Complete Works of Bram Stoker (486 page)

Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,

Though baffled oft is ever won.

Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!

Attest it many a deathless age!

While Kings, in dusty darkness hid,

Have left a namesless pyramid,

Thy Heroes, though the general doom

Hath swept the column from their tomb,

A mightier monument command,

The mountains of thy native land!

There points thy Muse to stranger’s eye

The graves of those that cannot die!

‘T were long to tell, and sad to trace,

Each step from Spledour to Disgrace;

Enough  —  no foreign foe could quell

Thy soul, till from itself it fell;

Yet! Self-abasement paved the way

To villain-bonds and despot sway.

What can he tell who tread thy shore?

No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the Muse might soar

High as thine own days of yore,

When man was worthy of thy clime.

The hearts within thy valleys bred,

The fiery souls that might have led

Thy sons to deeds sublime,

Now crawl from cradle to the Grave,

Slaves  —  nay, the bondsmen of a Slave,

And callous, save to crime.

Stained with each evil that pollutes

Mankind, where least above the brutes;

Without even savage virtue blest,

Without one free or valiant breast,

Still to the neighbouring ports tey waft

Proverbial wiles, and ancient craft;

In this subtle Greek is found,

For this, and this alown, renowned.

In vain might Liberty invoke

The spirit to its bondage broke

Or raise the neck that courts the yoke:

No more her sorrows I bewail,

Yet this will be a mournful tale,

And they who listen may believe,

Who heard it first had cause to grieve.

Far, dark, along the blue sea glancing,

The shadows of the rocks advancing

Start on the fisher’s eye like boat

Of island-pirate or Mainote;

And fearful for his light caïque,

He shuns the near but doubtful creek:

Though worn and weary with his toil,

And cumbered with his scaly spoil,

Slowly, yet strongly, plies the oar,

Till Port Leone’s safer shore

Receives him by the lovely light

That best becomes an Eastern night.

... Who thundering comes on blackest steed,

With slackened bit and hoof of speed?

Beneath the clattering iron’s sound

The caverned echoes wake around

In lash for lash, and bound for bound;

The foam that streaks the courser’s side

Seems gathered from the ocean-tide:

Though weary waves are sunk to rest,

There’s none within his rider’s breast;

And though tomorrow’s tempest lower,

‘Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour!

I know thee not, I loathe thy race,

But in thy lineaments I trace

What time shall strengthen, not efface:

Though young and pale, that sallow front

Is scathed by fiery passion’s brunt;

Though bent on earth thine evil eye,

As meteor-like thou glidest by,

Right well I view thee and deem thee one

Whom Othman’s sons should slay or shun.

On - on he hastened, and he drew

My gaze of wonder as he flew:

Though like a demon of the night

He passed, and vanished from my sight,

His aspect and his air impressed

A troubled memory on my breast,

And long upon my startled ear

Rung his dark courser’s hoofs of fear.

He spurs his steed; he nears the steep,

That, jutting, shadows o’er the deep;

He winds around; he hurries by;

The rock relieves him from mine eye;

For, well I ween, unwelcome he

Whose glance is fixed on those that flee;

And not a start that shines too bright

On him who takes such timeless flight.

He wound along; but ere he passed

One glance he snatched, as if his last,

A moment checked his wheeling steed,

A moment breathed him from his speed,

A moment on his stirrup stood -

Why looks he o’er the olive wood?

The crescent glimmers on the hill,

The mosque’s high lamps are quivering still

Though too remote for sound to wake

In echoes of far tophaike,

The flashes of each joyous peal

Are seen to prove the Moslem’s zeal,

Tonight, set Rhamazani’s sun;

Tonight the Bairam feast’s begun;

Tonight - but who and what art thou

Of foreign garb and fearful brow?

That thou should’st either pause or flee?

He stood - some dread was on his face,

Soon hatred settled in its place:

It rose not with the reddening flush

Of transient anger’s hasty blush,

But pale as marble o’er the tomb,

Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.

His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;

He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,

And sternly shook his hand on high,

As doubting to return or fly;

Impatient of his flight delayed,

Here loud his raven charger neighed -

Down glanced that hand and, and grasped his blade;

That sound had burst his waking dream,

As slumber starts at owlet’s scream.

The spur hath lanced his courser’s sides;

Away, away, for life he rides:

Swift as the hurled on high jerreed

Springs to the touch his startled steed;

The rock is doubled, and the shore

Shakes with the clattering tramp no more;

The crag is won, no more is seen

His Christian crest and haughty mien.

‘Twas but an instant he restrained

That fiery barb so sternly reined;

‘Twas but a moment that he stood,

Then sped as if by death pursued;

But in that instant 0’er his soul

Winters of memory seemed to roll,

And gather in that drop of time

A life of pain, an age of crime.

O’er him who loves, or hates, or fears,

Such moment pours the grief of years:

What felt he then, at once opprest

By all that most distracts the breast?

That pause, which pondered o’er his fate,

Oh, who its dreary length shall date!

Though in time’s record nearly nought,

It was eternity to thought!

For infinite as boundless space

The thought that conscience must embrace,

Which in itself can comprehend

Woe without name, or hope, or end.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone;

And did he fly or fall alone?

Woe to that hour he came or went!

The curse for Hassan’s sin was sent

To turn a palace to a tomb:

He came, he went, like the Simoom,

That harbinger of fate and gloom,

Beneath whose widely - wasting breath

The very cypress droops to death -

Dark tree, still sad when others’ grief is fled,

The only constant mourner o’er the dead!

The steed is vanished from the stall;

No serf is seen in Hassan’s hall;

The lonely spider’s thin grey pall

Waves slowly widening o’er the wall;

The bat builds in his harem bower,

And in the fortress of his power

The owl usurps the beacon-tower;

The wild-dog howls o’er the fountain’s brim,

With baffled thirst and famine, grim;

For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,

Where the weeds and the desolate dust are spread.

‘Twas sweet of yore to see it play

And chase the sultriness of day,

As springing high the silver dew

In whirls fantastically flew,

And flung luxurious coolness round

The air, and verdure o’er the ground.

‘Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night.

And oft had Hassan’s childhood played

Around the verge of that cascade;

And oft upon his mother’s breast

That sound had harmonized his rest;

And oft had Hassan’s youth along

Its bank been soothed by beauty’s song;

And softer seem’d each melting tone

Of music mingled with its own.

But ne’er shall Hassan’s age repose

Along the brink at twilight’s close:

The stream that filled that font is fled -

The blood that warmed his heart is shed!

And here no more shall human voice

Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice.

The last sad note that swelled the gale

Was woman’s wildest funeral wall:

That quenched in silence all is still,

But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill:

Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,

No hand shall clasp its clasp again.

On desert sands ‘twere joy to scan

The rudest steps of fellow man,

So here the very voice of grief

Might wake an echo like relief -

At least ‘twould say, ‘All are not gone;

There lingers life, though but in one’ -

For many a gilded chamber’s there,

Which solitude might well forbear;

Within that dome as yet decay

Hath slowly worked her cankering way -

But gloom is gathered o’er the gate,

Nor there the fakir’s self will wait;

Nor there will wandering dervise stay,

For bounty cheers not his delay;

Nor there will weary stranger halt

To bless the sacred ‘bread and salt’.

Alike must wealth and poverty

Pass heedless and unheeded by,

For courtesy and pity died

With Hassan on the mountain side.

His roof, that refuge unto men,

Is desolation’s hungry den.

The guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour,

Since his turban was cleft by the infidel’s sabre!

I hear the sound of coming feet,

But not a voice mine ear to greet;

More near - each turban I can scan,

And silver-sheathed ataghan;

The foremost of the band is seen

An emir by his garb of green:

‘Ho! Who art thou?’ - ‘This low salam

Replies of Moslem faith I am.’

‘The burden ye so gently bear,

Seems one that claims your utmost care,

And, doubtless, holds some precious freight,

My humble bark would gladly wait.’

‘Thou speakest sooth; they skiff unmoor,

And waft us from the silent shore;

Nay, leave the sail still furled, and ply

The nearest oar that’s scattered by,

And midway to those rocks where sleep

The channeled waters dark and deep.

Rest from your task - so - bravely done,

Of course had been right swiftly run;

Yet ‘tis the longest voyage, I trow,

That one of -

Sullen it plunged, and slowly sank,

The calm wave rippled to the bank;

I watched it as it sank, methought

Some motion from the current caught

Bestirred it more, - ‘twas but the beam

That checkered o’er the living stream:

I gazed, till vanishing from view,

Like lessening pebble it withdrew;

Still less and less, a speck of white

That gemmed the tide, then mocked the sight;

And all its hidden secrets sleep,

Known but to Genii of the deep,

Which, trembling in their coral caves,

They dare not whisper to the waves.

As rising on its purple wing

The insect-queen of eastern spring,

O’er emerald meadows of Kashmeer

Invites the young pursuer near,

And leads him on from flower to flower

A weary chase and wasted hour,

Then leaves him, as it soars on high,

With panting heart and tearful eye:

So beauty lures the full-grown child,

With hue as bright, and wing as wild:

A chase of idle hopes and fears,

Begun in folly, closed in tears.

If won, to equal ills betrayed,

Woe waits the insect and the maid;

A life of pain, the loss of peace,

From infant’s play and man’s caprice:

The lovely toy so fiercely sought

Hath lost its charm by being caught,

For every touch that wooed its stay

Hath brushed its brightest hues away,

Till charm, and hue, and beauty gone,

‘Tis left to fly or fall alone.

With wounded wing, or bleeding breast,

Ah! Where shall either victim rest?

Can this with faded pinion soar

From rose to tulip as before?

Or beauty, blighted in an hour,

Find joy within her broken bower?

No: gayer insects fluttering by

Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die,

And lovelier things have mercy shown

To every failing but their own,

And every woe a tear can claim

Except an erring sister’s shame.

The mind that broods o’er guilty woes,

Is like the scorpion girt by fire;

In circle narrowing as it glows,

The flames around their captive close,

Till inly searched by thousand throes,

And maddening in her ire,

One sad and sole relief she knows,

The sting she nourished for her foes,

Whose venom never yet was vain,

Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,

So do the dark in soul expire,

Or live like scorpion girt by fire;

So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,

Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,

Darkness above, despair beneath,

Around it flame, within it death!