Byron seems to have put into the mouth of Zuleika words which conveyed his own thoughts:
‘Think’st thou that I could bear to part
With thee, and learn to halve my heart?
Ah! were I severed from thy side,
Where were thy friend—and who my guide?
Years have not seen, Time shall not see,
The hour that tears my soul from thee:
Ev’n Azrael, from his deadly quiver
When flies that shaft, and fly it must,
That parts all else, shall doom for ever
Our hearts to undivided dust!
***** *
What other can she seek to see
Than thee, companion of her bower,
The partner of her infancy?
These cherished thoughts with life begun,
Say, why must I no more avow?’
Selim suggests that Zuleika should brave the world and fly with him:
‘But be the Star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika, share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
*******
Not blind to Fate, I see, where’er I rove,
Unnumbered perils,—but one only love!
Yet well my toils shall that fond breast repay,
Though Fortune frown, or falser friends betray.’
Zuleika, we are told, was the ‘last of Giaffir’s race.’[44] Selim tells her that ‘life is hazard at the best,’ and there is much to fear:
‘Yes, fear! the doubt, the dread of losing thee.
That dread shall vanish with the favouring gale;
Which Love to-night has promised to my sail.
No danger daunts the pair his smile hath blest,
Their steps still roving, but their hearts at rest.
With thee all toils are sweet, each clime hath charms;
Earth—Sea alike—our world within our arms!’
‘The Corsair’ was written between December 18, 1813, and January 11, 1814. While it was passing through the press, Byron was at Newstead. He gives a little of his own spirit to Conrad, and all Mary’s virtues to Medora—a name which was afterwards given to his child. Conrad
‘Knew himself a villain—but he deemed
The rest no better than the thing he seemed;
And scorned the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt.
None are all evil—quickening round his heart,
One softer feeling would not yet depart.
Yet ’gainst that passion vainly still he strove,
And even in him it asks the name of Love!
Yes, it was Love—unchangeable—unchanged,
Felt but for one from whom he never ranged.
Yes—it was Love—if thoughts of tenderness,
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet—oh! more than all! untired by Time.
If there be Love in mortals—this was Love!
He was a villain—aye, reproaches shower
On him—but not the Passion, nor its power,
Which only proved—all other virtues gone—
Not Guilt itself could quench this earliest one!’
The following verses are full of meaning for the initiated:
I.
‘Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.
II.
‘There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen;
Which not the darkness of Despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.
III.
‘Remember me—oh! pass not thou my grave
Without one thought whose relics there recline:
The only pang my bosom dare not brave
Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.
IV.
‘My fondest—faintest—latest accents hear—
Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever asked—a tear,
The first—last—sole reward of so much love!’