THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS: A TURKISH TALE. "Had we never loved so kindly, Had we never loved so blindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted."-BURNS. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HON. LORD HOLLAND, This Tale is Enscribed, WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF REGARD AND RESPECT, BY HIS GRATEFULLY OBLIGED AND SINCERE FRIEND, BYRON. INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS. THE "Bride of Abydos" was written early in November 1813, and was published on the 2nd of December. Galt, on its appearance, remarked a coincidence between the first part, and some real event within his own experience, upon which Lord Byron observes that his story also was drawn from existence. He appears just before to have engaged in one of those feverish attachments which troubled the period of his London reign. The double issue was to make him wretched, and to originate "The Bride." "All convulsions," he says, "end with me in rhyme. It was written to distract my dreams from * * *. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time I must have gone mad by eating my own heart,-bitter diet!" "I am much more indebted to the tale," he records in his Journal, at the period of publication, "than I can ever be to the most important reader, as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination; from selfish regrets to vivid recollections, and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory." There can be no doubt, however, that some of his pent up feelings flowed into the fiction, for he was less accustomed to divert the course of his troubles, than to relieve his heart by giving them utterance. "I began a comedy," he says in his Journal of this very period, "and burnt it because the scene ran into reality; a novel for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through. yes, yes, through." The tale was struck off in four days, and he composed faster, and for more hours at a time, than in any previous attempt. To the original sketch there were added in the printing about two hundred lines; and, as was usual with him, the interpolated passages are among the most splendid in the poem. He announced to Mr. Murray, during the revisal, that he was doing his best to beat the "Giaour," but in this he considered he had not succeeded, and the public thought so too; though his friend, Mr. Hodgson, maintained that "The Bride" was better versified than "The Fragment," and George Ellis asserted that it was in every respect superior. There is nothing in "The Giaour," to answer to the touching and confiding affection of the guileless Zuleika; but, in spite of paragraphs of exceeding beauty, the execution of "The Bride" is decidedly inferior. If the verse is more varied, it wants, in general, the force and finish, the nerve and impetuosity, of the elder tale. The title was a misnomer. Mr. Croker inquired why it was called "The Bride of Abydos," since the death of the lovers anticipates the marriage -and Lord Byron replied, that the question was "unanswerable." "I was a great fool," he adds, "to make the bull, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman." The opening lines were supposed to have been imitated from a song of Goethe's .... "Kennst du das Land wo die citronen blühn?" But the author of "The Bride," could not read German, and if he borrowed the idea, he must, he said, have derived it from Madame de Staël, who copied Goethe in some verses, which Lord Byron, however, was nearly confident he had never seen when he penned his own. The resemblance between the French and the English is extremely slight, and is almost confined to the first line,- 66 - 'Cette terre où les myrtes fleurissent." Lord Byron received 500 guineas for "The Bride." THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS. CANTO THE FIRST. 2 I. KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; And the voice of the nightingale never is mute: Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky, And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye ; Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine? 'Tis the clime of the East; 'tis the land of the Sun Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done? 2 Oh! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell. "Gúl," the rose. "Souls made of fire, and children of the Sun, With whom revenge is virtue.”—YOUNG's Revenge. |