The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 38

[178] {197} "Jannat-al-Aden," the perpetual abode, the Mussulman paradise. [See Sale's _Koran_, "Preliminary Discourse," sect. i.; and _Journal_, November 17, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 326.]

[gs] _Wait on thy voice and bow at thy command_.--[MS.]

[gt]

_Oh turn and mingle every thought with his,_ _And all our future days unite in this_.--[MS.]

[179] ["You wanted some reflections, and I send you _per Selim_, eighteen lines in decent couplets, of a pensive, if not an _ethical_ tendency.... Mr. Canning's approbation (_if_ he did approve) I need not say makes me proud."--Letter to Murray, November 23, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 286.]

[gu]

_Man I may lead but trust not--I may fall_ _By those now friends to me, yet foes to all_-- _In this they follow but the bent a.s.signed_, _By fatal Nature to our warring kind_.--[MS.]

[gv] {198} _Behold a wilderness and call it peace_,--[MS. erased.]

_Look round our earth and lo! where battles cease_, _"Behold a Solitude and call it" peace_.--[MS.]

or, _Mark even where Conquest's deeds of carnage cease_ _She leaves a solitude and calls it peace_.--[November 21, 1813].

[For the final alteration to the present text, see letter to Murray of November 24, 1813.]

[180] [Compare Tacitus, _Agricola_, cap. 30--

"Solitudinem faciun--pacem appellant."

See letter to Murray, November 24, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 287.]

[gw] _Power sways but by distrust--her sole source_.--[MS. erased.]

[gx] _Which Love to-night hath lent by swelling sail_.--[MS.]

[181] {199} [Compare--

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

Tibullus, _Eleg_., Lib. I. i. 45, 46.]

[gy] _Then if my lip once murmurs, it must be_.--[MS.]

[182] [The omission of lines 938, 939 drew from Byron an admission (Letter to Murray, November 29, 1813) that "the pa.s.sage is an imitation altogether from Medea in Ovid" (_Metamorph_., vii. 66-69)--

"My love possest, in Jason's bosom laid, Let seas swell high;--I cannot be dismay'd While I infold my husband in my arms: Or should I fear, I should but fear his harms."

Englished by Sandys, 1632.]

[gz] _This hour decides my doom or thy escape_.--[MS.]

[183] {200} [Compare--

"That thought has more of h.e.l.l than had the former.

Another, and another, and another!"

_The Revenge_, by Edward Young, act iv.

(_Modern British Drama_, 1811, ii. 17).]

[ha] {202} _Or grazed by wounds he scorned to feel_.--[MS.]

[hb] {203} Three MS. variants of these lines were rejected in turn before the text was finally adopted--

(1) {_Ah! wherefore did he turn to look_ {_I know not why he turned to look_ _Since fatal was the gaze he took?_ _So far escaped from death or chain_, _To search for her and search in vain:_ _Sad proof in peril and in pain_ _How late will Lover's hope remain._

(2) _Thus far escaped from death or chain_ _Ah! wherefore did he turn to look?_ _For her his eye must seek in vain,_ _Since fatal was the gaze he took._ _Sad proof, etc_.--

(3) _Ah! wherefore did he turn to look_ _So far escaped from death or chain?_ _Since fatal was the gaze he took_ _For her his eye but sought in vain,_ _Sad proof, etc_.--

A fourth variant of lines 1046, 1047 was inserted in a revise dated November 16--

_That glance he paused to send again_ _To her for whom he dies in vain_.

[hc] {204} _O'er which their talons yet delay_.--[MS. erased.]

[hd] {205} _And that changed hand whose only life_ _Is motion-seems to menace strife_.--[MS.]

[184] ["While the _Salsette_ lay off the Dardanelles, Lord Byron saw the body of a man who had been executed by being cast into the sea, floating on the stream, moving to and fro with the tumbling of the water, which gave to his arms the effect of scaring away several sea-fowl that were hovering to devour. This incident he has strikingly depicted in the _Bride of Abydos."--Life of Lord Byron_, by John Galt, 1830, p. 144.]

[185] A turban is carved in stone above the graves of _men_ only.

[186] The death-song of the Turkish women. The "silent slaves" are the men, whose notions of decorum forbid complaint in _public_.

[he] {206} _The Koran-chapter chaunts thy fate_.--[MS.]

[187] [At a Turkish funeral, after the interment has taken place, the Imam "a.s.sis sur les genoux a cote de la tombe," offers the prayer _Telkin_, and at the conclusion of the prayer recites the _Fathah_, or "opening chapter" of the Koran. ("In the name of the merciful and compa.s.sionate G.o.d. Praise belongs to G.o.d, the Lord of the worlds, the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate, the Ruler of the day of judgment. Thee we serve, and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with; nor of those who err."--_The Qur'an_, p. 1, translated by E. H. Palmer, Oxford, 1880): _Tableau Generale de l'Empire Ottoman_, par Mouradja D'Ohsson, Paris, 1787, i. 235-248. Writing to Murray, November 14, 1813, Byron instances the funeral (in the _Bride of Abydos_) as proof of his correctness with regard to local colouring.--_Letters_, 1898, ii. 283.]

[188] {207} ["I one evening witnessed a funeral in the vast cemetery of Scutari. An old man, with a venerable beard, threw himself by the side of the narrow grave, and strewing the earth on his head, cried aloud, 'He was my son! my only son!'"--_Constantinople in 1828_, by Charles Macfarlane, 1829, p. 233, note.]

[hf] _She whom thy Sultan had been fain to wed_.--[MS.]

[189] ["The body of a Moslemin is ordered to be carried to the grave in haste, with hurried steps."--_Ibid._, p. 233, note.]

[190] "I came to the place of my birth, and cried, 'The friends of my Youth, where are they?' and an Echo answered, 'Where are they?'"--_From an Arabic MS._ The above quotation (from which the idea in the text is taken) must be already familiar to every reader: it is given in the second annotation, p. 67, of _The Pleasures of Memory_ [note to Part I.

line 103]; a poem so well known as to render a reference almost superfluous: but to whose pages all will be delighted to recur [_Poems_, by Samuel Rogers, 1852, i. 48].

[hg] _There the sad cypress ever glooms_.--[MS.]

[hh] {209} _But with the day blush of the sky_.--[MS.]

[hi] _And some there be who could believe_.--[MS.]

[191]

"And airy tongues that _syllable_ men's names."

Milton, _Comus_, line 208.

For a belief that the souls of the dead inhabit the form of birds, we need not travel to the East. Lord Lyttleton's ghost story, the belief of the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal, that George I. flew into her window in the shape of a raven (see _Orford's Reminiscences, Lord Orford's Works_, 1798, iv.

283), and many other instances, bring this superst.i.tion nearer home. The most singular was the whim of a Worcester lady, who, believing her daughter to exist in the shape of a singing bird, literally furnished her pew in the cathedral with cages full of the kind; and as she was rich, and a benefactress in beautifying the church, no objection was made to her harmless folly. For this anecdote, see _Orford's Letters_.