The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 35

[fa] _Canto 1^st^ The Bride of Abydos. Nov. 1^st^ 1813_.--[MS.]

[fb] {159} _The changing cheek and knitting brow_.--[MS. i.]

[fc]

_Hence--bid my daughter hither come_ _This hour decides her future doom--_ _Yet not to her these words express_ _But lead her from the tower's recess_.--[MSS. i., ii.]

[These lines must have been altered in proof, for all the revises accord with the text.]

[fd] {160} _With many a tale and mutual song_.--[ms]

[129] Mejnoun and Leila, the Romeo and Juliet of the East. Sadi, the moral poet of Persia. [For the "story of Leila and Mujnoon," see _The Gulistan, or Rose Garden_ of ... Saadi, translated by Francis Gladwin, Boston, 1865, Tale xix. pp. 288, 289; and Gulistan ... du Cheikh Sa'di ... Traduit par W. Semelet, Paris, 1834, Notes on Chapitre V. p. 304.

Sa'di "moralizes" the tale, to the effect that love dwells in the eye of the beholder. See, too, Jami's _Medjnoun et Leila_, translated by A. L.

Chezy, Paris, 1807.]

[130] Tambour. Turkish drum, which sounds at sunrise, noon, and twilight. [The "tambour" is a kind of mandoline. It is the large kettle-drum (_nagare_) which sounds the hours.]

[fe] {161} _Must walk forsooth where waters flow_ _And pore on every flower below_.--[MS. erased.]

[ff] {162} _For looks of peace and hearts of ire_.--[MS.]

[fg] _And calmly to his Sire's was raised_.--[MS.]

[fh] {163} _No--nor the blood I call my own_.--[MS.]

[131] The Turks abhor the Arabs (who return the compliment a hundredfold) even more than they hate the Christians.

[fi] _Or Christian flying from the fight_.--[MS.]

[fj] _Zuleika! ever welcome here_.--[MS.]

[fk] _Who never was more blest than now_.--[MS.]

[132] {164} [Lines 170-181 were added in the course of printing. They were received by the publisher on November 22, 1813.]

[fl]

_Who hath not felt his very power of sight_ _Faint with the languid dimness of delight?_--[MS.]

[fm]

_The light of life--the purity of grace_ _The mind of Music breathing in her face_ or, _Mind on her lip and music in her face._ _A heart where softness harmonized the whole_ _And oh! her eye was in itself a Soul!_--[MS.]

[133] This expression has met with objections. I will not refer to "Him who hath not Music in his soul," but merely request the reader to recollect, for ten seconds, the features of the woman whom he believes to be the most beautiful; and, if he then does not comprehend fully what is feebly expressed in the above line, I shall be sorry for us both. For an eloquent pa.s.sage in the latest work of the first female writer of this, perhaps of any, age, on the a.n.a.logy (and the immediate comparison excited by that a.n.a.logy) between "painting and music," see vol. iii.

cap. 10, De l'Allemagne. And is not this connection still stronger with the original than the copy? with the colouring of Nature than of Art?

After all, this is rather to be felt than described; still I think there are some who will understand it, at least they would have done had they beheld the countenance whose speaking harmony suggested the idea; for this pa.s.sage is not drawn from imagination but memory,{A} that mirror which Affliction dashes to the earth, and looking down upon the fragments, only beholds the reflection multiplied!

[For the simile of the broken mirror, compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza x.x.xiii. line 1 (_Poetical Works_, ii. 236, note 2); and for "the expression," "music breathing from her face," compare Sir Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_, Part II. sect, ix., _Works_, 1835, ii. 106, "And sure there is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of any instrument;" and Lovelace's "Song," _Orpheus to Beasts_--

"Oh could you view the melody Of ev'ry grace, And music of her face!"

The effect of the appeal to Madame de Stael is thus recorded in Byron's _Journal_ of December 7, 1813 (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 369): "This morning, a very pretty billet from the Stael," (for pa.s.sage in _De L'Allemagne_, Part III. chap, x., and the "billet," see _Letters,_ ii. 354, note 1) ... "She has been pleased to be pleased with my slight eulogy in the note annexed to _The Bride_."]

{A} _In this line I have not drawn from fiction but memory--that mirror of regret memory--the too faithful mirror of affliction the long vista through which we gaze. Someone has said that the perfection of Architecture is frozen music--the perfection of Beauty to my mind always presented the idea of living Music_.--[MS. erased.]

[134] {166} Carasman Oglou, or Kara Osman Oglou, is the princ.i.p.al landholder in Turkey; he governs Magnesia: those who, by a kind of feudal tenure, possess land on condition of service, are called Timariots: they serve as Spahis, according to the extent of territory, and bring a certain number into the field, generally cavalry.

[The "line of Carasman" dates back to Kara Youlouk, the founder of the dynasty of the "White Sheep," at the close of the fourteenth century.

Hammer-Purgstall (_Hist. de l'Emp. Ottoman_, iii. 151) gives _sang-sue_, "blood-sucker," as the equivalent of Youlouk, which should, however, be interpreted "smooth-face." Of the Magnesian Kara Osman Oglou ("Black Osman-son"), Dallaway (_Constantinople Ancient and Modern_, 1797, p.

190) writes, "He is the most powerful and opulent dere bey ('lord of the valley'), or feudal tenant, in the empire, and, though inferior to the pashas in rank, possesses more wealth and influence, and offers them an example of administration and patriotic government which they have rarely the virtue to follow." For the Timariots, who formed the third cla.s.s of the feudal cavalry of the Ottoman Empire, see Finlay's _Greece under Othoman ... Domination_, 1856, pp. 50, 51.]

[fn] _Who won of yore paternal lands_.--[MS.]

[fo] _Enough if that thy bridesman true_.--[MS. erased.]

[135] [The Bey Oglou (Begzade) is "the n.o.bleman," "the high-born chief."]

[136] {167} When a Pacha is sufficiently strong to resist, the single messenger, who is always the first bearer of the order for his death, is strangled instead, and sometimes five or six, one after the other, on the same errand, by command of the refractory patient; if, on the contrary, he is weak or loyal, he bows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of these presents were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate; among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdat, a brave young man, cut off by treachery, after a desperate resistance.

[137] Clapping of the hands calls the servants. The Turks hate a superfluous expenditure of voice, and they have no bells.

[138] "Chibouque," the Turkish pipe, of which the amber mouthpiece, and sometimes the ball which contains the leaf, is adorned with precious stones, if in possession of the wealthier orders.

[139] {168} "Maugrabee" [_Maghrabi_, Moors], Moorish mercenaries.

[140] "Delis," bravos who form the forlorn hope of the cavalry, and always begin the action. [See _Childe Harold_, Canto II., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

[141] [The Kizlar aghasi was the head of the black eunuchs; kislar, by itself, is Turkish for "girls," "virgins."]

[142] A twisted fold of _felt_ is used for scimitar practice by the Turks, and few but Mussulman arms can cut through it at a single stroke: sometimes a tough turban is used for the same purpose. The jerreed [jarid] is a game of blunt javelins, animated and graceful.

[143] "Ollahs," Alla il Allah [La ilah ill 'llah], the "Leilies," as the Spanish poets call them, the sound is Ollah: a cry of which the Turks, for a silent people, are somewhat profuse, particularly during the jerreed [jarid], or in the chase, but mostly in battle. Their animation in the field, and gravity in the chamber, with their pipes and comboloios [_vide post_, p. 181, note 4], form an amusing contrast.

[fp] {169} _Her heart confessed no cause of shame_.--[MS.]

[144] "Atar-gul," ottar of roses. The Persian is the finest.

[145] The ceiling and wainscots, or rather walls, of the Mussulman apartments are generally painted, in great houses, with one eternal and highly-coloured view of Constantinople, wherein the princ.i.p.al feature is a n.o.ble contempt of perspective; below, arms, scimitars, etc., are, in general, fancifully and not inelegantly disposed.

[fq]

_The drops that flow upon his vest_ _Unheeded fell upon his breast_.--[MS.]

[146] {170} It has been much doubted whether the notes of this "Lover of the rose" are sad or merry; and Mr. Fox's remarks on the subject have provoked some learned controversy as to the opinions of the ancients on the subject. I dare not venture a conjecture on the point, though a little inclined to the "errare mallem," etc., _if_ Mr. Fox _was_ mistaken.

[Fox, writing to Grey (see Lord Holland's Preface (p. xii.) to the _History ... of James the Second_, by ... C. J. Fox, London, 1808), remarks, "In defence of my opinion about the nightingale, I find Chaucer, who of all poets seems to have been the fondest of the singing of birds, calls it a 'merry note,'" etc. Fox's contention was attacked and disproved by Martin Davy (1763-1839, physician and Master of Caius College, Cambridge), in an interesting and scholarly pamphlet ent.i.tled, _Observations upon Mr. Fox's Letter to Mr. Grey_, 1809.]

[fr]

_Would I had never seen this hour_ _What knowest thou not who loves thee best._--[MS.]

[fs] {171} _If so by Mecca's hidden shrine_.--[MS.]