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"Round her lamp of fretted gold

Bloom flowers in urns of China's mould;
The richest work of Iran's loom,
And Sheeraz' tribute of perfume;
All that can eye or sense delight

Are gathered in that gorgeous room-
But yet it hath an air of gloom-

She, of this Peri cell the sprite,

What doth she hence, and on so rude a night?"

The next stanza discovers her in the garden, with Selim by her side, in their way to her favourite grotto. On her arrival, she finds the appearance of it changed. In an obscure corner she. views a pile of arms, and a sword stained with blood. Selim throws off his vest, and discovers himself armed and accoutred like a Galiongée, or Turkish sailor. He unfolds the mysterious secret" that he was not what he seemed," and discovers himself to be no longer now the brother of Zuleika. Her answer to these unexpected tidings is expressed in all the pathos of artless junocence.

"Oh! not my brother!-yet unsay-
God! am I left alone on earth;

To mourn-I dare not curse--the day
That saw my solitary birth!

Oh! wilt thou love me now no more?
My sinking heart foreboded ill;
But know me all I was before,

Thy sister-friend-Zuleika still."

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Selim relates at considerable length the history of his life. He discovers himself to be the son of Abdallah, a brother of Giafhir. A rancorous hatred had long existed between the brothers, which terminated in the murder of Abdallah, from a poison which was administered to him while in the bath, by the order of Giaffir. From some doubtful reason, whether frem remorse, or from the desire of an heir, Selim, while an infant, was secretly adopted by Giaffir, and educated as his own son. The secret of his real birth was disclosed to him in due time by Haroun, the faithful slave of his father, who witnessed, but dared not revenge, the death of his master. In process of time the haughty pride of Giaffir discovered itself in a contemptuous aversion to the child of a murdered brother, and the indignation of Selim was daily increased by a thirst of revenge for the blood of his father. He now declares himself to Zuleika the leader of a. horde of pirates, to whom the chance of an adventure had first introduced him, and to which the tyranny of his pretended father had driven him, as a dreadful refuge. He closes his long nar

ration with protestations of love, and a requisition that, both for her father's sake and her own, she would fly with him that very night, as the morning would witness the arrival of Osman Bey. The ensuing lines will greet the classical ear as a lively representation of the mute amazement of the appalled but innocent Zuleika. The dramatic effect of the subsequent passage adds a spirit of reality to the scene.

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· Oh fly—no more yet now my more than brother!"

Giaffir and his guards hurry on, in the heat of pursuit, towards the grotto.-Selim stands dauntless, and entreats Zuleika to remain there for her own security, with an oath that he will not attempt the life of her father.-He flies to his comrades, who are seen approaching on the water to his rescue.

"His boat appears-not five oars length-
His comrades strain with desperate strength-
Oh! are they yet in time to save?

His feet the foremost breakers lave;

His band are plunging in the bay,
Their sabres glitter through the spray;
Wet-wild-unwearied to the strand
They struggle-now they touch the land!
They come 'tis but to add to slaughter-
His heart's best blood is on the water!"

He fails by a carbine, from the hand of Giaffir, and his body is washed from the shore by the waves. Before even the death of Selim, the heart of Zuleika, who had remained motionless within the grotto, had burst with amazement, fear, and anguish.

Such is the story of the Bride of Abydos; how far it may exceed the bounds of strict probability it is neither fair nor necessary to inquire, as the inquiry itself could not be suggested but by a very minute investigation; since then there is no incident which appears at first sight to shock our credulity, or to outrage our belief, we are bound to repose our confidence in the usual licence allowed to the invention of poetry. The unity of time

and

and place, which are so nearly preserved throughout, breathe a spirit of life into the whole. The attention is not wearied by tedious details of the change of place, or the lapse of hours, nor the imagination exhausted by following the poet over undescribed intervals of space and time. The action of the poem is included in less than twelve hours, and within the compass of a few hundred feet, yet every part is an animated and a moving picture. The conduct of the tale throughout seems to unite the most spirited freedom to the most accurate and artful judge

ment.

From the specimens already given, it will appear that the descriptive parts of the second canto abound with life and fire. The death of Zuleika is one of the most brilliant passages in this or any other modern poem. It is conceived in the tenderest affection, it glows with the most poetic eloquence, it is expressed in the very pathos of simplicity. It might pass the ordeal of the severest criticism, and be scarcely touched by the fire.

"By Helle's stream there is a voice of wail!

And woman's eye is wet-man's cheek is pale-
Zuleika, last of Giaffir's race,

Thy destin❜d lord is come too late,

He sees not-ne'er shall see thy face!
Can he not hear

The loud wul-wulleh warn his distant ear,
Thy handmaids weeping at the gate,

The Koran chaunters of the hymn of fate-
The silent slaves with folded arms that wait,
Sighs in the hall, and shrieks upon the gale;
Tell him thy tale!

Thou didst not view thy Selim fall!

That fearful moment when he left the cave
Thy heart grew chill-

He was thy hope, thy joy, thy love, thine all-
And that last thought on him thou could'st not save
Suffic'd to kill—

Burst forth in one wild cry-and all was still-
Peace to thy broken heart and virgin grave!"

The allusion to the unfortunate fate of Hero and Leander, at the opening of the second cauto, will be read by the scholar with much pleasure; and may perhaps remind him of the many exquisite passages in the long-neglected poem of the PseudoMusæus, on the same subject; we cannot forbear citing one

Wul-wulleh-the death song of the Turkish women.

line, as adding to "the turret torch which blazed on high," a new and most beautiful idea:

Μοιράων ἀνέφαινε, καὶ οὐκ ἔτι δάλον ἐρώτων.

The translation to the Troad is happily conceived, and pow erfully expressed.

"The winds are high-and Helles tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main,
And night's descending shadows hide
That field of blood bedew'd in vain,
The desart of old Priam's pride-
The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!".

He proceeds to state his belief in the reality of the scene: now whatever may be the fate of the hypothesis of that consummate scholar, Jacob Bryant, one fact is universally agreed upon, no less among the friends than among the opponents of his system, namely, that Homer described most accurately every lineament in the face of the country around. The question, therefore, as far as modern travellers are concerned, will be set at rest by considering the point at issue to be, not whether Homer placed the scene of his poem in the Troad, and whether his descriptions are answered by the features of country around; but whether the Greek encampments actually existed in the plains of Troy, or in the imagination of the poet; and whether the visions of the ancient bard were not as devoid of reality as the visions of the modern traveller, who in the heat of classical enthusiasm views the shores of the Hellespont peopled with the armies of Greece, and believes every tumulus to" contain no fabled hero's ashes." If, then, it is allowed that the poet fixed the scene of his action, whether real or imaginary, in the Troad, we believe that it will require as much learning to prove the action real, as Bryant has expended to shew it to be imaginary. And as such an exhibition is not likely to take place in our times, the learned world, notwithstanding the frequent visitations to the Troad, need not be alarmed, lest their repose should be again disturbed by the renewal of the controversy.

We have before noticed the change of measure, in which libertyLord Byron seems frequently to indulge. In a short and hasty tale, the effect produced by the transition is often striking, but we are of opinion, that in a longer poem, the frequent recurrence of such a licence would give an air of littleness and trifling, and considerably diminish any ideas of grandeur that might be attached to the whole. The transition is happily introduced in

the

the second canto, where Selim, having closed his history, renews his protestations of love in heroic measure, a verse in which the noble Lord seems peculiarly to excel.-Many of the lines are worthy of selection.

"Mark, where his carnage and his conquests cease:
He makes a solitude-and calls it peace!

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Pow'r sways but by division-her resource

The blest alternative of fraud or force."

Our readers must have anticipated us in the recollection of the celebrated expression of Tacitus, "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant;" and in the last couplet, the well known maxim of a politician, (Machiavel we believe,) " Divide et impera." We shall cite the ensuing lines, not only on account of their own beauty, but as they remind us of an exquisite passage in Tibullus, I. 1. 45.

"Ay-let the loud winds whistle o'er the deck,
So that these arms cling closer round my neck;
The deepest murmur of these lips shall be
No sigh for safety, but a prayer for thee."

"Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem
Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu," &c.

One extract more from this part of the poem will close our selection. The harmony and flow of the following lines is too elegant to be passed over without observation.

"Borne by my steed, or wafted by my sail,

Across the desert, or before the gale,

Bound, where thou wilt my barb, or glide my prow,
But be the star that guides the wanderer, thou.
Thou, my Zuleika, share and bless my bark,
The dove of peace, and promise to my ark;
Or since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life.."

The grace of this passage is heightened in no small degree by the judicious application of a scriptural image. Similar allusions are not unfrequent in the poem, but not always with the same success. Who in the ocean patriarch" would recognize Noah? The waters of the universal deluge cannot in any propriety of language be termed " the ocean," nor excepting in the ark, is Noah recorded to have ever embarked. The expression therefore is evidently misapplied. Nor is the name which Selim assumes to himself, "The nephew of a Cain,” more appropriate, for it does not appear from Scripture that

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