It is well known, that during the youth of Mahomet, the conqueror of Constantinople, his father Amurath, wearied of a life of wars and victories, resigned to him the sceptre of the Ottomans; whose empire he had extended almost to the gates of the city of the eastern Cæsars. Mahomet giving no sign of that fitness for authority, which made him afterwards the greatest monarch of his day, abandoned himself to licentious indulgence, in such a manner, as to endanger the state of the Mahommedans in Europe. His father resuming the throne, condemned the degraded prince to a residence in one of the distant provinces of Asia Minor.

During this period of his disgrace, Mahomet is supposed to have first meditated the subjugation of the Grecian islands, many of which he visited in disguise, that he might be better enabled to effect his purpose, when supreme authority should be his own again.

On this journey of observation, he became enamoured of a young Venetian girl, the daughter of the Governor of the place, then absent from his command. The unsuspecting virgin received him as a prince, in alliance with the Senate of her native city, and had no fear of encountering objection on the part of her father, whose return was scarcely announced as at hand, when her lover suddenly disappeared.

After many years, Mahomet, having commenced the execution of his gigantic projects, sat down in person before the Island of Negropont, which he reduced, with the exception of the principal fortress; having taken captive the commander and his daughter, whom he discovered to be the almost forgotten object of his early love. On this discovery, he was liberal of his offers, to both the father and daughter; but both resisting equally his entreaties and his threats, he ordered the father to be placed in the front rank of his soldiers, in the next attack upon the citadel, and abandoned the daughter to the brutality of his troops.

Had Venice always continued to produce such instances of virtue in her children, the indignant moralist had never found room for the unavoidable reflections which her present state inspires.

I.

Oh, Venice! when thou hast returned to earth,
And the dull element that gave thee birth
Shall rest upon thy ashes; when the wave

Shall break above thee o'er a nation's grave;

And all of thee that once was fair and bright
Shall sleep the sleep of everlasting night-
Pride, pomp and glory.-Still thou shalt not all
Forgotten slumber, Venice, in thy fall;

Not wholly shalt thou perish, still sublime,
One curse preserves thee, through the march of time,
Sublime in guilt, the curse of wasted blood,
Poured by thy sons on mountain and on flood:
To make thee, vestal daughter of the sea,
Last guardian of the flame of liberty-
That holy light which since the world began
Some sacred spot hath treasured still for man,
His covenant and ark-his beacon fire

Of hope; till hope shall with the world expire.

II.

We would not curse thee; for the chief who bore
Thy conquering lion to Byzantium's shore,
The blind old man, who on Sophia's dome
The standard planted of his sea-born Rome,
For her the tempest braved-the storm-and bled,
With eighty winters' snows upon his head,
But could not deem, as high her banner flew,
And freedom's hope beneath her triumphs grew;
As distant realms her will obedient heard,
And humbled tyrants trembled at her word;
That all the glories of her early day,
Her light, her freedom, and her ocean sway,
While she rode on, bright, dazzling, and alone,
Should set in darkness deeper than his own.

III.

Old Dandolo! and where are they who learned
To feel the fire with which thy bosom burned,
The sons, who caught from thee the spark divine,
And made their country worthy to be thine;
Laid conquered regions at her feet, and all
Tiaraed her with nations; that her pall
Was one vast universe of gorgeous things;
Her very vassals, arbiters of kings.

IV.

Where are they now? the gallant and the young,
Where are they now, whom harps of poets sung,
The high and happy! Where the Senate's pride,
That Rome and Rome's supremacy defied?
Whose faith unbought, unawed by human power,
Still brightest burned in Superstition's hour

Whose state unyielding to the Roman ban
Hurl'd back the thunders of the vatican!
And he the crowned consort of the deep-
Why does his bride, the Adriatic, weep?
Why vainly thus her azure zone unlace
And heave her bosom to his loved embrace?
Why comes he not, the bridegroom-where is now
The painted banner-and the gilded prow—
Where, Venice, are thy children-what hath come-
Or who, to strike thy voice of music dumb?

V.

Silence is in thy streets, and hushed the sound
Of revel in thy palaces around;

c

Thy lordly senator hath changed his state,
Almost a beggar at his father's gate,
And forced, yet basely satisfied to live,
To beg the favor that he used to give.
So art thou fallen, oh, Venice! Never more
The song shall animate thy gentle shore,
Beautiful Brenta-few howe'er shall shed
A tear for thee, thou city of the dead!
The dead have all thy fame: arise and tell,
Erizzo! how of old Venetians fell,

For honour and for Venice! rise and say
How well they fought on Negroponte's day,
And thou with them-though there no altar stone
Arose to tell that country was thy own;

No monument, beneath whose sacred weight
Thy fathers slept-the fathers of the state.
There naught was thine to make that spot to thee
Sacred as Venice to her sons should be;
But that thy country's banner floated o'er
The walls, that trembled at her lion's roar,
Sufficed for thee, and Negropont became
A new Thermopyla to crown thy name.

VI.

Thus old Erizzo;-for the stranger land-
But trusted by his country to his hand!
Thus, with his comrades, lived he o'er the hour
Of Grecian glory and of Roman power.
And could not ye, Venetians, for the fires
That blazed upon the altars of your sires,
Could ye not envy such an hour of strife,
Beyond the infamy of an age of life?

Oh, well, when thou wert doomed to fall, did he
Who bore the ensigns of thy majesty,
Survive not to endure the threat and frown
Of one who wore his delegated crown.
VII.

Fell Negropont-and old Erizzo stood
Beside his conqueror, in that field of blood;
Sternly he eyed the Sultan, sternly too
His glance of anger back the Moslem threw;
And they who knew the meaning of that look,
Sad augury for old Erizzo took.

But one was there who could not deem that he,
So gentle, she had heard his voice, could be
To her obdurate; they had met before,
And Candia's isle had heard the lover pour
As ardent vows as virgin e'er betrayed
From lips of lover, 'neath the myrtle shade,
In the soft luxury of Italian skies,
And lighted only by her lover's eyes.

VIII.

And happy then was Mahomet to prove
The gentler raptures of requited love;
Forgot his sceptre, and ambition's crown,
Cast at the feet of sovereign beauty down.
Oh, wore not then the destined conqueror's brow
A prouder wreath than binds his forehead now?
Swelled not his breast with nobler triumph then,
Than e'er shall bid his heart to beat again?
To clasp her form, unlearned the frauds of life,
Who deemed herself as surely then his wife,
In the warm pledge, beneath the starlight given,
As if those little orbs had beamed from heaven,
To witness and record the vow of truth
That bound them in the innocence of youth.

IX.

She would have led him to her sire, and poured,
So proud she looked upon her bosom's lord,
Again, and yet again, her passion's vow-
Told how he won her early love; and how
His dark eye beamed-and how his bosom fired
At deeds of arms; and that she most desired
In one she loved, she would have bade her sire
Behold in him-love, virtue, modest fire,
And towering hopes-and all that woman deems,
In him who ministers her passions' dreams.

X.

A little month, and Candia's fountains bore,
Her groves and valleys, happiness no more
To the dark-eyed Venetian-rock, and tree,
And summer-sky, were there-but where was he?
Gone from her bower-and now must Anna learn,
The fears that harrow, and the hopes that burn;
As the sealed fountains of the heart unclose;
And woman learns the origin of woes!
When first the secrets of her bosom rise,
Like crime untold, before the virgin's eyes;
And all the rapturous visions of delight,
The nameless dreams, that visit her by night
Start up before her when at last are burst
The chains of blissful ignorance, and first
The blushing maid is summoned to confess,
With all the fervor of its young excess,
Her sex's secret to her heart, and tell
That she can love-and love, alas! too well!

XI.

And well no second love may woman know;
What second love can bid her bosom glow
Again with untried rapture-tear away
The chaste affections of her early day;
Find her in innocence, and teach the cost
At which that early innocence is lost;

Rend the heart's floodgates, and, with fierce control,
Pour the warm passion full upon the soul !

XII.

Such love was thine, Erizzo's daughter! Why
Should ever love like thine be doomed to sigh?
Why should the best reward of love, sincere
As thine, be pity's unavailing tear?

Oh, could'st thou know to whom thou hast resigned
Thy love-to what, the treasure of thy mind-
But no! enough, in all thy woes, for thee

To prove the force of love, and woman's constancy!

XIII.

At length arrived at Crete; her sire she told
The simple story of her heart; and old
As was Erizzo's memory of his youth,
Perhaps, perhaps her artlessness of truth,