s and images.
Something akin to inspiration seizes upon him: and he throws himself to
work with all the zest and nerve of his impulsive nature.

This is a man who writes, in his own phrase, "with rapidity and rarely
with pains.... When I once take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes
uppermost or fling it away." Not for him that careful polishing of
sentences, which other writers meticulously bestow. "I have always
written as fast as I could put pen to paper, and never revised but in
the proofs.... I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I
miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle." And to this
impetuous directness of onslaught, his finest poems bear witness. Some
critic has remarked that Byron is too much of the earth earthy to be a
great lyrical writer: yet a Promethean fire, stolen from heaven, burns
immortally through some of his shorter lyrics. In Greek, it is said,
there are 1632 ways of expressing the simple fact _I love you_: yet who
has ever put it in a more convincing form than Byron does in _Maid of
Athens_?

[Illustration]

MAID OF ATHENS.

By those tresses unconfined,
Woo'd by each AEgean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
_Zoee mou, sas agapo_.

* * * * *

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.
_Zoee mou, sas agapo._
(My life, I love you!)

By those tresses unconfined,
Woo'd by each AEgean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
_Zoee 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,
_Zoee 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!
_Zoee mou, sas agapo._

Rapidly as his pen flies over the paper, the torrent of throbbing
thought flows faster still. Far on into the night, when ghostly noises
echo through the sleeping palace, "that ever-gushing and perennial fount
of natural waters," as Scott has described the genius of Byron, pours
forth in reckless profusi