For there the Rose. o'er crag or vale, The maid for whom his melody, His thousand songs are heard on high, And And turn to groans his roundelay. Strange that where Nature loved to trace, As if for Gods, a dwelling place, And every charm and grace hath mix'd There man, enamour'd of distress, Or if, at times, the transient breeze That waves and wafts the fragrance there."-MS. The whole of this passage, from line 7 down to line 167, "Who heard it first had cause to grieve," was not in the first edition.] The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations. 4 The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night; with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing. And trample, brute-like, o'er each flower And, fix'd on heavenly thrones, should dwell So soft the scene, so form'd for joy, So curst the tyrants that destroy! He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled, The last of danger and distress, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,) The rapture of repose that's there," The fix'd yet tender traits that streak That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, As if to him it could impart ["And mark'd the almost dreaming air, Which speaks the sweet repose that's there."-MS.] "Ay, but to die and go we know not where, To lye in cold obstruction?" Measure for Measure, Act iii. sc. 2. 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 past away! Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Clime of the unforgotten brave!' Say, is not this Thermopyla? 8 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 languor, 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. 9 [There is infinite beauty and effect, though of a painful and almost oppressive character, in this 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 recollect in the whole compass of poetry.-JEFFREY.] 1 [From hence to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the pen to follow the imagination.] These waters blue that round you lave,Oh servile offspring of the free Pronounce what sea, what shore is this? The gulf, the rock of Salamis ! These scenes, their story not unknown, Arise, and make again your own; Snatch from the ashes of your sires The embers of their former fires; And he who in the strife expires Will add to theirs a name of fear That Tyranny shall quake to hear, And leave his sons a hope, a fame, They too will rather die than shame:" For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeath'd by bleeding Sire to Son, Though baffled oft is ever won. Bear witness, Greece, thy living page! Attest it many a deathless age! While kings, in dusty darkness hid, Have left a nameless pyramid, Thy heroes, though the general doom Hath swept the column from their tomb, A mightier monument command, The mountains of their native land! There points thy Muse to stranger's eye The graves of those that cannot die! "Twere long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendour to disgrace ; Enough-no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! Self-abasement paved the way To villain-bonds and despot sway. What can he tell who treads thy shore? When man was worthy of thy clime. Now crawl from cradle to the grave, Stain'd with each evil that pollutes Yet this will be a mournful tale, And they who listen may believe, Who heard it first had cause to grieve. * Far, dark, along the blue sea glancing, That best becomes an Eastern night. Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga (the slave of the scraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch-these are not polite, yet true appellations-now governs the governor of Athens ! |