ANASTASIUS.
Lands of the burning East, adieu!
I bid your Sun farewell!
To colder climates, strange and new,
My bark the winds impel.
From olives of the Grecian vale
To northern firs I go;
To darkness, snow, and rain, and hail,
From skies that ever glow.
There memories gloomy as the clime,
Like vulture-beaks will gnaw;
The ruined maid, the plundered shrine,
The violated law—
The life-blood, which my gory hand
From friendship’s bosom drew—
These drive me from my native land,
To regions cold and new.
Isle of my birth, I never more
Will seek thee o’er the wave;
For fast beside thy lovely shore
Is Helen’s early grave.
The billows of the ocean roll,
And murmur softly there;
To Mary Mother for her soul
Is uttered many a prayer.
Old Stamboul’s halls I ne’er again
In pleasure’s train shall tread,
Nor sauntering view, with slackened rein,
Her City of the dead;
Nor o’er the yellow desert far
The dome of Ali spy,
Which in the distance, like a star,
Salutes the pilgrim’s eye.
Sole solace of my dark career,
A lovely boy is left;
My ruthless lust his mother dear
Of home and joy bereft.
Her phantom hovers ever nigh,
In sunshine and in shade,
Forevermore her gentle sigh
My bosom doth upbraid.
She loved me long, she loved me true,
I trampled on her heart,
My cold neglect the sweet one slew,
Like Asrael’s venomed dart.
Ah! white-robed saint, bend down on me
Thy features sad and mild;
My life a flowerless desert see,
All save thy gentle child.
The haughty Scian’s heart is riven,
His buoyant spirits flown;
For him there is no hope in heaven,
Below, no rest nor home.
Forgive me, O my slighted love!
Wert thou on earth again,
Believe me, thou shouldst not reprove—
My heart would own thy reign.
Already in my breast I feel
The immedicable ill,
The fell disease no art can heal,
Beyond the leech’s skill.
Sapped by its power my frame shall lie,
Mixed with its parent mould;
Once with those statues it could vie,
Which Hellas loved of old.
Its day of splendor and of power
Even in my youth is past;
Its Phidian symmetry no more
Shall beauty’s promise blast.
Apostate to my father’s creed,
I from their heaven am banned;
How o’er Jehennan shall I speed,
By light Al Serat spanned?
The infernal surge, which moans below
Its gossamer arches frail,
Me, plunging to the gulfs of woe,
Will whelm in endless bale.
Would that my soul might share a part
Of perfect bliss with thee!
O, dark-eyed Smyrniote of my heart,
My wronged Euphrosynè!