'Tis fired!

Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turban'd victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,

970

Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane,

In one wild roar expired!

975

The shatter'd town-the walls thrown down

The waves a moment backward bent

The hills that shake, although unrent,

As if an earthquake pass'd—

The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,

By that tremendous blast

Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er

On that too long afflicted shore;

Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorch'd and shrivell'd to a span,

When he fell to earth again

Like a cinder strew'd the plain:

980

985

990

Down the ashes shower like rain;

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

Some fell on the shore, but far away,
Scatter'd o'er the isthmus lay;
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say!
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deem'd she such a day

Would rend those tender limbs away.
Not the matrons that them bore

Could discern their offspring more ;

That one moment left no trace

995

1000

1005

More of human form or face

Save a scatter'd scalp or bone:

And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,

Deeply dinted in the clay,

ΠΟΙΟ

All blacken'd there and reeking lay.

That deadly earth-shock disappear'd:

All the living things that heard

The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead;
The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke-

VOL. V.

6

1015

The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouth'd arose, and doubly harsh;
The wolves yell'd on the cavern'd hill,
Where echo roll'd in thunder still;
The jackal's troop, in gather'd cry,1o
Bay'd from afar complainingly,
With a mix'd and mournful sound,
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,

1020

1025

And mounted nearer to the sun,

1030

The clouds beneath him seem'd so dun ;

Their smoke assail'd his startled beak,

And made him higher soar and shriek

Thus was Corinth lost and won!

NOTES

ΤΟ

THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.

NOTE I.

The Turcoman hath left his herd.

Page 77, line 1. THE life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.

NOTE 2.

Coumourgi—he whose closing scene.

Page 79, line 15. Ali Coumourgi, the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III. after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners; and his last words, Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs! a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, was a great general," he said "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."

66

NOTE 3.

There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea.

Page 92, line 15.

The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.

NOTE 4.

And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull.

Page 94, line 5.

This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's Travels. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.

NOTE 5.

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair.

Page 94, line 14.

This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.

NOTE 6.

Page 97, line 7.

I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel.” It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge him