distant vision fails,
All stealthily, with eyes on earth, and shrinking
from the sight,
As a nocturnal robber holds his dark and breathless
flight,
And thinks he sees the gibbet spread its arms in solemn
wrath,
In every tree that dimly throws its shadow on his
path!
Thus, after his defeat, pale
Reschid speaks.
Among the dead we mourned
a thousand Greeks.
Lone from the field the Pasha
fled afar,
And, musing, wiped his reeking
scimitar;
His two dead steeds upon the
sands were flung,
And on their sides their empty
stirrups hung.
W.D., Bentley’s Miscellany, 1839.
("Les Turcs ont passes la.")
[XVIII., June 10, 1828.]
All is a ruin where rage knew no bounds:
Chio is levelled, and loathed by the hounds,
For shivered yest’reen
was her lance;
Sulphurous vapors envenom the place
Where her true beauties of Beauty’s true race
Were lately linked close in
the dance.
Dark is the desert, with one single soul;
Cerulean eyes! whence the burning tears roll
In anguish of uttermost shame,
Under the shadow of one shrub of May,
Splashed still with ruddy drops, bent in decay
Where fiercely the hand of
Lust came.
“Soft and sweet urchin, still red with the lash
Of rein and of scabbard of wild Kuzzilbash,
What lack you for changing
your sob—
If not unto laughter beseeming a child—
To utterance milder, though they have defiled
The graves which they shrank
not to rob?
“Would’st thou a trinket, a flower, or
scarf,
Would’st thou have silver? I’m ready
with half
These sequins a-shine in the
sun!
Still more have I money—if you’ll
but speak!”
He spoke: and furious the cry of the Greek,
“Oh, give me your dagger
and gun!”
("Sara, belle d’indolence.")
[XIX., August, 1828.]
In a swinging hammock lying,
Lightly flying,
Zara, lovely indolent,
O’er a fountain’s crystal
wave
There to lave
Her young beauty—see her bent.
As she leans, so sweet and soft,
Flitting oft,
O’er the mirror to and fro,
Seems that airy floating bat,
Like a feather
From some sea-gull’s wing of snow.
Every time the frail boat laden
With the maiden
Skims the water in its flight,
Starting from its trembling sheen,
Swift are seen
A white foot and neck so white.
As that lithe foot’s timid tips
Quick she dips,
Passing, in the rippling pool,
(Blush, oh! snowiest ivory!)
Frolic, she
Laughs to feel the pleasant cool.
Here displayed, but half concealed—
Half revealed,
Each bright charm shall you behold,
In her innocence emerging,
As a-verging
On the wave her hands grow cold.
