Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again
Like a cinder strewed the plain :
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,
Scattered 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 deemed 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
More of human form or face,
Save a scattered scalp or bone :
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,

Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blackened there and recking lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth shock disappeared:
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-

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-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;
The wolves yelled on the caverned hill,
Where echo rolled in thunder still;
The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,10
Bayed from afar complainingly,
With a mixed and mournful sound,
Like crying babe and beaten hound:
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,
And mounted nearer to the sun,

The clouds beneath him seemed so dun ;
Their smoke assailed his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek—
Thus was Corinth lost and won!

NOTES.

Note 1, page 6, line 17.

The Turcoman hath left his herd.

The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal : they dwell in tents.

Note 2, page 8, line 13.

Coumourgi-he whose closing scene.

Ali Comourgi, 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 specch 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. >>

Note 3, page 17, line 21.

There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea.

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

Note 4, page 18, line 23.

And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull. 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, page 18, line 32.

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair. This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.

Note 6, page 20, line 23.

Was it the wind, through some hollow stone.

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 himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.

Note 7, page 24, line 20.

There is a light cloud by the moon

I have been told that the idea expressed from lines 19 to 25 has been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it: but it is not original-at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of « Vathek» (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.

Note 8, page 26, line 3.

The horsetails are plucked from the ground, and the sword. The horsetail, fixed upon a lance, a Pasha's standard.

Note 9, page 29, line 25.

And since the day, when in the strait.

In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the Venetians and the Turks.

Note 10, page 38, line 7.

The jackal's troop, in gathered cry.

I believe I have taken a poetical licence to transplant the jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and follow armies.