The foremost of the prying band,

A gasping head, a quivering trunk:
Another falls-but round him close
A swarming circle of his foes;
From right to left his path he cleft,

And almost met the meeting wave:
His boat appears-not five oars' length-
His comrades strain with desperate strength-
Oblare they yet in time to save?

The sea-birds shriek above the prey,
O'er which their hungry beaks delay,
As shaken on his restless pillow,
His head heaves with the heaving billow;
That hand, whose motion is not life,
Yet feebly seems to menace strife,
Flung by the tossing tide on high,

Then levell'd with the wave-
What recks it, though that corse shall lie
Within a living grave?

And fragments of each shiver'd brand: Steps stamp'd'; and dash'd into the sand The print of many a struggling hand

May there be mark'd; nor far remote
A broken torch, an oarless boat;
And tangled on the weeds that heap
The beach where shelving to the deep
There lies a white capote !

'Tis rent in twain-one dark-red stain
The wave yet ripples o'er in vain :
But where is he who wore?
Ye! who would o'er his relics weep
Go, seek them where the surges sweep
Their burthen round Sigæum's steep,
And cast on Lemnos' shore:

Vainly the sackcloth o'er thy limbs doth spr
By that same hand Abdallah-Selim bled.
Now let it tear thy beard in idle grief:
Thy pride of heart, thy bride for Osman's bed.
She, whom thy sultan had but seen to wed,
Thy daughter's dead!

Hope of thine age, thy twilight's lonely beam,
The star hath set that shone on Helle's stream.
What quench'd its ray?-the blood that thou hast sh
Hark! to the hurried question of despair:
"Where is my child?" an echo answers-"Where?"4
XXVIII.

Within the place of thousand tombs

That shine beneath, while dark above

The sad but living cypress glooms
And withers not, though branch and leaf
Are stamp'd with an eternal grief,

Like early unrequited love,
One spot exists, which ever blooms
Even in that deadly grove-
A single rose is shedding there

Its lonely lustre, meek and pale:
It looks as planted by despair-
So white-so faint-the slightest gale
Might whirl the leaves on high;

And yet, though storms and blight assail,
And hands more rude than wintry sky

May wring it from the stem-in vain-
To-morrow sees it bloom again!
The stalk some spirit gently rears,
And waters with celestial tears;

For well may maids of Helle deem
That this can be no earthly flower,
Which mocks the tempest's withering hour,
And buds unshelter'd by a bower;

Nor droops, though spring refuse her shower,
Nor woos the summer beam:

To it the livelong night there sings

A bird unseen-but not remote:

Invisible his airy wings,

But soft as harp that Houri strings

His long entrancing note!

It were the bulbul; but his throat,

Though mournful, pours not such a strain:
For they who listen cannot leave
The spot, but linger there and grieve
As if they loved in vain!

And yet so sweet the tears they shed,
"Tis sorrow so unmix'd with dread,
They scarce can bear the morn to break
That melancholy spell,

And longer yet would weep and wake,
He sings so wild and well!

But when the day-blush bursts from high,
Expires that magic melody.

And some have been who could believe
(So fondly youthful dreams deceive,
Yet harsh be they that blame)
That note so piercing and profound
Will shape and syllable its sound

Into Zuleika's name.43

"T is from her cypress' summit heard,
That melts in air the liquid word:
"T is from her lowly virgin earth
That white rose takes its tender birth.
There late was laid a marble stone;
Eve saw it placed the morrow gone!
It was no mortal arm that bore
That deep-fix'd pillar to the shore;
For there, as Helle's legends tell,
Next morn 't was found where Selim fell;
Lash'd by the tumbling tide, whose wave
Denied his bones a holier grave:
And there, by night, reclined, 't is said,
Is seen a ghastly turban'd head:
And hence extended by the billow,

"T is named the "Pirate-phantom's pillow!"
Where first it lay that mourning flower
Hath flourish'd; flourisheth this hour,
Alone and dewy, coldly pure and pale;
As weeping beauty's cheek at sorrow's tale!

The mind, the music breathing from her face. This expression has met with objections. I will not refer to "him who hath not Music in his soul," but merely request the reader to recollect, for ten seconds, the features of the woman whom he believes to be the most beautiful; and if he then does not comprehend fully what is feebly expressed in the above line, I shall be sorry for us both. For an eloquent passage in the latest work of the first female writer of this, perhaps of any age, on the analogy (and the immediate comparison excited by that analogy), between "painting and music," see vol. iii. cap. 10. DE L'ALLEMAGNE. And is not this connexion still stronger with the original than the copy?-with the colouring of nature than of art? After all, this is rather to be felt than described; still I think there are some who will understand it, at, least they would have done, had they beheld the countenance whose speaking harmony suggested the idea; for this passage is not drawn from imagination, but memory, that mirror which affliction dashes to the earth, and looking down upon the fragments, only beholds the reflection multiplied!