He stood – some dread was on his face,
Soon Hatred settled in its place:
It rose not with the reddening flush
Of transient Anger’s hasty blush,
But pale as marble o’er the tomb,
Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.
His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;
He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,
And sternly shook his hand on high,
As doubting to return or fly;
Impatient of his flight delay’d,
Here loud his raven charger neigh’d —
Down glanced that hand, and grasp’d his blade;
That sound had burst his waking dream,
As Slumber starts at owlet’s scream,
The spur hath lanced his courser’s sides;
Away, away, for life he rides:
Swift as the hurl’d on high jerreed
Springs to the touch his startled steed:
The rock is doubled, and the shore
Shakes with the clattering tramp no more:
The crag is won, no more is seen
His Christian crest and haughty mien.
‘T was but an instant he restrain’d
That fiery barb so sternly rein’d;
‘T was but a moment that he stood,
Then sped as if by death pursued;
But in that instant o’er his soul
Winters of Memory seem’d to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O’er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years:
What felt he then, at once opprest
By all that most distracts the breast?
That pause, which ponder’d o’er his fate,
Oh, who its dreary length shall date !
Though in Time’s record nearly nought,
It was Eternity to Thought !
For infinite as boundless space
The thought that Conscience must embrace,
Which in itself can comprehend
Woe without name, or hope, or end.
– The Giaour, Lord Byron

An aristocratic cologne of titanic passions, moody and brooding. This scent is dark with disillusionment and cynicism: a Victorian fougère and a dashing carnation boutonniere tainted by a cloud of khus, yew, and patchouli.