The Life of Lord Byron. John Galt

cooks were busy dressing kids and sheep. The scene is described with the poet’s liveliest pencil.

      Richly caparison’d a ready row

      Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,

      Circled the wide extending court below;

      Above, strange groups adorn’d the corridor,

      And ofttimes through the area’s echoing door,

      Some high-capp’d Tartar spurr’d his steed away.

      The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor

      Here mingled in their many-hued array,

      While the deep war-drum’s sound announced the close of day.

      Some recline in groups,

      Scanning the motley scene that varies round.

      There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,

      And some that smoke, and some that play, are found.

      Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground

      Half-whispering, there the Greek is heard to prate.

      Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound;

      The Muezzin’s call doth shake the minaret.

      “There is no god but God! – to prayer – lo, God is great!”

      The peculiar quietness and ease with which the Mahommedans say their prayers, struck the travellers as one of the most peculiar characteristics which they had yet witnessed of that people. Some of the graver sort began their devotions in the places where they were sitting, undisturbed and unnoticed by those around them who were otherwise engaged. The prayers last about ten minutes they are not uttered aloud, but generally in a low voice, sometimes with only a motion of the lips; and, whether performed in the public street or in a room, attract no attention from the bystanders. Of more than a hundred of the guards in the gallery of the Vizier’s mansion at Tepellené, not more than five or six were seen at prayers. The Albanians are not reckoned strict Mahommedans; but no Turk, however irreligious himself, ever disturbs the devotion of others.