The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 23

"Such is my name, and such my tale.

Confessor! to thy secret ear 1320 I breathe the sorrows I bewail, And thank thee for the generous tear This glazing eye could never shed.

Then lay me with the humblest dead,[ew]

And, save the cross above my head, Be neither name nor emblem spread, By prying stranger to be read, Or stay the pa.s.sing pilgrim's tread."[123]

He pa.s.sed--nor of his name and race He left a token or a trace, 1330 Save what the Father must not say Who shrived him on his dying day: This broken tale was all we knew[ex]

Of her he loved, or him he slew.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] {85} A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles.

["There are," says c.u.mberland, in his _Observer_, "a few lines by Plato upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better translation than I can give--

"'By the sea's margin, on the watery strand, Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand: By this directed to thy native sh.o.r.e, The merchant shall convey his freighted store; And when our fleets are summoned to the fight Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.'"

Note to Edition 1832.

The traditional site of the tomb of Themistocles, "a rock-hewn grave on the very margin of the sea generally covered with water," adjoins the lighthouse, which stands on the westernmost promontory of the Piraeus, some three quarters of a mile from the entrance to the harbour.

Plutarch, in his _Themistocles_ (cap. x.x.xii.), is at pains to describe the exact site of the "altar-like tomb," and quotes the pa.s.sage from Plato (the comic poet, B.C. 428-389) which c.u.mberland paraphrases. Byron and Hobhouse "made the complete circuit of the peninsula of Munychia,"

January 18, 1810.--_Travels in Albania_, 1858, i. 317, 318.]

[cg] {86} _Fair clime! where_ ceaseless summer _smiles_ _Benignant o'er those blessed isles_, _Which seen from far Colonna's height_, _Make glad the heart that hails the sight_, _And lend to loneliness delight_.

_There_ shine the bright abodes ye seek, Like dimples upon Occan's cheek, So smiling round the waters lave _These Edens of the Eastern wave_.

Or _if, at times, the transient breeze_ _Break the_ smooth _crystal of the seas_, _Or_ brush _one blossom from the trees_, _How_ grateful _is each gentle air_ _That wakes and wafts the_ fragrance _there_.--[MS.]

----_the fragrance there_.--[Second Edition.]

[56] The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.

[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones--

"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing, Thyself the rose and he the bird of spring: Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.

Be gay: too soon the flowers of spring will fade."

"The full style and t.i.tle of the Persian nightingale (_Pycnonotus haemorrhous_) is 'Bulbul-i-hazar-dastan,' usually shortened to 'Hazar'

(bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'"

(See _Arabian Nights_, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; _Supplemental Nights_, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's _Lalla Rookh_--

"Oh! sooner shall the rose of May Mistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.

(Ed. "Chandos Cla.s.sics," p. 423)

and Fitzgerald's translation of the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam (stanza vi.)--

"And David's lips are lockt; but in divine High piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!'--the Nightingale cries to the Rose That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine."

_Rubaiyat, etc._, 1899, p. 29, and note, p. 62.

Byron was indebted for his information to a note on a pa.s.sage in _Vathek_, by S. Henley (_Vathek_, 1893, p. 217).]

[57] {87} The guitar is the constant amus.e.m.e.nt of the Greek sailor by night; with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.

[ch] {88} _Should wanton in a wilderness_.--[MS.]

[ci] The first draft of this celebrated pa.s.sage differs in many particulars from the Fair Copy, which, with the exception of the pa.s.sages marked as _vars._ i. (p. 89) and i. (p. 90), is the same as the text. It ran as follows:--

_He who hath bent him o'er the dead_ _Ere the first day of death is fled_-- _The first dark day of Nothingness_ _The last of_ doom _and of distress_-- _Before_ Corruption's _cankering fingers_ _Hath_ tinged the hue _where Beauty lingers_ _And marked_ the soft and settled _air_ That dwells with all but Spirit there _The fixed yet tender_ lines _that speak_ Of Peace along _the placid cheek_ _And--but for that sad shrouded eye_ _That fires not_--pleads _not--weeps not--now--_ _And but for that pale_ chilling _brow_ Whose touch tells of Mortality {-And curdles to the Gazer's heart-} _As if to him it could impart_ _The doom_ he only _looks upon_-- _Yes but for these and these alone_, A moment--yet--a little hour We _still might doubt the Tyrant's power_.

The eleven lines following (88-98) were not emended in the Fair Copy, and are included in the text. The Fair Copy is the sole MS. authority for the four concluding lines of the paragraph.

[58] [Compare "Beyond Milan the country wore the aspect of a wider devastation; and though everything seemed more quiet, the repose was like that of death spread over features which retain the impression of the last convulsions."--_Mysteries of Udolpho_, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 29.]

[cj] {89} _And marked the almost dreaming air_, _Which speaks the sweet repose that's there_.--

[MS. of Fair Copy.]

[59] {90} "Aye, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction?"

_Measure for Measure_, act iii. sc. I, lines 115, 116.

[Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza iv. line 5.]

[ck]

_Whose touch thrills with mortality_, _And curdles to the gazer's heart_.--[MS. of Fair Copy.]

[60] I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. [According to Medwin (1824, 4to, p. 223), an absurd charge, based on the details of this note, was brought against Byron, that he had been guilty of murder, and spoke from experience.]

[61] [In Dallaway's _Constantinople_ (p. 2) [Rev. James Dallaway (1763-1834) published _Constantinople Ancient and Modern, etc_., in 1797], a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a pa.s.sage quoted from Gillies' _History of Greece_(vol. i. p. 335), which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid l.u.s.tre of active life."--Moore, _Note to Edition_ 1832.]

[62] {91} [From hence to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the pen to follow the imagination.--(_Note to Edition_ 1837. The lines were added to the Second Edition.)]

[cl] _Fountain of Wisdom! can it be_.--[MS. erased.]

[63] [Compare--

"Son of the Morning, rise! approach you here!"

_Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza iii. line 1.]

[cm]

_Why is not this Thermopylae_; _These waters blue that round you lave_ _Degenerate offspring of the free_-- _How name ye them what sh.o.r.e is this?_ _The wave, the rock of Salamis?_--[MS.]

[cn] {92} _And he who in the cause expires_, _Will add a name and fate to them_ _Well worthy of his n.o.ble stem_.--[MS.]