XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretched To grasp the spoil he almost reached When old Minotti's hand Touched with the torch the train-- 'Tis fired![401] Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain, The turbaned victors, the Christian band, All that of living or dead remain, Hurled on high with the shivered fane, In one wild roar expired![402] 1020 The shattered town--the walls thrown down-- The waves a moment backward bent-- The hills that shake, although unrent,[qr] As if an Earthquake passed-- The thousand shapeless things all driven In cloud and flame athwart the heaven, By that tremendous blast-- Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er On that too long afflicted shore:[403] Up to the sky like rockets go 1030 All that mingled there below: Many a tall and goodly man, Scorched and shrivelled to a span, When he fell to earth again Like a cinder strewed the plain: Down the ashes shower like rain; Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles With a thousand circling wrinkles; Some fell on the shore, but, far away, Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040 Christian or Moslem, which be they? Let their mothers see and say![qs] When in cradled rest they lay, And each nursing mother smiled On the sweet sleep of her child, Little deemed she such a day Would rend those tender limbs away.[404] Not the matrons that them bore Could discern their offspring more;[405] That one moment left no trace 1050 More of human form or face Save a scattered scalp or bone: And down came blazing rafters, strown Around, and many a falling stone,[qt] Deeply dinted in the clay, All blackened there and reeking lay. All the living things that heard The deadly earth-shock disappeared: The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled, And howling left the unburied dead;[qu][406] 1060 The camels from their keepers broke; The distant steer forsook the yoke-- The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, And burst his girth, and tore his rein; The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh, Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;[407] The wolves yelled on the caverned hill Where Echo rolled in thunder still;[qv] The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,[qw][408] Bayed from afar complainingly, 1070 With a mixed and mournful sound,[qx] Like crying babe, and beaten hound:[409] With sudden wing, and ruffled breast, The eagle left his rocky nest, And mounted nearer to the sun, The clouds beneath him seemed so dun; Their smoke assailed his startled beak, And made him higher soar and shriek-- Thus was Corinth lost and won![410]

FOOTNOTES:

[330] "With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss, and Thunder."

[331] {447} Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains his government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-11; and, in the course of journeying through the country from my first arrival in 1809, I crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains; or in the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. Both the routes are picturesque and beautiful, though very different: that by sea has more sameness; but the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it, presents many attractive views of the islands Salamis, Ægina, Poros, etc., and the coast of the Continent.

["Independently of the suitableness of such an event to the power of Lord Byron's genius, the Fall of Corinth afforded local attractions, by the intimate knowledge which the poet had of the place and surrounding objects.... Thus furnished with that topographical information which could not be well obtained from books and maps, he was admirably qualified to depict the various operations and progress of the siege."--_Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222.]

[332] {449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as an opening to the _Siege of Corinth_. I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now;--on that you and your Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale," October 23rd. First published in _Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 638, they were included among the _Occasional Poems_ in the edition of 1831, and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]

[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an old ballad (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. 53)--

"Upon the sixteen hunder year Of God, and fifty-three, From Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie," etc.

See "The Life and Age of Man" (_Burns' Selected Poems_, ed. by J. L. Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]

[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives that travellers be!"--_Letters_, 1898, i. 233.]

[335] {450} [For "capote," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 132, 181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (_Letters_, 1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]

[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

[nz] {451} _But those winged days_----.--[MS.]

[337] [Compare Kingsley's _Last Buccaneer_--

"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main-- To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]

[oa] _The kindly few who love my lay_.--[MS.]

[338] [The MS. is dated J^y (January) 31, 1815. Lady Byron's copy is dated November 2, 1815.]

[ob] _Many a year, and many an age_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[oc] _A marvel from her Moslem bands_.--[MS. G.]

[339] {452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on the story, and that Akenside had the same design (_Works_ of Alexander Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]

[od] _Or could the dead be raised again_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oe] ----_through yon clear skies_ _Than tower-capt Acropolis_.--[MS. G.]

[of] _Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]_

[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]

[og] _The turbaned crowd of dusky hue_ _Whose march Morea's fields may rue_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.

[342] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 639 (_vide ante_, p. 116)--"The deathshot hissing from afar."]

[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how "Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed (Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan élevée jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en poussière."--Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l'Empire Othoman_, i. 13-15.]

[oh] _But now an exile_----.--[MS. G.]

[344] {455} ["The _Lions' Mouths_, under the arcade at the summit of the Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal for the public welfare."--_Sketches from Venetian History_, 1832, ii. 380.]

[oi] _To waste its future_----.--[MS. G.]

[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."

[For his letter to Prince Eugene, "Eh bien! la guerre va décider entre nous," etc., and for an account of his death, see Hammer-Purgstall, _Historie de l'Empire Othoman_, xiii. 300, 312.]

[oj] {456} _And death-like rolled_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ok] _Like comets in convulsion riven_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ol] _Impervious to the powerless sun_, _Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew_.-- [MS. G. erased.]

[om] {457} _In midnight courtship to Italian maid_.--[MS. G.]

[346] {458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]

[on] _By Buda's wall to Danube's side_.--[MS. G.]

[oo] _Pisani held_----.--[MS. G.]

[op] _Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[347] {459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

[oq] _By stepping o'er_----.--[MS. G.]

[348] ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight. Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]

[or] _Bespangled with her isles_----.--[MS. G.]

[349] ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in _The Pleasures of Hope_, Part II.--

"The seraph eye shall count the starry train, Like distant isles embosomed on the main."

And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xi. lines 14, 15--

"The studded archipelago, O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."

For other "star-similes," see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]

[os] _And take a dark unmeasured tone._--[MS. G.] _And make a melancholy moan_, _To mortal voice and ear unknown._--[MS. G. erased.]

[350] {461} [Compare Scott's _Marmion_, III. xvi. 4--

"And that strange Palmer's boding say, That fell so ominous and drear."]

[ot] ----_by fancy framed_, _Which rings a deep, internal knell_, _A visionary passing-bell._--[MS. G. erased.]

[ou] _The thoughts tumultuously roll._--[MS. G.]

[ov] {462} _To triumph o'er_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ow] _They but provide, he fells the prey._--[MS. G.] _As lions o'er the jackal sway_ _By springing dauntless on the prey;_ _They follow on, and yelling press_ _To gorge the fragments of success._--[MS. G. erased.]

[351] [Lines 329-331 are inserted in the copy. They are in Byron's handwriting. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 1, _seq._--"_That's_ an appropriate simile, _that jackal_."]

[ox] {463} _He vainly turned from side to side_, _And each reposing posture tried_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oy] _Beyond a rougher_----.--[MS. G.]

[oz] ----_to sigh for day_.--[MS. G.]

[pa] {464} _Of Liakura--his unmelting snow_ _Bright and eternal_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[352] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 566 (_vide ante_, p. 113)--

"For where is he that hath beheld The peak of Liakura unveiled?"

The reference is to the almost perpetual "cap" of mist on Parnassus (Mount Likeri or Liakura), which lies some thirty miles to the north-west of Corinth.]

[pb] {465} _Her spirit spoke in deathless song_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pc] _And in this night_----.--[MS. G.]

[pd] _He felt how little and how dim_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pe] _Who led the band_----.--[MS. G.]

[353] [Compare _The Giaour_, lines 103, _seq._ (_vide ante_, p. 91)--"Clime of the unforgotten brave!" etc.]

[pf] {466} _Their memory hallowed every fountain_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pg] Here follows, in the MS.--

_Immortal--boundless--undecayed--_ _Their souls the very soil pervade_.-- [_In the Copy the lines are erased_.]

[ph] _Where Freedom loveliest may be won_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[354] The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.

[pi] _So that fiercest of waves_----.--[MS. G.]

[pj] {467} _A little space of light grey sand_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[355] [Compare _The Island_, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12--

"A narrow segment of the yellow sand On one side forms the outline of a strand."]

[pk] _Or would not waste on a single head_ _The ball on numbers better sped_.--[MS. G. erased]

[pl] _I know not in faith_----.--[MS. G.]

[356] [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the editor of _The Works of Lord Byron_, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, "Lord Byron gave Mr. Gifford _carte blanche_ to strike out or alter anything at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention whatever to the august "reader's" suggestions and strictures. The sheets on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January 2, 1817.]

[357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's _Travels_ [_in Albania_, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.

[358] This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.

[pm] {469} _Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[359] ["Than the mangled corpse in its own blood lying."--Gifford.]

[pn] _Than the rotting dead_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[360] [Strike out--

"Scorch'd with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain, Than the perishing dead who are past all pain."

What is a "perishing dead"?--Gifford.]

[361] [Lines 487, 488 are inserted in the copy in Byron's handwriting.]

[po] _And when all_----.--[MS. G.]

[362] ["O'er the weltering _limbs_ of the tombless dead."--Gifford.]

[pp] _All that liveth on man will prey_, _All rejoicing in his decay,_ or, _Nature rejoicing in his decay_. _All that can kindle dismay and disgust_ _Follow his frame from the bier to the dust._--[MS. G. erased.]

[pq] {470} ----_it hath left no more_ _Of the mightiest things that have gone before_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[363] [Omit this couplet.--Gifford.]

[pr] After this follows in the MS. erased--

_Monuments that the coming age_ _Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage_-- _Till Ruin makes the relics scarce_, _Then Learning acts her solemn farce_, _And, roaming through the marble waste_, _Prates of beauty, art, and taste_.