Selected Poems (35 page)

Far, dark, along the blue sea glancing,

The shadows of the rocks advancing

170

Start on the fisher’s eye like boat

Of island-pirate or Mainote;

And fearful for his light caique,

He shuns the near but doubtful creek:

Though worn and weary with his toil,

175

And cumber’d with his scaly spoil,

Slowly, yet strongly, plies the oar,

Till Port Leone’s safer shore

Receives him by the lovely light

That best becomes an Eastern night.

* * * * *

180

Who thundering comes on blackest steed,

With slacken’d bit and hoof of speed?

Beneath the clattering iron’s sound

The cavern’d echoes wake around

In lash for lash, and bound for bound;

185

The foam that streaks the courser’s side

Seems gather’d from the ocean-tide:

Though weary waves are sunk to rest,

There’s none within his rider’s breast;

And though to-morrow’s tempest lower,

190

‘Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!

I know thee not, I loathe thy race,

But in thy lineaments I trace

What time shall strengthen, not efface:

Though young and pale, that sallow front

195

Is scathed by fiery passion’s brunt;

Though bent on earth thine evil eye,

As meteor-like thou glidest by,

Right well I view and deem thee one

Whom Othman’s sons should slay or shun.

200

On – on he hasten’d, and he drew

My gaze of wonder as he flew:

Though like a demon of the night

He pass’d, and vanish’d from my sight,

His aspect and his air impress’d

205

A troubled memory on my breast,

And long upon my startled ear

Rung his dark courser’s hoofs of fear.

He spurs his steed; he nears the steep,

That, jutting, shadows o’er the deep;

210

He winds around; he hurries by;

The rock relieves him from mine eye;

For well I ween unwelcome he

Whose glance is fix’d on those that flee;

And not a star but shines too bright

215

On him who takes such timeless flight.

He wound along; but ere he pass’d

One glance he snatch’d, as if his last,

A moment check’d his wheeling steed,

A moment breathed him from his speed,

220

A moment on his stirrup stood –

Why looks he o’er the olive wood?

The crescent glimmers on the hill,

The Mosque’s high lamps are quivering still:

Though too remote for sound to wake

225

In echoes of the far tophaike,
¹

The flashes of each joyous peal

Are seen to prove the Moslem’s zeal,

To-night, set Rhamazani’s sun;

To-night, the Bairam feast’s begun;

230

To-night – but who and what art thou

Of foreign garb and fearful brow?

And what are these to thine or thee,

That thou should’st either pause or flee?

He stood – some dread was on his face,

235

Soon Hatred settled in its place:

It rose not with the reddening flush

Of transient Anger’s hasty blush,

But pale as marble o’er the tomb,

Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.

240

His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;

He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,

And sternly shook his hand on high,

As doubting to return or fly:

Impatient of his flight delay’d,

245

Here loud his raven charger neigh’d –

Down glanced that hand, and grasp’d his blade;

That sound had burst his waking dream,

As Slumber starts at owlet’s scream.

The spur hath lanced his courser’s sides;

250

Away, away, for life he rides:

Swift as the hurl’d on high jerreed
¹

Springs to the touch his startled steed;

The rock is doubled, and the shore

Shakes with the clattering tramp no more;

255

The crag is won, no more is seen

His Christian crest and haughty mien.

‘Twas but an instant he restrain’d

That fiery barb so sternly rein’d;

‘Twas but a moment that he stood,

260

Then sped as if by death pursued:

But in that instant o’er his soul

Winters of Memory seem’d to roll,

And gather in that drop of time

A life of pain, an age of crime.

265

O’er him who loves, or hates, or fears,

Such moment pours the grief of years:

What felt
he
then, at once opprest

By all that most distracts the breast?

That pause, which ponder’d o’er his fate,

270

Oh, who its dreary length shall date!

Though in Time’s record nearly nought,

It was Eternity to Thought!

For infinite as boundless space

The thought that Conscience must embrace,

275

Which in itself can comprehend

Woe without name, or hope, or end.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone;

And did he fly or fall alone?

Woe to that hour he came or went!

280

The curse for Hassan’s sin was sent

To turn a palace to a tomb;

He came, he went, like the Simoom,
¹

That harbinger of fate and gloom,

Beneath whose widely-wasting breath

285

The very cypress droops to death –

Dark tree, still sad when others’ grief is fled,

The only constant mourner o’er the dead!

The steed is vanish’d from the stall;

No serf is seen in Hassan’s hall;

290

The lonely Spider’s thin gray pall

Waves slowly widening o’er the wall;

The Bat builds in his Haram bower

And in the fortress of his power

The Owl usurps the beacon-tower;

295

The wild-dog howls o’er the fountain’s brim,

With baffled thirst, and famine, grim;

For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,

Where the weeds and the desolate dust are spread.

‘Twas sweet of yore to see it play

300

And chase the sultriness of day,

As springing high the silver dew

In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness round

The air, and verdure o’er the ground.

305

‘Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night.

And oft had Hassan’s Childhood play’d

Around the verge of that cascade;

310

And oft upon his mother’s breast

That sound had harmonized his rest;

And oft had Hassan’s Youth along

Its bank been soothed by Beauty’s song;

And softer seem’d each melting tone

315

Of Music mingled with its own.

But ne’er shall Hassan’s Age repose

Along the brink at Twilight’s close:

The stream that fill’d that font is fled –

The blood that warm’d his heart is shed!

320

And here no more shall human voice

Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice.

The last sad note that swell’d the gale

Was woman’s wildest funeral wail:

That
quench’d in silence, all is still,

325

But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill:

Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,

No hand shall close its clasp again.

On desert sands ’twere joy to scan

The rudest steps of fellow man,

330

So here the very voice of Grief

Might wake an Echo like relief –

At least ’t would say, ‘All are not gone;

There lingers Life, though but in one’–

For many a gilded chamber’s there,

335

Which Solitude might well forbear;