Oh! who in such a night will dare Yet here, amidst this barren isle, To tempt the wilderness? And who 'mid thunder-peals can hear Our signal of distress? And who that heard our shouts would rise Nor rather deem from nightly cries That outlaws were abroad. Clouds burst, skies flash, oh, dreadful hour! More fiercely pours the storm! Yet here one thought has still the power To keep my bosom warm. While wandering through each broken path, O'er brake and craggy brow: While elements exhaust their wrath, Sweet Florence, where art thou? Not on the sea, not on the sea, Thy bark hath long been gone: Oh, may the storm that pours on me Bow down my head alone! Full swiftly blew the swift Siroc When last I press'd thy lip; Now thou art safe; nay, long ere now And since I now remember thee Which mirth and music sped; Do thou amidst the fair white walls, At times from out her latticed halls Then think upon Calypso's isles, And when the admiring circle mark A half-form'd tear, a transient spark Again thou 'It smile, and blushing shun Some coxcomb's raillery ; Nor own for once thou thought'st of one, Though smile and sigh alike are vain, When sever'd hearts repine; My spirit flies o'er mount and main, ΤΟ On Lady! when I left the shore, Where panting nature droops the head, I view my parting hour with dread. I ne'er shall bend mine eyes on thee: All charms which heedless hearts can move, Whom but to see is to admire, And, oh! forgive the word-to love. Forgive the word, in one who ne'er With such a word can more offend; And since thy heart I cannot share, Believe me, what I am, thy friend. And who so cold as look on thee, Thou lovely wanderer, and be less? Nor be, what man should ever be, The friend of beauty in distress? The Turkish tyrants now enclose; As spot of thy nativity: And though I bid thee now farewell, When I behold that wondrous scene, Since where thou art I may not dwell, "T will soothe to be where thou hast been. September, 1809. WRITTEN AT ATHENS, THE spell is broke, the charm is flown! Each lucid interval of thought Recalls the woes of Nature's charter, And he that acts as wise men ought, But lives, as saints have died, a martyr. WRITTEN BENEATH A PICTURE. Dear object of defeated care! Though now of love and thee bereft, To reconcile me with despair Thine image and my tears are left. "Tis said with sorrow time can cope; But this, I feel, can ne'er be true: For by the death-blow of my hope, My memory immortal grew. WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS,' MAY 9, 1810. IF, in the month of dark December, Though in the genial month of May, And think I've done a feat to-day. According to the doubtful story, "T were hard to say who fared the best: For he was drown'd, and I've the ague. Ζώη μου, σὰς ἀγαπῶ.2 ATHENS, 1810. MAID of Athens, ere we part, 1 On the 3d of May, 1810, while the Salsette (Captain Bathurst) was lying in the Dardanelles, Lieutenant Ekenhead of that frigate and the writer of these rhymes swam from the European shore to the Asiatic-by-the-by, from Abydos to Sestos would have been more correct. The whole distance from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles; though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other in an hour and ten minutes. The water was extremely cold, from the melting of the mountain-snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt, but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the straits, as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic fort. Chevalier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions its having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul, Tarragona, remembered neither of these circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that, as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability. 2 Zoe mou, sas agapo, or Zún pov, càs ȧyazã, a Romaic expression of tenderness: if I translate it I shall affront the By those tresses unconfined, By that lip I long to taste; Maid of Athens! I am gone: Sons of Greeks, let us go Then manfully despising Sons of Greeks, etc. Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie? With Athens, old ally! 1 In the East (where ladies are not taught to write, lest ther gentlemen, as it may seem that I supposed they could not; and should scribble assignations) flowers, cinders, peble, if I do not, I may affront the ladies. For fear of any miscon- convey the sentiments of the parties by that universal depaty struction on the part of the latter, I shall do so, begging of Mercury-an old woman. A cinder says, "I hur for the which sounds very prettily in all languages, and is as much a bunch of flowers tied with hair. "Take me and fly," but pardon of the learned. It means. My life, I love you!" in fashion in Greece at this day as, Juvenal tells us, the two first words were amongst the Roman ladies, whose erotic expressions were all Hellenized. pebble declares-what nothing else can. 2 Constantinople. · Επτάλοφος." TRANSLATION OF THE ROMAIC SONG, σε Μπενω μες τσ' περιβολι 'Ωραίοτατη Χαηδή,” etc. The song from which this is taken is a great favourite with the young girls of Athens of all classes. Their manner of singing it is by verses in rotation, the whole number present joining in the chorus. I have beard it frequently at our "Xópoc" in the winter of 1810-11. The air is plaintive and pretty. I ENTER thy garden of roses, Beloved and fair Haidée, Yet trembles for what it has sung: When love has abandon'd the bowers; My heart from these horrors to save: By pangs which a smile would dispel? And mourns o'er thine absence with me. ON PARTING. THE kiss, dear maid! thy lip has left, Shall never part from mine, Till happier hours restore the gift Thy parting glance, which fondly beams, The tear that from thine eyelid streams I ask no pledge to make me blest, Nor need I write-to tell the tale By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart, no longer free, TO THYRZA. WITHOUT a stone to mark the spot, Divided, yet beloved in vain ; To bid us meet-no-ne'er again! Could this have been-a word, a look, That softly said, "We part in peace," Had taught my bosom how to brook, With fainter sighs, thy soul's release. And didst thou not, since death for thee Prepared a light and pangless dart, Once long for him thou ne'er shalt see, Who held, and holds thee in his heart? Oh! who like him had watch'd thee here? Or sadly mark'd thy glazing eye, In that dread hour ere death appear, When silent sorrow fears to sigh, Till all was past? But when no more 'T was thine to reck of human woe, Affection's heart-drops, gushing o'er, Had flow'd as fast-as now they flow. Affection's mingling tears were ours? The smile none else might understand; The whisper'd thought of hearts allied, The pressure of the thrilling hand; The kiss so guiltless and refined, That love each warmer wish forbore; Those eyes proclaim'd so pure a mind, Even passion blush'd to plead for more. The tone, that taught me to rejoice, When prone, unlike thee, to repine; The song celestial from thy voice, But sweet to me from none but thine; The pledge we wore-I wear it still, But where is thine ?-ah, where art thou? Oft have I borne the weight of ill, But never bent beneath till now! Well hast thou left in life's best bloom The cup of woe for me to drain. If rest alone be in the tomb, I would not wish thee here again; To wean me from mine anguish here. STANZAS. AWAY, away, ye notes of woe! Be silent, thou once soothing strain, Or I must flee from hence, for, oh! I dare not trust those sounds again. To me they speak of brighter days— But lull the chords, for now, alas! I must not think, I may not gaze On what I am, on what I was. The voice that made those sounds more sweet A dirge, an anthem o'er the dead! Beloved dust! since dust thou art; Is worse than discord to my heart! "T is silent all!-but on my ear The well-remember'd echoes thrill; A voice that now might well be still; Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep, Thou art but now a lovely dream; A star that trembled o'er the deep, Then turn'd from earth its tender beam. But he who through life's dreary way Must pass, when heaven is veil'd in wrath, Will long lament the vanish'd ray That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. Then bring me wine, the banquet bring; That smiles with all and weeps with none. It was not thus in days more dear, It never would have been, but thou Hast fled, and left me lonely here; Thou 'rt nothing, all are nothing now, In vain my lyre would lightly breathe! On many a lone and lovely night It soothed to gaze upon the sky; For then I deem'd the heavenly light Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye; And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon, · When sailing o'er the Ægean wave, "Now Thyrza gazes on that moon—” Alas, it gleam'd upon her grave! When stretch'd on fever's sleepless bed, And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins, ""T is comfort still," I faintly said, "That Thyrza cannot know my pains:" Like freedom to the time-worn slave, A boon 't is idle then to give, Relenting Nature vainly gave My life when Thyrza ceased to live! My Thyrza's pledge in better days, When love and life alike were new, How different now thou meet'st my gare! How tinged by time with sorrow's hue! The heart that gave itself with thee Is silent-ah, were mine as still! Though cold as even the dead can be, It feels, it sickens with the chill. Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token! Though painful, welcome to my breast! Still, still, preserve that love unbroken, Or break the heart to which thou 'rt prest Time tempers love, but not removes, More hallow'd when its hope is filed: Oh! what are thousand living loves To that which cannot quit the dead? TO THYRZA. ONE struggle more, and I am free pangs From that rend my heart in twain, One last long sigh to love and thee, Then back to busy life again. It suits me well to mingle now With things that never pleased before: Though every joy is fled below, What future grief can touch me more? EUTHANASIA. WHEN time, or soon or late, shall bring The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, Oblivion! may thy languid wing Wave gently o'er my dying bed! No band of friends or heirs be there, To weep or wish the coming blow; No maiden, with dishevell'd hair, To feel, or feign, decorous woe. But silent let me sink to earth, MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. With no officious mourners near: Yet Love, if Love in such an hour In her who lives and him who dies. 'T were sweet, my Psyche, to the last Even Pain itself should smile on thee. But vain the wish-for Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; Then lonely be my latest hour, Without regret, without a groan! a Ay, but to die, and go," alas! Ere born to life and living woe! Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, STANZAS. "Heu! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" AND thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, It is enough for me to prove Like common earth can rot; As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And what were worse, thou canst not see The better days of life were ours; The worst can be but mine; The sun that cheers, the storm that lours, The silence of that dreamless sleep That all those charms have pass'd away, The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd I know not if I could have borne Extinguish'd, not decay'd; As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep, My tears might well be shed, One vigil o'er thy bed; To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, Uphold thy drooping head; Yet how much less it were to gain, Returns again to me, And more thy buried love endears STANZAS. IF sometimes in the haunts of men Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile, |