Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/119

 The maid for whom his melody,
 His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale:
His queen, the garden queen, his Rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows,
Far from the winters of the west.
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by Nature given30
In softest incense back to Heaven;
And grateful yields that smiling sky
Her fairest hue and fragrant sigh.
And many a summer flower is there.
And many a shade that Love might share,
And many a grotto, meant for rest,
That holds the pirate for a guest;
Whose bark in sheltering cove below
Lurks for the passing peaceful prow.
Till the gay mariner's guitar^{[decimal 1]}40
Is heard, and seen the Evening Star;

Notes

hæmorrhous) is 'Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán,' usually shortened to 'Hazar' (bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'" (See Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; Supplemental Nights, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's Lalla Rookh—

"Oh! sooner shall the rose of May
Mistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.
(Ed. "Chandos Classics," p. 423)


and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (stanza vi.)—
"And David's lips are lockt; but in divine
High piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!'—the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine."
Rubáiyát, etc., 1899, p. 29, and note, p. 62.


Byron was indebted for his information to a note on a passage in Vathek, by S. Henley (Vathek, 1893, p. 217).]
1. The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night; with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.