by Lord Byron
There Fortune plays, while Rumour holds the stake
And the World trembles to bid brokers break.
How rich is Britain! not indeed in mines,
Or peace or plenty, corn or oil, or wines;
No land of Canaan, full of milk and honey, 670
Nor (save in paper shekels) ready money:
But let us not to own the truth refuse,
Was ever Christian land so rich in Jews?
Those parted with their teeth to good King John,
And now, ye kings, they kindly draw your own;
All states, all things, all sovereigns they control,
And waft a loan “from Indus to the pole.”
The banker — broker — baron — brethren, speed
To aid these bankrupt tyrants in their need.
Nor these alone; Columbia feels no less 680
Fresh speculations follow each success;
And philanthropic Israel deigns to drain
Her mild per-centage from exhausted Spain.
Not without Abraham’s seed can Russia march;
Tis gold, not steel, that rears the conqueror’s arch.
Two Jews, a chosen people, can command
In every realm their Scripture-promised land: —
Two Jews, keep down the Romans, and uphold
The accurséd Hun, more brutal than of old:
Two Jews, — but not Samaritans — direct 690
The world, with all the spirit of their sect.
What is the happiness of earth to them?
A congress forms their “New Jerusalem,”
Where baronies and orders both invite —
Oh, holy Abraham! dost thou see the sight?
Thy followers mingling with these royal swine,
Who spit not “on their Jewish gaberdine,”
But honour them as portion of the show —
(Where now, oh Pope! is thy forsaken toe?
Could it not favour Judah with some kicks? 700
Or has it ceased to “kick against the pricks?”)
On Shylock’s shore behold them stand afresh,
To cut from Nation’s hearts their “pound of flesh.”
XVI.
Strange sight this Congress! destined to unite
All that’s incongruous, all that’s opposite.
I speak not of the Sovereigns — they’re alike,
A common coin as ever mint could strike;
But those who sway the puppets, pull the strings,
Have more of motley than their heavy kings.
Jews, authors, generals, charlatans, combine, 710
While Europe wonders at the vast design:
There Metternich, power’s foremost parasite,
Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight;
There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs;
And subtle Greeks intrigue for stupid Tartars;
There Montmorenci, the sworn foe to charters,
Turns a diplomatist of great éclat,
To furnish articles for the “Débats;”
Of war so certain — yet not quite so sure
As his dismissal in the “Moniteur.” 720
Alas! how could his cabinet thus err!
Can Peace be worth an ultra-minister?
He falls indeed, perhaps to rise again,
“Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.”
XVII.
Enough of this — a sight more mournful woos
The averted eye of the reluctant Muse.
The Imperial daughter, the Imperial bride,
The imperial Victim — sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the Hero’s hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of Modern Troy; 730
The still pale shadow of the loftiest Queen
That Earth has yet to see, or e’er hath seen;
She flits amidst the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France’s widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen’s wave,
Her only throne is in Napoleon’s grave.
But, no, — she still must hold a petty reign,
Flanked by her formidable chamberlain; 740
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes
Must watch her through these paltry pageantries.
What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,
Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort,
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams — while nations gaze and mourn — 750
Ere yet her husband’s ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e’er those awful ashes can grow cold; —
But no, — their embers soon will burst the mould;)
She comes! — the Andromache (but not Racine’s,
Nor Homer’s,) — Lo! on Pyrrhus’ arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord’s half-shattered sceptre through,
Is offered and accepted? Could a slave
Do more? or less? — and he in his new grave! 760
Her eye — her cheek — betray no inward strife,
And the Ex-Empress grows as Ex a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men’s feelings, when their own are jests?
XVIII.But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home,
And sketch the group — the picture’s yet to come.
My Muse ‘gan weep, but, ere a tear was spilt,
She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt!
While thronged the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman! 770
Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse roar,
While all the Common Council cry “Claymore!”
To see proud Albyn’s tartans as a belt
Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt,
She burst into a laughter so extreme,
That I awoke — and lo! it was no dream!
Here, reader, will we pause: — if there’s no harm in
This first — you’ll have, perhaps, a second “Carmen.”
B. Jn 10th 1823.
TALES
CONTENTS
THE GIAOUR
INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ADVERTISEMENT
THE GIAOUR
THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS
INTRODUCTION
THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS
CANTO THE FIRST
CANTO THE SECOND
THE CORSAIR
INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE CORSAIR
CANTO THE FIRST
CANTO THE SECOND
CANTO THE THIRD
LARA
INTRODUCTION
LARA
CANTO THE FIRST
CANTO THE SECOND
THE SIEGE OF CORINTH
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
THE SIEGE OF CORINTH
PARISINA
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
PARISINA
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
MAZEPPA
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
MAZEPPA
THE ISLAND
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
THE ISLAND
CANTO THE FIRST
CANTO THE SECOND.
CANTO THE THIRD.
CANTO THE FOURTH.
THE LAMENT OF TASSO
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
THE LAMENT OF TASSO I.
THE PROPHECY OF DANTE
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE PROPHECY OF DANTE
CANTO THE FIRST
CANTO THE SECOND
CANTO THE THIRD
CANTO THE FOURTH
THE MORGANTE MAGGIORE OF PULCI
INTRODUCTION
ADVERTISEMENT
THE MORGANTE MAGGIORE
FRANCESCA OF RIMINI
INTRODUCTION
FRANCESCA OF RIMINI
THE GIAOUR
INTRODUCTION
In a letter to Murray, dated Pisa, December 12, 1821 (Life, p. 545), Byron avows that the “Giaour Story” had actually “some foundation on facts.” Soon after the poem appeared (June 5, 1813), “a story was circulated by some gentlewomen … a little too close to the text” (Letters to Moore, September 1, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 258), and in order to put himself right with his friends or posterity, Byron wrote to his friend Lord Sligo, who in July, 1810, was anchored off Athens in “a twelve-gun brig, with a crew of fifty men” (see Letters, 1898, i. 289, note 1), requesting him to put on paper not so much the narrative of an actual event, but “what he had heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there.” According to the letter which Moore published (Life, p. 178), and which is reprinted in the present issue (Letters, 1898, ii. 257), Byron interposed on behalf of a girl, who “in compliance with the strict letter of the Mohammedan law,” had been sewn in a sack and was about to be thrown into the sea. “I was told,” adds Lord Sligo, “that you then conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night to Thebes.” The letter, which Byron characterizes as “curious,” is by no means conclusive, and to judge from the designedly mysterious references in the Journal, dated November 16 and December 5, and in the second postscript to a letter to Professor Clarke, dated December 15, 1813 (Letters, 1898, ii. 321, 361, 311), “the circumstances which were the groundwork” are not before us. “An event,” says John Wright (ed. 1832, ix. 145), “in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story so circumstantially set forth (see Medwin’s Conversations, 1824, pp. 121, 124) of his having been the lover of this female slave, there is no foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, we are assured by Sir John Hobhouse (Westminster Review, January, 1825, iii. 27), an object of his Lordship’s attachment, but of that of his Turkish servant.” Nevertheless, whatever Byron may have told Hobhouse (who had returned to England), and he distinctly says (Letters, 1898, ii. 393) that he did not tell him everything, he avowed to Clarke that he had been led “to the water’s edge,” and confided to his diary that to “describe the feelings of that situation was impossible — it is icy even to recollect them.”
For the allusive and fragmentary style of the Giaour, The Voyage of Columbus, which Rogers published in 1812, is in part responsible. “It is sudden in its transitions,” wrote the author, in the Preface to the first edition, “... leaving much to be imagined by the reader.” The story or a part of it is told by a fellow-seaman of Columbus, who had turned “eremite” in his old age, and though the narrative itself is in heroic verse, the prologue and epilogue, as they may be termed, are in “the romance or ballad-measure of the Spanish.” The resemblance between the two poems is certainly more than accidental. On the other hand, a vivid and impassioned description of Oriental scenery and customs was, as Gifford observed, new and original, and though, by his own admission, Byron was indebted to Vathek (or rather S. Henley’s notes to Vathek) and to D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale for allusions and details, the “atmosphere” could only have been reproduced by the creative fancy of an observant and enthusiastic traveller who had lived under Eastern skies, and had come within ken of Eastern life and sentiment.
In spite, however, of his love for the subject-matter of his poem, and the facility, surprising even to himself, with which he spun his rhymes, Byron could not persuade himself that a succession of fragments would sort themselves and grow into a complete and connected whole. If his thrice-repeated depreciation of the Giaour is not entirely genuine, it is plain that he misdoubted himself. Writing to Murray (August 26, 1813) he says, “I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month;” to Moore (September 1), “The Giaour I have added to a good deal, but still in foolish fragments;” and, again, to Moore (September 8), “By the coach I send you a copy of that awful pamphlet the Giaour.”
But while the author doubted and apologized, or deprecated “his love’s excess In words of wrong and bitterness,” the public read, and edition followed edition with bewildering speed.
The Giaour was reviewed by George Agar Ellis in the Quarterly (No. xxxi., January, 1813 [published February 11, 1813]) and in the Edinburgh Review by Jeffrey (No. 54, January, 1813 [published February 24, 1813]).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The bibliography of the Giaour is beset with difficulties, and it is doubtful if more than approximate accuracy can be secured. The composition of the entire poem in its present shape was accomplished within six months, May-November, 1813, but during that period it was expanded by successive accretions from a first draft of 407 lines (extant in MS.) to a seventh edition of 1334 lines. A proof is extant of an edition of 28 pages containing 460 lines, itself an enlargement on the MS.; but whether (as a note in the handwriting of the late Mr. Murray affirms) this was or was not published is uncertain. A portion of a second proof of 38 pages has been preserved, but of the publication of the poem in this state there is no record. On June 5 a first edition of 41 pages, containing 685 lines, was issued, and of this numerous copies are extant. At the end of June, or the beginning of July, 1813, a second edition, entitled, a “New Edition with some Additions,” appeared. This consisted of 47 pages, and numbered 816 lines. Among the accretions is to be found the famous passage beginning, “He that hath bent him o’er the dead.” Two MS. copies of this pannus vere purpureus are in Mr. Murray’s possession. At the end of July, and during the first half of August, two or more issues of a third edition were set up in type. The first issue amounted to 53 pages, containing 950 lines, was certainly published in this form, and possibly a second issue of 56 pages, containing 1004 lines, may have followed at a brief interval. A revise of this second issue, dated August 13, is extant. In the last fortnight of August a fourth edition of 58 pages, containing 1048 lines, undoubtedly saw the light. Scarcely more than a few days can have elapsed before a fifth edition of 66 pages, containing 1215 lines, was ready to supplant the fourth edition. A sixth edition, a reproduction of the fifth, may have appeared in October. A seventh edition of 75 pages, containing 1334 lines, which presented the poem in its final shape, was issued subsequently to November 27, 1813 (a seventh edition was advertised in the Morning Chronicle, December 22, 1813), the date of the last revise, or of an advance copy of the issue. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth editions belong to 1814, while a fourteenth edition is known to have been issued in 1815. In that year and henceforward the Giaour was included in the various collected editions of Byron’s works. The subjoined table assigns to their several editions the successive accretions in their order as now published: —
NOTE.
The first edition is advertised in the Morning Chronicle, June 5; a third edition on August 11, 13, 16, 31; a fifth edition, with considerable additions, on September 11; on November 29 a “new edition;” and on December 27, 1813, a seventh edition, together with a repeated notice of the Bride of Abydos. These dates do not exactly correspond with Murray’s contemporary memoranda of the dates of the successive issues.
TO
/>
SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.
AS A SLIGHT BUT MOST SINCERE TOKEN
OF ADMIRATION OF HIS GENIUS,
RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER,
AND GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
THIS PRODUCTION IS INSCRIBED
BY HIS OBLIGED
AND AFFECTIONATE SERVANT,
BYRON.
London, May, 1813.
‘Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha’ by Eugène Delacroix, 1827
ADVERTISEMENT
The tale which these disjointed fragments present, is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the “olden time,” or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea, during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.
THE GIAOUR
No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian’s grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,
First greets the homeward-veering skiff
High o’er the land he saved in vain;
When shall such Hero live again?
Fair clime! where every season smiles
Benignant o’er those blessed isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna’s height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight, 10
And lend to loneliness delight.
There mildly dimpling, Ocean’s cheek
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the eastern wave:
And if at times a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odours there! 20
For there the Rose, o’er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover’s tale: