by Byron
Never did I droop before;
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Never to my sovereign sue,
As his foes I now implore:
All I ask is to divide
Every peril he must brave;
Sharing by the hero’s side
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His fall, his exile, and his grave.
THE SIEGE OF CORINTH
To JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.
THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED BY HIS FRIEND.
January 22, 1816
ADVERTISEMENT
‘The grand army of the Turks (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that country,1 thought it best in the first place to attack Corinth, upon which they made several storms. The garrison being weakened, and the governor seeing it was impossible to hold out against so mighty a force, thought it fit to beat a parley: but while they were treating about the articles, one of the magazines in the Turkish camp, wherein they had six hundred barrels of powder, blew up by accident, whereby six or seven hundred men were killed; which so enraged the infidels, that they would not grant any capitulation, but stormed the place with so much fury, that they took it, and put most of the garrison, with Signior Minotti, the governor, to the sword. The rest, with Antonio Bembo, proveditor extraordinary, were made prisoners of war.’ – History of the Turks, vol. iii. p. 151.
In the year since Jesus died for men,
Eighteen hundred years and ten,
We were a gallant company,
Riding o’er land, and sailing o’er sea.
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Oh! but we went merrily!
We forded the river, and clomb the high hill,
Never our steeds for a day stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed;
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Whether we couch’d in our rough capote,
On the rougher plank of our gliding boat,
Or stretch’d on the beach, or our saddles spread
As a pillow beneath the resting head,
Fresh we woke upon the morrow:
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All our thoughts and words had scope,
We had health, and we had hope,
Toil and travel, but no sorrow.
We were of all tongues and creeds; —
Some were those who counted beads,
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Some of mosque, and some of church,
And some, or I mis-say, of neither;
Yet through the wide world might ye search,
Nor find a mother crew nor blither.
But some are dead, and some are gone,
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And some are scatter’d and alone,
And some are rebels on the hills1
That look along Epirus’ valleys,
Where freedom still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood oppression’s ills;
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And some are in a far countree,
And some all restlessly at home;
But never more, oh! never, we
Shall meet to revel and to roam.
But those hardy days flew cheerily,
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And when they now fall drearily,
My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main,
And bear my spirit back again
Over the earth, and through the air,
A wild bird and a wanderer.
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’Tis this that ever wakes my strain,
And oft, too oft, implores again
The few who may endure my lay,
To follow me so far away.
Stranger – wilt thou follow now,
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And sit with me on Acro-Corinth’s brow?
1
Many a vanish’d year and age,
And tempest’s breath, and battle’s rage,
Have swept o’er Corinth; yet she stands,
A fortress form’d to Freedom’s hands.
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The whirlwind’s wrath, the earthquake’s shock,
Have left untouch’d her hoary rock,
The keystone of a land, which still,
Though fall’n, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide
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That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
But could the blood before her shed
Since first Timoleon’s brother bled,
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Or baffled Persia’s despot fled,
Arise from out the earth which drank
The stream of slaughter as it sank,
That sanguine ocean would o’erflow
Her isthmus idly spread below:
20 Or could the bones of all the slain,
Who perish’d there, be piled again,
That rival pyramid would rise
More mountain-like, through those clear skies,
Than yon tower-capp’d Acropolis,
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Which seems the very clouds to kiss.
II
On dun Cithæron’s ridge appears
The gleam of twice ten thousand spears;
And downward to the Isthmian plain,
From shore to shore of either main,
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The tent is pitch’d, the crescent shines
Along the Moslem’s leaguering lines;
And the dusk Spahi’s bands advance
Beneath each bearded pacha’s glance;
And far and wide as eye can reach
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The turban’d cohorts throng the beach;
And there the Arab’s camel kneels,
And there his steed the Tartar wheels;
The Turcoman hath left his herd,1
The sabre round his loins to gird;
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And there the volleying thunders pour
Till waves grow smoother to the roar.
The trench is dug, the cannon’s breath
Wings the far hissing globe of death;
Fast whirl the fragments from the wall,
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Which crumbles with the ponderous ball;
And from that wall the foe replies,
O’er dusty plain and smoky skies,
With fires that answer fast and well
The summons of the Infidel.
III
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But near and nearest to the wall
Of those who wish and work its fall,
With deeper skill in war’s black art,
Than Othman’s sons, and high of heart
As any chief that ever stood
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Triumphant in the fields of blood;
From post to post, and deed to deed,
Fast spurring on his reeking steed,
Where sallying ranks the trench assail,
And make the foremost Moslem quail;
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Or where the battery, guarded well,
Remains as yet impregnable,
Alighting cheerly to inspire
The soldier slackening in his fire;
The first and freshest of the host
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Which Stamboul’s sultan there can boast,
To guide the follower o’er the field,
To point the tube, the lance to wield,
Or whirl around the bickering blade; —
Was Alp, the Adrian renegrade!
IV
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From Venice – once a race of worth
His gentle sires – he drew his birth;
But late an exile from her shore,
Against his countrymen he bore
The arms they taught to bear; and now
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The turban girt his shaven brow.
Through many a change had Corinth pass’d
With Greece to Venice’ rule at
last;
And here, before her walls, with those
To Greece and Venice equal foes,
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He stood a foe, with all the zeal
Which young and fiery converts feel,
Within whose heated bosom throngs
The memory of a thousand wrongs.
To him had Venice ceased to be
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Her ancient civic boast – ‘the Free;’
And in the palace of St Mark
Unnamed accusers in the dark
Within the ‘Lion’s mouth’ had placed
A charge against him uneffaced:
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He fled in time, and saved his life,
To waste his future years in strife,
That taught his land how great her loss
In him who triumph’d o’er the Cross,
‘Gainst which he rear’d the Crescent high,
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And battled to avenge or die.
V
Coumourgi1 - he whose closing scene
Adorn’d the triumph of Eugene,
When on Carlowitz’ bloody plain,
The last and mightiest of the slain,
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He sank, regretting not to die,
But cursed the Christian’s victory –
Coumourgi – can his glory cease,
That latest conqueror of Greece,
Till Christian hands to Greece restore
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The freedom Venice gave of yore?
A hundred years have roll’d away
Since he refix’d the Moslem’s sway,
And now he led the Mussulman,
And gave the guidance of the van
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To Alp, who well repaid the trust
By cities levell’d with the dust;
And proved, by many a deed of death,
How firm his heart in novel faith.
VI
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
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Against them pour’d the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin;
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And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb:
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell’s volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flash’d
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The flame, as loud the ruin crash’d,
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven;
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,
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With volumed smoke that slowly grew
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.
VII
But not for vengeance, long delay’d,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
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His skill to pierce the promised breach:
Within these walls a maid was pent
His hope would win without consent
Of that inexorable sire,
Whose heart refused him in its ire,
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When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin hand aspired to claim.
In happier mood, and earlier time,
While unimpeach’d for traitorous crime,
Gayest in gondola or hall,
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He glitter’d through the Carnival;
And tuned the softest serenade
That e’er on Adria’s waters play’d
At midnight to Italian maid.
VIII
And many deem’d her heart was won;
150
For sought by numbers, given to none,
Had young Francesca’s hand remain’d
Still by the church’s bonds unchain’d:
And when the Adriatic bore
Lanciotto to the Paynim shore,
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Her wonted smiles were seen to fail,
And pensive wax’d the maid and pale;
More constant at confessional,
More rare at masque and festival;
Or seen at such, with downcast eyes,
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Which conquer’d hearts they ceased to prize:
With listless look she seems to gaze:
With humbler care her form arrays;
Her voice less lively in the song;
Her step, though light, less fleet among
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The pairs, on whom the Morning’s glance
Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.
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Sent by the state to guard the land,
(Which, wrested from the Moslem’s hand,
While Sobieski tamed his pride
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By Buda’s wall and Danube’s side,
The chiefs of Venice wrung away
From Patra to Eubœa’s bay,)
Minotti held in Corinth’s towers
The Doge’s delegated powers,
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While yet the pitying eye of Peace
Smiled o’er her long forgotten Greece:
And ere that faithless truce was broke
Which freed her from the unchristian yoke,
With him his gentle daughter came;
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Nor there, since Menelaus’ dame
Forsook her lord and land, to prove
What woes await on lawless love,
Had fairer form adorn’d the shore
Than she, the matchless stranger, bore.
X
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The wall is rent, the ruins yawn;
And, with to-morrow’s earliest dawn,
O’er the disjointed mass shall vault
The foremost of the fierce assault.
The bands are rank’d; the chosen van
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Of Tartar and of Mussulman,
The full of hope, misnamed ‘forlorn,’
Who hold the thought of death in scorn,
And win their way with falchion’s force,
Or pave the path with many a corse,
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O’er which the following brave may rise,
Their stepping-stone – the last who dies!
XI
‘Tis midnight: on the mountains brown
The cold, round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
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Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining
And turn’d to earth without repining,
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Nor wish’d for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
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But murmur’d meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillow’d on the waves;
The banners droop’d along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
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And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neigh’d oft and shrill,
And echo answer’d from the hill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
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Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin’s voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer;
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit’s o’er the plain:
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&n
bsp; ’Twas musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.
It seem’d to those within the wall
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A cry prophetic of their fall:
It struck even the besieger’s ear
With something ominous and drear,
An undefined and sudden thrill,
Which makes the heart a moment still,
235 Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense its silence framed;
Such as a sudden passing-bell
Wakes, though but for a stranger’s knell.
XII
The tent of Alp was on the shore;
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The sound was hush’d, the prayer was o’er;
The watch was set, the night-round made,
All mandates issued and obey’d:
’Tis but another anxious night,
His pains the morrow may requite
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With all revenge and love can pay,
In guerdon for their long delay.
Few hours remain, and he hath need
Of rest, to nerve for many a deed
Of slaughter; but within his soul
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The thoughts like troubled waters roll.
He stood alone among the host;
Not his the loud fanatic boast
To plant the crescent o’er the cross,
Or risk a life with little loss,
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Secure in paradise to be
By Houris loved immortally:
Nor his, what burning patriots feel,
The stern exaltedness of zeal,
Profuse of blood, untired in toil,
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When battling on the parent soil.
He stood alone – a renegade
Against the country he betray’d;
He stood alone amidst his band,
Without a trusted heart or hand:
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They follow’d him, for he was brave,
And great the spoil he got and gave;
They crouch’d to him, for he had skill
To warp and wield the vulgar will:
But still his Christian origin
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With them was little less than sin.
They envied even the faithless fame
He earn’d beneath a Moslem name;
Since he, their mightiest chief, had been
In youth a bitter Nazarene.
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They did not know how pride can stoop,
When baffled feelings withering droop;
They did not know how hate can burn
In hearts once changed from soft to stern;
Nor all the false and fatal zeal
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The convert of revenge can feel.
He ruled them – man may rule the worst,
By ever daring to be first;
So lions o’er the jackal sway;
The jackal points, he fells the prey,
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Then on the vulgar yelling press,
To gorge the relics of success.
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His head grows fever’d, and his pulse