Pagina-afbeeldingen
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" By winds and waves, and some important captures,"

having remained long at sea, it was supposed he had perished, and she, in consequence, took possession of all his treasures, and surendered herself to the full enjoyment of her lover. The old gentleman, however, returns, and landing on a distant part of the island, walks leisurely towards his home, while Juan and his daughter are giving a public breakfast to their friends and acquaintance. The description of the fete is e is executed with equal felicity and spirit; we think it would be difficult to match the life and gaiety of the picture by any thing of the kind in English poetry-perhaps in any other poetry.

" And further on a group of Grecian girls, The first and tallest her white kerchief waving,

Were strung together like a row of pearls; too, having

Link'd hand in hand, and dancing; each

Down her white neck long floating auburn curls(The least of which would set ten poets raving ;)

Their leader sang and bounded to her song, With choral step and voice, the virgin throng.

"And here, assembled cross-legg'd round their trays,

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The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks, The innocence which happy childhood blesses,

Made quite a picture of these little
Greeks;

So that the philosophical beholder
Sigh'd for their sakes that they should

e'er grow older."

The father is not at all pleased to see such fatal doings in his absence. "Perhaps you think in stumbling on this feast,

He flew into a passion; and in fact,
There was no mighty reason to be pleased;
Perhaps you prophesy some sudden act.

"You're wrong. He was the mildestmanner'd man That ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat; With such true breeding of a gentleman, You never could divine his real thought.

" Advancing to the nearest dinner tray, Tapping the shoulder of the nighest guest With a peculiar smile, which, by the way, Boded no good, whatever it express'd, He ask'd the meaning of this holiday; The vinous Greek to whom he had adress'd

His question, much too merry to divine The questioner, fill'd up a glass of wine." And facetiously looking over his shoulder, said,

"Talking's dry work, and our old master's dead."

Small social parties just begun to dine; Pilans and meats of all sorts met the gaze, This certainly was not very pleasant

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The ashes of our hopes, is a deep grief,
Beyond a single gentleman's belief.

"He entered in the house his home no more;

For without hearts there is no home-and felt

The solitude of passing his own door Without a welcome. There he long had dwelt,

There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er;

melt

There his worn bosom and keen eye would Over the innocence of that sweet child, His only shrine of feeling undefiled."

The portrait of this man is one of the best, if not the very best, of all Byron's gloomy portraits. It may be the Corsair grown into an elderly character and a father, but it is equal to the finest heads that ever Michael Angelo, Carrivagio, painted with black and umber.

"He was a man of a strange temperament, Of mild demeanour, though of savage mood,

Moderate in all his habits, and content With temperance in pleasure as in food; Quick to perceive, and strong to bear, and

meant

Had cost his enemies a long repentance, And made him a good friend, but bad acquaintance.

"But something of the spirit of old Greece Flash'd o'er his soul a few heroic rays, Such as lit onward to the Golden Fleece His predecessors in the Colchian days. "Tis true he had no ardent love for peaceAlas! his country show'd no path to praise;

Hate to the world and war with every na. tion He waged, in vengeance of her degrada

tion.

"Still o'er his mind the influence of the clime

Shed its Ionian elegance, which show'd Its power unconsciously full many a time,A taste seen in the choice of his abode, A love of music and of scenes sublime,

A pleasure in the gentle stream that flow'd

Past him in crystal, and a joy in flowers, Bedew'd his spirit in his calmer hours."

Lambro, for so it seems he was called, passed, unseen, a private gate, and stood within the hall where his daughter and her lover were at table. This affords the noble poet an opportunity to show his knowledge of a Greek gentleman's house and an Ottoman feast. But the merits of this still life, splendid and true as they are in delineation and colouring, are far inferior to the description of Haidée. "Round her she made an atmosphere of life,

The very air seem'd lighter from her

eyes,

They were so soft and beautiful, and rife With all we can imagine of the skies, And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife

Too pure even for the purest human ties;

Her overpowering presence made you feel It would not be idolatry to kneel. "Her eyelashes, though dark as night, were tinged,

For something better, if not wholly And in their native beauty stood avenged:

good; His country's wrongs, and his despair to save her,

Had stung him from a slave to an enslaver. "The love of power, and rapid gain of gold,

(It is the country's custom,) but in vain; For those large black eyes were so blackly fringed, The glossy rebels mock'd the jetty stain, Her nails were touch'd with henna; but again The power of art was turn'd to nothing, for They could not look more rosy than before. "The henna should be deeply dyed to make

The hardness by long habitude produced, The dangerous life in which he had grown old,

The skin relieved appear more fairly fair;

The mercy he had granted oft abused, The sights he was accustom'd to behold, The wild seas, and wild men, with whom he cruised,

She had no need of this, day ne'er will break On mountain tops more heavenly whire than her:

The eye might doubt if it were well awake,
She was so like a vision; I might err,
But Shakspeare also says 'tis very silly
• To gild refined gold, or paint the lily."

Haidée and Juan are amused, while at table, by dwarfs and dancing-girls, black eunuchs, and a poet, of whom I shall say nothing, Christopher, because I do not think the account is very good, but his song, I am persuaded, you will think is the very loftiest bachanalian ever penned-You will, indeed, although with a grumble, I know, allow this as if you were suffering a jerk of your rheumatism.

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,-
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

"The Scian and the Teian muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' Islands of the Blest.'
"The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dream'd that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

"A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below, And men in nations; - all were his! He counted them at break of dayAnd when the sun set where were they?

But one arise, we come, we come!" 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

"In vain in vain: strike other chords;

Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,

And shed the blood of Scio's vine!

Hark! rising to the ignoble call-
How answers each bold bacchanal !
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?

You have the letters Cadmus gave
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
"Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine:

He served but served Polycrates-
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.
"The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

"Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, The Heracleidan blood might own.

"Trust not for freedom to the Franks-
They have a king who buys and sells ;
In native swords, and native ranks,

The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield, however broad.
"Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-

"And where are they? and where art thou, I see their glorious black eyes shine;

My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay is tuneless now

The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine?

"'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though link'd among a fetter'd race,

To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.
"Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylæ!
"What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no; the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,

But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

"Place me on Sunium's marbled steep-
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die :
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!"

There is a little confusion in the narrative; or perhaps it is the hurry in which I am going over it, that makes me not able to trace it so clearly as I might do, through digressions. Lambro arrived while the lovers were at dinner, and we are led to suppose that he witnesses their dalliance and revelling; but it would seem that this was not the case, for we find Haidée and Juan left alone after the banquet, admiring the rosy twilight of the evening sky.

"T" our tale. The feast was over, the slaves gone,

The dwarfs and dancing girls had all re-
tired;

The Arab lore and poet's song were done,
And every sound of revelry expired;
The lady and her lover, left alone,

The rosy flood of twilight sky admi-
red ;-

Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is wor-

thiest thee!

"Ave Maria! blessed be the hour,

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so

oft

Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant
tower,

Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air,

And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

"Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
Look up to thine, and to thy Son's above!

Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

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Grecian evening, a presentiment of sor-
row passes over their hearts.
"1 know not why, but in that hour to-night,
Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor
came,

And swept, as 'twere, across their heart's
delight,

Like the wind c'er a harp-string, or a flame,

When one is shook in sound, and one in sight;

And thus some boding flash'd through either frame,

And call'd from Juan's breast a faint low sigh,

While one new tear arose in Haidée's eye."

Having retired to their couch, they are still haunted by the same unpleasant something.

"Now pillow'd cheek to cheek, in loving
sleep,

Haidée and Juan their siesta took,
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,
For ever and anon a something shook
Juan, and shuddering o'er his frame would

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Walks over it, was she shaken by the
dream,
The mystical usurper of the mind.

Good to the soul which we no more can
bind;

Strange state of being! (for 'tis still to be)
Senseless to feel, and with seal'd eyes to

see."

Now, Christopher, after this, take O'erpowering us to be whate'er may seem thy crutch, and, with the help of Blackwood'sporter, John Lesley, crawl up the new road along the Salisbury Craigs, on the first fine Sabbath evening, when all the west is still one broad glow of heavenly ruby; and the castle, in the middle of the view, appears like the crowned head of some great being, resting on his elbow in contemplation; repeat these verses, and I will venture to bet a plack to a bawbee, that from that hour all animosity against the wayward and unfortunate Byron will be for ever hushed in thy bosom. Even John himself will, by the mere sound of thy solemn voice of prayer, thenceforth forego the grudge that he has long borne his lordship for the many burdens he has made him bear, and, melting into tears of tenderness, dry the big drops from his eyes with a corner of the same handkerchief which thou wilt apply to wipe the Ave Maria

dew from thine own.

While Haidée and Juan were contemplating the glorious stillness of a

In this state, the ominous fancies of
Haidée take at last the definite form
of a regular dream, in which she sees
Juan dead in a cavern. As she gazes
on him, he seems to change into the
resemblance of her father. Startled
by the apparition, she awakes, and the
first object that her eyes meet are those
of the pirate sternly fixed upon her-,
Juan is in the same moment roused by
the shriek she gave.
"Up Juan sprung to Haidée's bitter shriek,
And caught her falling, and from off
the wall

Snatch'd down his sabre, in hot haste to
wreak
Vengeance on him who was the cause
of all:
Then Lambro, who till now forbore to
Smiled scornfully, and said, 'Within
my call,

speak,

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'Tis Lambro-'tis my father! Kneel with me

He will forgive us-yes-it must be yes.

Oh! dearest father, in this agony Of pleasure and of pain-even while I kiss Thy garment's hem with transport, can it be

That doubt should mingle with my filial

joy ? Deal with me as thou wilt, but spare this boy.'

"High and inscrutible the old man stood, Calm in his voice, and calm within his eye

Not always signs with him of calmest mood: He look'd upon her, but gave no reply; Then turn'd to Juan, in whose cheek the

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Juan replied, 'Not while this arm is free."

The old man's cheek grew pale, but not with dread,

And drawing from his belt a pistol, he Replied, Your blood be then on your own head.'

Then look'd close at the flint, as if to see 'Twas fresh, for he had lately used the lock, And next proceeded quietly to cock.

"It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, That cocking of a pistol, when you know A moment more will bring the sight to

bear

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"I said they were alike, their features and

Their stature differing but in sex and

years;

Even to the delicacy of their hands There was resemblance, such as true blood wears;

And now to see them, thus divided, stand In fix'd ferocity, when joyous tears, And sweet sensations, should have welcomed both,

Show what the passions are in their full growth."

This, Christopher, you must allow, is spirited, and you will observe a curious mark of propinquity which the poet notices with respect to the hands of the father and daughter. The poet, I suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali Pashaw, who, by the bye, is the original of Lambro; for when his Lordship was introduced, with his squat friend, Cam, to that agreeablemannered tyrant, the vizier said that he knew he was the Magotos Anthropos by the smallness of his ears and hands.

Don Juan is dangerously wounded, and being seized by some of the pirate's sailors, is carried from the scene. The effect on poor Haidée is deplo

rable.

For several days she lay insensible, and, when she awoke from her trance, she was in such a state as Mlle. Nob

let is seen in the ballet of Nina. The first time you see your venison friend, the Thane of Fife, ask him if there is not some reason to suspect that Byron had her in his eye when he wrote the following description :

"Afric is all the sun's, and as her earth Her human clay is kindled; full of power

For good or evil, burning from its birth, The Moorish blood partakes the planet's hour,

And like the soil beneath it will bring forth: Beauty and love were Haidée's mother's dower;

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But her large dark eye show'd deep Passion's force, Though sleeping like a lion near a source. "Her daughter, temper'd with a milder

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ray,

Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair,

Till slowly charged with thunder they display

For she too was as one who could avenge, If cause should be a lioness, though

tame:

Her father's blood before her fathers's face Boil'd up, and proved her truly of his race.

Terror to earth, and tempest to the air, Had held till now her soft and milky way; But overwrought with passion and despair,

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