That Frenchmen will breathe, when their hearts are on fire, For the hero they love, and the Chief they admire ! Their hero has rushed to the field! His laurels are cover'd with shade But where is the spirit that never should yield, The loyalty never to fade! In a moment desertion and guile Abandon'd him up to the foe; The dastards that flourish'd and grew at his smile, Forsook and renounced him in wo; And the millions that swore they would perish to save, Beheld him a fugitive, captive, and slave! The savage all wild in his glen Is nobler and better than thou; At once from thy arms would I sever; And thinking of thee in my long after-years, Oh, shame to thee, Land of the Gaul! Oh, shame to thy children and thee! Unwise in thy glory and base in thy fall, How wretched thy portion shall be ! Derision shall strike thee forlorn, A mockery that never shall die; The curses of Hate and the hisses of Scorn And proud o'er thy ruin for ever be hurl'd The laughter of Triumph, the jeers of the World. NOTES ΤΟ THE POEMS. Note 1, page 149. Written after swimming from Sestos to Abydos. 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 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 circumstances, 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 ascertain its practicability. Note 2, page 150. Ζώη με, σας ἀγαπῶ. Zoe mou, sas agapo, or Ζώη με, σας ἀγαπῶ, 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 1 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 expressions were all Hellenized. Note 3, page 151, line 13. By all the token-flowers that tell. 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. A cinder says, "I burn for thee;" a bunch of flowers tied with hair, "Take me and fly;" but a pebble declares-what nothing else can. Note 4, page 151, line 19. Though I fly to Istambol. Constantinople. Note 5, page 153, line 7. Constantinople. "Enlaλopos." Note 6, page 216, line 8. Turning rivers into blood. See Rev. chap. viii. verse 7, &c. "The first angel "sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with "blood," &c. Verse 8. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into "the sea; and the third part of the sea became 66 blood," " &c. Verse 10. "And the third angel sounded, and there "fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a 66 lamp; and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters." 66 Verse 11. "And the name of the star is called "Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became "wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because "they were made bitter." |