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6.

Oh! who in such a night will dare
To tempt the wilderness?

And who 'mid thunder peals can hear
Our signal of distress?

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And who that heard our shouts would rise

To try the dubious road?

Nor rather deem from nightly cries

That outlaws were abroad.

8.

Clouds burst, skies flash, oh, dreadful hour!
More fiercely pours the storm!

Yet here one thought has still the power
To keep my bosom warm.

9.

While wand'ring through each broken path, O'er brake and craggy brow;

While elements exhaust their wrath,

Sweet Florence, where art thou?

10.

Not on the sea, not on the sea,

Thy bark hath long been gone:
Oh, may the storm that pours on me,
Bow down my head alone!

11.

Full swiftly blew the swift Siroc,
When last I press'd thy lip;

And long ere now, with foaming shock,
Impell'd thy gallant ship.

12.

Now thou art safe; nay, long ere now
Hast trod the shore of Spain;
"Twere hard if ought so fair as thou
Should linger on the main.

13.

And since I now remember thee

In darkness and in dread,
As in those hours of revelry
Which mirth and music sped;

14.

Do thou amidst the fair white walls,
If Cadiz yet be free,

At times from out her latticed halls
Look o'er the dark blue sea;

15.

Then think upon Calypso's isles,
Endear'd by days gone by:

To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh.

16.

And when the admiring circle mark
The paleness of thy face,

A half-form'd tear, a transient spark

Of melancholy grace,

17.

Again thou'lt smile, and blushing shun
Some coxcomb's raillery;

Nor own for once thou thought'st of one,
Who ever thinks on thee,

18.

Though smile and sigh alike are vain,
When sever'd hearts repine,"

My spirit flies o'er mount and main,
And mourns in search of thine.

WRITTEN AT ATHENS.

JANUARY 16, 1810.

THE spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.
Each lucid interval of thought

Recalls the woes of Nature's charter,
And he that acts as wise men ought,
But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS.*

MAY 9, 1810.
1.

Ir, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)

To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

On the 3d of May, 1810, while the Salsette (Captain Bathurst) was lying in the Dardanelles, Lieutenant Ekenhead of that frigate and the writer of these rhymes swam from the European shore to the Asiatic-by-the-by, from Abydos to Sestos would have been more correct. The whole distance from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those

2.

If, when the wintry tempest roar'd,
He sped to Hero, nothing loth,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!

3.

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day.

4.

But since he cross'd the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,

To woo,-and-Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;

5.

'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest:

For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles; though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other in an hour and ten, minutes. The water was extremely cold from the melting of the mountain-snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt, but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the straits, as just stated; entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic, fort. Chevalier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions its having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul, Tarragona, remembered neither of these cir cumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that, as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascer tain its practicability.

SONG.

Ζωή με, σας αγαπω.

ATHENS, 1810.

1.

MAID of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give me back my heart!
Or, since thou hast left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,

Ζωή με, σας αγαπω.

2.

By those tresses unconfined,
Woo'd by each Ægean wind;
By those lids, whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,

Ζωη με, σας αγαπω.

3.

By that lip I long to taste;

By that zone-encircled waist;

By all the token-flowers† that tell

What words can never speak so well;

By Love's alternate joy and wo,

Ζωη με, σας αγαπω.

* Zoe mou sas agapo, or Zon us, was ayar, a Romaic expression of tenderness: If I translate it I shall affront the gentlemen, as it may seem that I supposed they could not; and if I do not I may affront the ladies. For fear of any misconstruction on the part of the latter, I shall do so, begging pardon of the learned. It means "My life, I love you!" which sounds very prettily in all languages, and is as much in fashion in Greece at this day, as Juvenal tells us, the two first words were amongst the Roman ladies, whose erotic expressious were all Hellenized.

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In the East (where the ladies are not taught to write, lest they should scribble assignations) flowers, cinders, pebbles, &c. convey the sentiments of the parties by that universal deputy of Mercury-an old woman. einder says, "I burn for thee;" a bunch of flowers tied with hair, “T me and fly," but a pebble declares-what nothing else can.

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