ns. If his life had
been spared, it is possible that the Greeks then might have thrown off
the Turkish yoke; but he succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by
the exposure of a frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at
Missolonghi in his thirty-seventh year. He was adored by the Greeks, and
his death was a national calamity. This last appearance of Lord Byron
shows that he was capable of as great things in action as in the realm
of literature. It was the tragic end of the stormy career of a genius
whose life was as full of contradictions as his character.

[Illustration: _NEWSTEAD ABBEY._ The ancestral home of the family of
Lord Byron. Original Etching from an Old Engraving.]

It was not only in Greece that Byron's death was profoundly felt, but in
all Europe, which was under the spell of his genius. Mrs. Anne Thackeray
Ritchie, in her charming recollections of Tennyson, says:--"One day
the news came to the village--the dire news which spread across the
land, filling men's hearts with consternation--that Byron was dead.
Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. 'Byron was dead! I thought the
whole world was at an end,' he once said, speaking of those bygone days.
'I thought everything was over and finished for every one--that nothing
else mattered. I remember I walked out alone and carved "Byron is dead"
into the sandstone.'"

[Illustration: Signature: Chas. Dudley Warner]

MAID OF ATHENS

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~[107]

By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each AEgean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Zoe mou, sas agapo: "My life, I love you."

TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC SONG

I enter thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidee,
Each morning where Flora reposes,