[A Report, though false, at that time generally believed.]Fallen are thy towers,
Byzantium! towers that
Before the Turk's dread fury, when he came,
The crescent sparkling amidst Christian blood,
And to the reeking den of Moloch
Sophia's holy fane!
Where, where are now,
Imperial city, the late proud
Of thy brave founder's greatness, when he
In worldly grandeur pure Religion's form;
Then placed beside him, placed upon a throne,
The lowly Nazarene's meek simple child!….
He, wandering then upon a Christian land,
Stranger at home had been, nor known
His artless rites, his followers, in the
Filled with the sparkling shrine, the rich-robed priests,
And pomp of earthly greatness……..
But not
Lived there his name….
Science and art, farewell!
The foe of light and love,
Mohammed, comes,
And Constantine's proud race exists no more.
But, sons of Mahomet, the towers he built,
Though by your anger spared, have fallen now,
And crushed your bloody race!
A mightier
Than his who raised, or spared, yon domes came forth;
From the hot sable rolling cloud it came,
And crumbled them to dust!….
The wind, the air,
Seem in strict silence bound, but smiling
Appears the face of day; assassin-like,
Smiling, though conscious of intended death.
But Nature trembles at her own repose;
The brute creation dread forebodings shake;
While man alone is bold…..
But see where
The labouring ocean, in fantastic
And sudden swells, her heaving bosom rears;
Like the mad Pythia, when the Delphian
Spoke by her fraudful lips….
But here, alas!
A real God that world of waters
To do his dreadful bidding!….
Hark! he comes!
The thunder's roar, the rush of winds
The Mighty One is near….
But oh! when
His power, and those he spared raised up their heads,
Where was the eye could bear upon the
To gaze, and mark the ruin stretching wide!
Oh! ye were blest, ye victims, ye who
Deep in the yawning chasm!…."Where are now,"The sad survivor cries, "my peaceful home,
The sacred mosque I loved, the child, the wifeI clasped but now; the city towering high,
Proud in its strength?….
Disperse, thou gloomy cloud,
And let me gaze on them!" The cloud's dispersed;
But he beholds no city, he can
No vestige of his home: a putrid
Or barren ground replace them, and proclaim,
Devouring earthquake, thy resistless power.
England! blest country, from such woes as these Thy temperate clime preserves thee; lightly felt,
If ever, by thy comfort-breathing shores,
The earthquake desolating distant lands:
And….thou hast cause to lift thy voice most high,
In the great choir of nations hymning praise.
But ye, who wander from your native shores,
While haply such calamity draws
As sunk Byzantium; ye, whose eager
Anticipate a glad return to
Ye shall behold no more, for ever
From off the earth, unconscious heirs of woe;
For you I mourn!….
Methinks I see the
Flushed with delight, chastized perhaps by fear,
When your own land approaches….
See the
Misty with tears ope wide its eager
To catch the well-known objects!
Horrid change!
Fear pales that glowing cheek, and dries that eye,"It is our native shore,….but where are
The fanes, the spires, erewhile our city's pride?"I hear you cry. "The pilot is deceived,
And hope deceived us too….'Tis not our land!"But soon the mournful certainty ye guess,
And leap to shore; and there ye call in
On all ye loved….
Throughout the silent
That yet remain, perhaps some meagre
May trembling steal along, and tell the tale;
While on the ruins some lone maniac sits,
And, as he points to where the chasm yawned,
Boasts of the treasures earth preserves for him;
Or, while a sudden beam of reason darts,
Screams his discordant anguish, and
Earth to give back his children!….
Angel of woe, that from the eternal
Receivest thy dread commission, going
To flap thy sable pinions o'er the world,
And shed unnumbered evils, which
To piety's uplifted eye as
Concealed in evil's garb;….angel of woe,
Upon thy awful power I've pondered oft,
In all its dark varieties,
I've
The horrid path where Madness stalks
In fancied majesty, or from his
Sends the loud shriek, or more afflicting laugh;
And, as I hurried from the o'erwhelming scene,
Have shuddering owned thy awful presence there ,….
I've seen thee by the death-bed sit, and
The silent corse to speak again, and
The eyes for ever closed to ope once
And beam as they were wont:….and I have
In slow procession to the opening grave,
And seen thee triumph when the earth
The form beloved, and the deep bursting
Bespoke affliction's forced composure o'er,
And agony victorious!
I have
Upon the guilty wretch, when, doomed to die,
Terror has vanquished him, and his pale
Has proved the falsehood of his vaunting tongue,
While, to his startled fancy, in the
Of Death came judgement, and the world to
Unfolded all its horrors!
There,
O there,
Thee I beheld, and fled from!….and I've
How on the sultry suffocating
Of livid pestilence, thou, floating wide,
Hast done thy master's bidding!
Vain were
The ties of nature! from the parent's
The child has forced its once sustaining hand,
And, horror-struck, has from contagion fled!
While the fond parent, from his dying
Vainly his aid imploring, terror-winged,
Has urged his selfish flight* !
And there thou wert….
But when the earthquake's varied horrors come,
All, all thy ministers are waiting round,
Fear,
Madness,
Pestilence,
Pain,
Famine,
Death,
And all the
ES
ED are there!
