the local particulars to which he alludes in the above note; and this gives a very striking air of reality to the whole.

The opening stanza describes, in few but powerful words, the situation of the famed city;

Many a vanished year and age,

And tempest's breath, and battle's rage,
Have swept o'er Corinth; yet she stands
A fortress formed to Freedom's hands.
The whirlwind's wrath, the earthquake's shock,
Have left untouched her hoary rock,

The keystone of a land, which still,
Though fallen, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide

That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
But could the blood before her shed
Since first Timoleon's brother bled,
Or baffled Persia's despot fled,

Arise from out the earth which drank
The stream of slaughter as it sank,
That sanguine ocean would o'erflow
Her isthmus idly spread below:
Or could the bones of all the slain,
Who perished there, be piled again,

That rival pyramid would rise

More mountain-like, through those clear skies,

Than yon tower-capt Acropolis,

Which seems the very clouds to kiss.

Among the Moslem warriors assembled before the walls of Corinth, and then carrying on a fierce attack upon it, none was more renowned than the hero of the poem, Alp, the Adrian renegade:

From Venice-once a race of worth

His gentle sires-he drew his birth;
But, late an exile from her shore,
Against his countrymen he bore

The arms they taught to bear; and now
The turban girt his shaven brow.

Through many a change had Corinth passed
With Greece to Venice' rule at last;
And here, before her walls, with those
To Greece and Venice equal foes,
He stood a foe, with all the zeal
Which young and fiery converts feel,
Within whose heated bosom throngs
The memory of a thousand wrongs.
To him had Venice ceased to be
Her ancient civic boast

the Free;'

And in the palace of St. Mark
Unnamed accusers, in the dark,
Within the Lion's mouth' had placed
A charge against him uneffaced.
He fled in time, and saved his life,
To waste his future years in strife,
That taught his land how great her loss
In him who triumphed o'er the cross,
'Gainst which he reared the crescent high,
And battled to avenge or die.

Coumourgi-he whose closing scene
Adorned the triumph of Eugene,
When on Carlowitz' bloody plain,
The last and mightiest of the slain,
He sank, regretting not to die,
But curst the Christian's victory-
Coumourgi-can his glory cease,
That latest conqueror of Greece,
Till Christian hands to Greece restore
The freedom Venice gave of yore?
A hundred years have rolled away
Since he refixed the Moslem's sway;
And now he led the Mussulman,
And gave the guidance of the van
To Alp, who well repaid the trust

By cities levelled with the dust;
And proved, by many a deed of death,
How firm his heart in novel faith.

The siege is carried on briskly under the direction of the Vizier and

Published by J. Robins and Co. London, July 24, 1824.

Alp, who has another motive besides his thirst for vengeance to take Corinth. He loves Francesca, the daughter of Minotti, who has been appointed by the Venetian state to defend Corinth; and the maiden is now in the fortress with her father:

But not for vengeance, long delayed,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
His skill to pierce the promised breach:
Within these walls a maid was pent
His hope would win without consent
Of that inexorable sire,

Whose heart refused him in its ire,

When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin hand aspired to claim.
In happier mood, and earlier time,
While unimpeached for traitorous crime,
Gayest in gondola or hall,

He glittered through the carnival;
And tuned the softest serenade
That e'er on Adria's waters played
At midnight to Italian maid.

And many deemed her heart was won;
For, sought by numbers, given to none,
Had young Francesca's hand remained
Still by the church's bonds unchained :
And, when the Adriatic bore
Lanciotto to the Paynim shore,
Her wonted smiles were seen to fail,
And pensive waxed the maid, and pale;
More constant at confessional,

More rare at masque and festival;
Or, seen at such, with downcast eyes,

Which conquered hearts they ceased to prize:
With listless look she seems to gaze;
With humbler care her form arrays;
Her voice less lively in the song;
Her step, though light, less fleet, among
The pairs on whom the Morning's glance
Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.