.

Something too much of this:-but now 'tis past, And the spell closes with its silent seal. Long absent HAROLD reappears at last ; He of the breast which fain no more would feel, Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ue'er Yet Time, who changes all, had alter'd him [heal; In soul and aspect as in age: years steal Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

6 [The first and second cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" produced, on their appearance in 1812, an effect upon the public, at least equal to any work which has appeared within this or the last century, and placed at once upon Lord Byron's head the garland for which other men of genius have toiled long, and which they have gained late. He was placed pre-eminent among the literary men of his country by general acclamation. It was amidst such feelings of admiration that he entered the public stage. Every thing in his manner, person, and conversation, tended to maintain the charm which his genius had flung around him; and those admitted to his conversation, far from finding that the inspired poet sunk into ordinary mortality, felt themselves attached to him, not only by many noble qualities, but by the interest of a mysterious, undefined, and almost painful curiosity. A countenance exquisitely modelled to the expression of feeling and passion, and exhibiting the remarkable contrast of presented to the physiognomist the most interesting subject very dark hair and eyebrows with light and expressive eyes, for the exercise of his art. The predominating expression was that of deep and habitual thought, which gave way to the most rapid play of features when he engaged in interesting discussion; so that a brother poet compared them to the