Gebir

by Walter Savage Landor

First published in 1798 when Walter Savage Landor was twenty-four years old, Gebir is the poetic reinvention of the medieval Arabian legend of Jubair, founder of Alexandria. When the Iberian prince Gebir invades Egypt in order to rebuild the city of his ancestors, he immediately falls in love with its Queen Charoba. Supernatural forces thwart his every attempt to rebuild, and he must descend to the underworld before fulfilling his tragic destiny. Structured in seven books, the poem melds elements of heroic idyl, romance, tragedy, and pastoral.This volume reproduces the revised, extensively footnoted text of 1803, and also the related epic poems “Crysaor” and “The Phocæans” of the same period. "Crysaor" is the story of the slaying of a mythical, Iberian giant-king by Neptune, the comeuppance for Crysaor's avaricious and autocratic rule. "The Phocæans" is the tale of a refugee people displaced from Ionia by the invasion of Harpagus in the 6th century B.C. and sailing across the Mediterranean in search of asylum. All three poems are attacks on political tyranny, on "Circæan soul-dissolving monarchy", and are suffused by Landor's strong sense of republicanism. They are each set down in knotty, idiosyncratic blank verse. Also included in this volume are Landor's prose "Postscript to Gebir" (1800/02), the short poem “Apology for Gebir” (1854), the prefaces to the three poems, and an introduction to the volume by Empyrean Series co-editor Jacob Siefring.

Genres: Poetry

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1798

About the author

Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist.

Landor's best known work is the multi-volume Imaginary Conversations, written during his years living in Italy. He died in Florence at age 89.

Throughout his life, Landor travelled widely and had a notable circle of friends including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Lamb, Countess Blessington, Robert Browning and Charles Dickens. Landor was the godfather of Dickens's son Walter Landor Dickens.

The writer, explorer, and adventurer Arnold Henry Savage Landor is his grandson.