human
Can you write me a poem about lord byron, john and stanza?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about lord byron, john and stanza:
  footnotes to the text.
cultivated readers.
The poem may be dealt with in two ways. It may be regarded as a
I have again to record my grateful acknowledgments to Dr. Richard
Charlotte Duchess of Richmond to be reproduced for this volume.
possession.
_Letters_, 1898, i. 308), he informs her that he has MSS. in his
Dallas was "delighted," and on the evening of the same day (July
considerations, were provocative and objectionable. They were
altogether. Not only were nine poems added to the twenty already
No further alterations were made in the text of the poem; but an
characteristic feature of _Childe Harold_ which association and
conclusion that Childe Harold was Byron in disguise, and idly
Concluded, Canto 2^d, Smyrna,
The marginal remarks pencilled occasionally were made by two
"Henry Drury, Harrow. Given me by Lord Byron. Being his original
"Sir,--I desire that you will settle any account for _Childe
Harold_ with Mr. R. C. Dallas, to whom I have presented the
copyright.
"Received, April 1st, 1812, of Mr. John Murray, the sum of one
hundred pounds 15/8, being my entire half-share of the profits of
{ Mem.: This receipt is for the above sum,
£101:15:8.  { in part of five hundred guineas agreed to
{ be paid by Mr. Murray for the Copyright
{ of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_."
"'As o'er the cold sepulchral stone.'"
"'The spell is broke, the charm is flown.'"
"Dear D^s.,--This is all that was contained in the MS., but the
outside cover has been torn off by the booby of a binder.
Yours ever,
Stanza vii.       "Of all his train there was a henchman page,"--
Stanza xxii.      "Unhappy Vathek! in an evil hour,"--
Stanza xxv.       "In golden characters right well designed,"--
Stanza xxvii.     "But when Convention sent his handy work,"--
Stanza lxxxv.     "Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!"--
Stanza lxxxix.    "Not yet, alas! the dreadful work is done,"--
Stanza xc.        "Not all the blood at Talavera shed,"--
Stanza xci.       "And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe,"--
Stanza viii.      "Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I,"--
Stanza lxiii.     "Mid many things most new to ear and eye,"--
Stanza lxxxiv.    "For thee, who thus in too protracted song,"--
Stanza lxxxvii.   "Then must I plunge again into the crowd,"--
Stanza lxxxviii.  "What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?"--
The Second Canto, in the first six editions, numbers eighty-eight
Stanza xxvii.     "More blest the life of godly Eremite,"--
Stanza lxxvii.    "The city won for Allah from the Giaour,"--
July 6.    Arrive Lisbon. (Stanzas xvi., xvii. Letter 126.)
Visit Cintra. (Stanzas xviii.-xxvi. Letter 128.)
Visit Mafra. (Stanza xxix.)
July 17.   Leave Lisbon. (Stanza xxviii. Letter 127.)
Ride through Portugal and Spain to Seville.
Visit Albuera. (Stanza xliii.)
Ride to Cadiz, across the Sierra Morena. (Stanza li.)
Sept. 19.  Sail from Malta in brig-of-war _Spider_. (Letter 131.)
Sept. 27.  In the channel between Ithaca and the mainland.
(Stanzas xxxix.-xlii.)
Sept. 28.  Anchor off Prevesa (7 p.m.). (Stanza xlv.)
Oct. 1.    Leave Prevesa, arrive Salakhora (Salagoura).
Oct. 3.    Leave Salakhora, arrive Arta.
Oct. 4.    Leave Arta, arrive han St. Demetre (H. Dhimittrios).
Oct. 5.    Arrive Janina. (Stanza xlvii. Letter 131.)
Oct. 8.    Ride into the country. First day of Ramazan.
Oct. 11.   Leave Janina, arrive Zitza ("Lines written during
a Thunderstorm"). (Stanzas xlviii.-li. Letter 131.)
Oct. 13.   Leave Zitza, arrive Mossiani (Móseri).
Oct. 15.   Leave Delvinaki, arrive Libokhovo.
Oct. 17.   Leave Libokhovo, arrive Cesarades (Kestourataes).
Oct. 18.   Leave Cesarades, arrive Ereeneed (Irindi).
Oct. 19.   Leave Ereeneed, arrive Tepeleni. (Stanzas lv.-lxi.)
Oct. 20.   Reception by Ali Pacha. (Stanzas lxii.-lxiv.)
Oct. 23.   Leave Tepeleni, arrive Locavo (Lacovon).
Oct. 24.   Leave Locavo, arrive Delvinaki.
Oct. 25.   Leave Delvinaki, arrive Zitza.
Oct. 26.   Leave Zitza, arrive Janina.
Oct. 31.   Byron begins the First Canto of _Childe Harold_.
Nov. 3.    Leave Janina, arrive han St. Demetre.
Nov. 4.    Leave han St. Demetre, arrive Arta.
Nov. 5.    Leave Arta, arrive Salakhora.
Nov. 7.    Leave Salakhora, arrive Prevesa.
Nov. 8.    Sail from Prevesa, anchor off mainland near Parga.
(Stanzas lxvii., lxviii.)
Nov. 9.    Leave Parga, and, returning by land, arrive
Volondorako (Valanidórakhon). (Stanza lxix.)
Nov. 10.   Leave Volondorako, arrive Castrosikia (Kastrosykia).
Nov. 11.   Leave Castrosikia, arrive Prevesa.
Nov. 13.   Sail from Prevesa, anchor off Vonitsa.
Nov. 14.   Sail from Vonitsa, arrive Lutraki (Loutráki).
(Stanzas lxx., lxxii., Song "Tambourgi, Tambourgi;"
stanza written in passing the Ambracian Gulph. Letter 131.)
Nov. 15.   Leave Lutraki, arrive Katúna.
Nov. 16.   Leave Katúna, arrive Makalá (? Machalas).
Nov. 18.   Leave Makalá, arrive Guriá.
Nov. 19.   Leave Guriá, arrive Ætolikon.
Nov. 20.   Leave Ætolikon, arrive Mesolonghi.
Nov. 23.   Sail from Mesolonghi, arrive Patras.
Dec. 4.    Leave Patras, sleep at _Han_ on shore.
Dec. 15.   Leave Larnáki (? Itea), arrive Chrysó.
Dec. 16.   Visit Delphi, the Pythian Cave, and stream of Castaly.
Dec. 17.   Leave Chrysó, arrive Arakhova (Rhakova).
Dec. 18.   Leave Arakhova, arrive Livadia (Livadhia).
Dec. 21.   Leave Livadia, arrive Mazee (Mazi).
Dec. 22.   Leave Mazee, arrive Thebes.
Dec. 24.   Leave Thebes, arrive Skurta.
Dec. 25.   Leave Skurta, pass Phyle, arrive Athens.
(Stanzas i.-xv., stanza lxxiv.)
Dec. 30.   Byron finishes the First Canto of _Childe Harold_.
Jan. 16.   Visit Mendeli (Pentelicus). (Stanza lxxxvii.)
Jan. 18.   Walk round the peninsula of Munychia.
Jan. 19.   Leave Athens, arrive Vari.
Jan. 20.   Leave Vari, arrive Keratéa.
Jan. 23.   Visit temple of Athene at Sunium. (Stanza lxxxvi.)
Jan. 24.   Leave Keratéa, arrive plain of Marathon.
Jan. 25.   Visit plain of Marathon. (Stanzas lxxxix., xc.)
Jan. 26.   Leave Marathon, arrive Athens.
Mar. 13.   Leave Smyrna, sleep at _Han_, near the river Halesus.
Mar. 14.   Leave _Han_, arrive Aiasaluk (near Ephesus).
Mar. 16.   Leave Ephesus, return to Smyrna. (Letter 132.)
Mar. 28.   Byron finishes the Second Canto of _Childe Harold_.
April 13.  Visit ruins of Alexandria Troas.
April 16.  Byron attempts to swim across the Hellespont, explores
April 30.  Visit the springs of Bunarbashi (Bunarbási).
May 3.     Byron and Mr. Ekenhead swim across the Hellespont
(lines "Written after swimming," etc.).
May 13.    Anchor off Venaglio Point, arrive Constantinople.
July 14.   Sail from Constantinople in _Salsette_ frigate.
July 18.   Byron returns to Athens.
Notes on the MSS. of the First and Second Cantos   xvi
Original Draft, etc., of Canto the Fourth
"L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la
première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un
assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet
m'ont reconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre
bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les
experimental.
A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some
connection to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to
Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real
With the different poems which have been published on Spanish
I have now waited till almost all our periodical journals have
Returning, therefore, to all and each my best thanks for their
happens that the good old times, when "l'amour du bon vieux tems,
Before the days of Bayard, and down to those of Sir Joseph Banks
(the most chaste and celebrated of ancient and modern times) few
exceptions will be found to this statement; and I fear a little
Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
Not in those visions to the heart displaying
Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
Hath aught like thee in Truth or Fancy seemed:
Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
To paint those charms which varied as they beamed--
To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?
Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy Spring--
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love's image upon earth without his wing,
And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
And surely she who now so fondly rears
Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
Beholds the Rainbow of her future years,
Before whose heavenly hues all Sorrow disappears.
Young Peri of the West!--'tis well for me
My years already doubly number thine;
My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,
And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;
Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;
Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed,
Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
To those whose admiration shall succeed,
But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.
Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,
Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,
Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny
That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh
Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
This much, dear Maid, accord; nor question why
To one so young my strain I would commend,
But bid me with my wreath one matchless Lily blend.
Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;
And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast[i]
On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined
Shall thus be _first_ beheld, forgotten _last_:
My days once numbered--should this homage past
Attract thy fairy fingers near the Lyre
Of him who hailed thee loveliest, as thou wast--
Such is the most my Memory may desire;
Oh, thou! in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,[k]
Muse! formed or fabled at the Minstrel's will!
Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,[l]
Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred Hill:
Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;[m]
Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine,[1.B.]
Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
To grace so plain a tale--this lowly lay of mine.
Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,
Who ne in Virtue's ways did take delight;
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
Ah me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;[n]
Few earthly things found favour in his sight[o]
Save concubines and carnal companie,
And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.
Childe Harold was he hight:--but whence his name[p]
And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
And had been glorious in another day:
But one sad losel soils a name for ay,
However mighty in the olden time;
Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme,[q]
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.
Childe Harold basked him in the Noontide sun,[r]
Disporting there like any other fly;
Nor deemed before his little day was done
One blast might chill him into misery.
But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
Worse than Adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of Satiety:
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell.
For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,[s]
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sighed to many though he loved but one,[t]
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,[u]
And from his fellow Bacchanals would flee;
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But Pride congealed the drop within his ee:
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,[v]
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
The Childe departed from his father's hall:
It was a vast and venerable pile;
So old, it seeméd only not to fall,
Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle.
Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile![w]
Where Superstition once had made her den
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile;[x]
And monks might deem their time was come agen,
If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.
Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,[z]
As if the Memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know;
For his was not that open, artless soul
That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow,
Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,
Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control.
And none did love him!--though to hall and bower
He gathered revellers from far and near,
He knew them flatterers of the festal hour,
The heartless Parasites of present cheer.
Yea! none did love him--not his lemans dear--[ab]
But pomp and power alone are Woman's care,
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
Childe Harold had a mother--not forgot,[ac]
Though parting from that mother he did shun;
A sister whom he loved, but saw her not
Before his weary pilgrimage begun:
If friends he had, he bade adieu to none.[ad]
Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel:[ae]
Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon
A few dear objects, will in sadness feel
Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.
His house, his home, his heritage, his lands,[af]
The laughing dames in whom he did delight,[ag]
Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
Might shake the Saintship of an Anchorite,
And long had fed his youthful appetite;
His goblets brimmed with every costly wine,
And all that mote to luxury invite,
Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine,
And traverse Paynim shores, and pass Earth's central line.[ah]
The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew,[ai]
As glad to waft him from his native home;
And fast the white rocks faded from his view,
And soon were lost in circumambient foam:
And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
Repented he, but in his bosom slept
The silent thought, nor from his lips did come
One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept,
And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept.
But when the Sun was sinking in the sea
He seized his harp, which he at times could string,
And strike, albeit with untaught melody,
When deemed he no strange ear was listening:
And now his fingers o'er it he did fling,
And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight;
While flew the vessel on her snowy wing,
And fleeting shores receded from his sight,
Thus to the elements he poured his last "Good Night."
"Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon Sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native Land--Good Night!
"A few short hours and He will rise
To give the Morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother Earth.
Deserted is my own good Hall,
Its hearth is desolate;
Wild weeds are gathering on the wall;
My Dog howls at the gate.
"Come hither, hither, my little page
Why dost thou weep and wail?
Or dost thou dread the billows' rage,
Or tremble at the gale?
But dash the tear-drop from thine eye;
Our ship is swift and strong:
Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly[aj]
More merrily along."[ak]
"Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high,[al]
I fear not wave nor wind:
Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I
Am sorrowful in mind;
For I have from my father gone,
A mother whom I love,
And have no friend, save these alone,
But thee--and One above.
'My father blessed me fervently,
Yet did not much complain;
But sorely will my mother sigh
Till I come back again.'--
"Enough, enough, my little lad!
Such tears become thine eye;
If I thy guileless bosom had,
Mine own would not be dry.
"Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman,
Why dost thou look so pale?
Or dost thou dread a French foeman?
Or shiver at the gale?"--
'Deem'st thou I tremble for my life?
Sir Childe, I'm not so weak;
But thinking on an absent wife
Will blanch a faithful cheek.
'My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall,
Along the bordering Lake,
And when they on their father call,
What answer shall she make?'--
"Enough, enough, my yeoman good,[am]
Thy grief let none gainsay;
But I, who am of lighter mood,
Will laugh to flee away.
"For who would trust the seeming sighs[an]
Of wife or paramour?
Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes
We late saw streaming o'er.
For pleasures past I do not grieve,
Nor perils gathering near;
My greatest grief is that I leave
No thing that claims a tear.
"And now I'm in the world alone,
Upon the wide, wide sea:
But why should I for others groan,
When none will sigh for me?
Perchance my Dog will whine in vain,
Till fed by stranger hands;
But long ere I come back again,
He'd tear me where he stands.[ao]
"With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go
Athwart the foaming brine;
Nor care what land thou bear'st me to,
So not again to mine.
Welcome, welcome, ye dark-blue waves!
And when you fail my sight,
Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves!
My native Land--Good Night!"
On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone,
And winds are rude in Biscay's sleepless bay.
Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
New shores descried make every bosom gay;
And Cintra's mountain greets them on their way,
And Tagus dashing onward to the Deep,
His fabled golden tribute bent to pay;
And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap,
And steer 'twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap.[ap]
Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land![aq]
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!
But man would mar them with an impious hand:
And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge
'Gainst those who most transgress his high command,
With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge
Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen purge[ar]
What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold![as]
Her image floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,[at]
But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
And to the Lusians did her aid afford:
A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,
Who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword[au]
To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord.
But whoso entereth within this town,
That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down,
'Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;[av]
For hut and palace show like filthily:[aw]
The dingy denizens are reared in dirt;[ax]
Ne personage of high or mean degree
Doth care for cleanness of surtout or shirt,
Poor, paltry slaves! yet born 'midst noblest scenes--
Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men?
Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah, me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken[ay]
Than those whereof such things the Bard relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates.
The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned,[az]
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,[ba]
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
Then slowly climb the many-winding way,
And frequent turn to linger as you go,
From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
And rest ye at "Our Lady's house of Woe;"[2.B.]
Where frugal monks their little relics show,
And sundry legends to the stranger tell:
Here impious men have punished been, and lo!
Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path:
Yet deem not these Devotion's offering--
These are memorials frail of murderous wrath:
For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath
Pour'd forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife,
Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
And grove and glen with thousand such are rife
Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life.[3.B.]
On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath,
Are domes where whilome kings did make repair;
But now the wild flowers round them only breathe:
Yet ruined Splendour still is lingering there.
And yonder towers the Prince's palace fair:
There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,[bb]
Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware
When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,[bc]
Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow:
But now, as if a thing unblest by Man,[bd]
Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as Thou!
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To Halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;[be]
Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!
Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened![4.B.]
Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
With diadem hight Foolscap, lo! a Fiend,
A little Fiend that scoffs incessantly,
There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by[bf]
His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,
Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,[bg]
And sundry signatures adorn the roll,[bh]
Whereat the Urchin points and laughs with all his soul.[bi]
Convention is the dwarfish demon styled
That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome:
Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
Here Folly dashed to earth the victor's plume,
And Policy regained what arms had lost:
For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom!
Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host,
Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast.
And ever since that martial Synod met,
Britannia sickens, Cintra! at thy name;
And folks in office at the mention fret,[bj]
And fain would blush, if blush they could, for shame.
How will Posterity the deed proclaim!
Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer,
To view these champions cheated of their fame,
By foes in fight o'erthrown, yet victors here,
Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year?
So deemed the Childe, as o'er the mountains he
Did take his way in solitary guise:
Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
More restless than the swallow in the skies:[bk]
Though here awhile he learned to moralise,
For Meditation fixed at times on him;
And conscious Reason whispered to despise
His early youth, misspent in maddest whim;
But as he gazed on truth his aching eyes grew dim.
To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits
A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul:[bl]
Again he rouses from his moping fits,
But seeks not now the harlot and the bowl.[bm]
Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet the goal
Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;
And o'er him many changing scenes must roll
Ere toil his thirst for travel can assuage,[bn]
Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage.
Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay,[5.B.]
Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen;[bo]
And Church and Court did mingle their array,
And Mass and revel were alternate seen;
Lordlings and freres--ill-sorted fry I ween!
A dome, where flaunts she in such glorious sheen,
That men forget the blood which she hath spilt,
And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to varnish guilt.
O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills,
(Oh, that such hills upheld a freeborn race!)
Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce fills,
Childe Harold wends through many a pleasant place.[bp]
Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,
And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace,
Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,
And Life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share.
More bleak to view the hills at length recede,
And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend:[bq]
Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed!
Far as the eye discerns, withouten end,
Spain's realms appear whereon her shepherds tend
Flocks, whose rich fleece right well the trader knows--
Now must the Pastor's arm his _lambs_ defend:
For Spain is compassed by unyielding foes,
And _all_ must shield their _all_, or share Subjection's woes.
Where Lusitania and her Sister meet,
Deem ye what bounds the rival realms divide?[br]
Or ere the jealous Queens of Nations greet,
Doth Tayo interpose his mighty tide?
Or dark Sierras rise in craggy pride?
Or fence of art, like China's vasty wall?--
Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide,
Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall,
Rise like the rocks that part Hispania's land from Gaul:
But these between a silver streamlet glides,
And scarce a name distinguisheth the brook,
Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides:
Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow;
For proud each peasant as the noblest duke:
Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.[6.B.]
But ere the mingling bounds have far been passed,[bs]
Dark Guadiana rolls his power along
In sullen billows, murmuring and vast,
So noted ancient roundelays among.[bt]
Whilome upon his banks did legions throng
Of Moor and Knight, in mailéd splendour drest:
Here ceased the swift their race, here sunk the strong;
The Paynim turban and the Christian crest
Mixed on the bleeding stream, by floating hosts oppressed.
Oh, lovely Spain! renowned, romantic Land!
Where is that standard which Pelagio bore,[bu]
When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore?[7.B.]
Where are those bloody Banners which of yore
Waved o'er thy sons, victorious to the gale,
And drove at last the spoilers to their shore?
Red gleamed the Cross, and waned the Crescent pale,[bv]
While Afric's echoes thrilled with Moorish matrons' wail.
Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?
Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate!
When granite moulders and when records fail,
A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw]
Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate,
See how the Mighty shrink into a song!
Can Volume, Pillar, Pile preserve thee great?
Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue,
When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong?
Awake, ye Sons of Spain! awake! advance!
Lo! Chivalry, your ancient Goddess, cries,
But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance,
Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies:
Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies,
And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar:
In every peal she calls--"Awake! arise!"
Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore,
When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore?
Hark!--heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note?
Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath?
Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote,
Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath
Tyrants and Tyrants' slaves?--the fires of Death,
The Bale-fires flash on high:--from rock to rock![bx]
Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe;
Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,
Red Battle stamps his foot, and Nations feel the shock.
Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deepening in the Sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing afar,--and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done;
For on this morn three potent Nations meet,
To shed before his Shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see
(For one who hath no friend, no brother there)
Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery,[by]
Their various arms that glitter in the air!
What gallant War-hounds rouse them from their lair,
And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey!
All join the chase, but few the triumph share;
The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away,
And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array.
Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;
Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;
Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;
The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!
The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally
That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,
Are met--as if at home they could not die--
To feed the crow on Talavera's plain,
And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain.
There shall they rot--Ambition's honoured fools![bz]
Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!
Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,[ca]
The broken tools, that Tyrants cast away
By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
With human hearts--to what?--a dream alone.
Can Despots compass aught that hails their sway?[cb]
Or call with truth one span of earth their own,
Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone?
Oh, Albuera! glorious field of grief![cc]
As o'er thy plain the Pilgrim pricked his steed,
Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief,
A scene where mingling foes should boast and bleed![cd]
Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed[ce]
And tears of triumph their reward prolong![cf]
Till others fall where other chieftains lead
Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng,
And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song.[cg]
Enough of Battle's minions! let them play
Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame:
Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay,
Though thousands fall to deck some single name.
In sooth 'twere sad to thwart their noble aim
Who strike, blest hirelings! for their country's good,[ch]
And die, that living might have proved her shame;
Perished, perchance, in some domestic feud,
Or in a narrower sphere wild Rapine's path pursued.[ci]
Full swiftly Harold wends his lonely way[cj]
Where proud Sevilla triumphs unsubdued:[ck]
Yet is she free? the Spoiler's wished-for prey!
Soon, soon shall Conquest's fiery foot intrude,
Blackening her lovely domes with traces rude.
Inevitable hour! 'Gainst fate to strive
Where Desolation plants her famished brood
Is vain, or Ilion, Tyre might yet survive,
And Virtue vanquish all, and Murder cease to thrive
But all unconscious of the coming doom,
The feast, the song, the revel here abounds;
Strange modes of merriment the hours consume,
Nor bleed these patriots with their country's wounds:
Nor here War's clarion, but Love's rebeck sounds;[cl]
Here Folly still his votaries inthralls;
And young-eyed Lewdness walks her midnight rounds:[cm]
Girt with the silent crimes of Capitals,
Still to the last kind Vice clings to the tott'ring walls.
Not so the rustic--with his trembling mate
He lurks, nor casts his heavy eye afar,
Lest he should view his vineyard desolate,
Blasted below the dun hot breath of War.
No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star
Fandango twirls his jocund castanet:
Ah, Monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar,
Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret;[cn]
The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet!
How carols now the lusty muleteer?
Of Love, Romance, Devotion is his lay,
As whilome he was wont the leagues to cheer,
His quick bells wildly jingling on the way?
No! as he speeds, he chants "Vivā el Rey!"[8.B.]
And checks his song to execrate Godoy,
The royal wittol Charles, and curse the day
When first Spain's queen beheld the black-eyed boy,
And gore-faced Treason sprung from her adulterate joy.
On yon long level plain, at distance crowned
With crags, whereon those Moorish turrets rest,
Wide-scattered hoof-marks dint the wounded ground;
And, scathed by fire, the greensward's darkened vest
Tells that the foe was Andalusia's guest:
Here was the camp, the watch-flame, and the host,
Here the bold peasant stormed the Dragon's nest;
Still does he mark it with triumphant boast,
And points to yonder cliffs, which oft were won and lost.
And whomsoe'er along the path you meet
Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet:[9.B.]
Woe to the man that walks in public view
Without of loyalty this token true:
Sharp is the knife, and sudden is the stroke;
And sorely would the Gallic foeman rue,
If subtle poniards, wrapt beneath the cloke,
Could blunt the sabre's edge, or clear the cannon's smoke.
At every turn Morena's dusky height
Sustains aloft the battery's iron load;
And, far as mortal eye can compass sight,
The mountain-howitzer, the broken road,
The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed,
The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch,[co]
The magazine in rocky durance stowed,
The bolstered steed beneath the shed of thatch,
The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match,[10.B.]
Portend the deeds to come:--but he whose nod
Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway,
A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod;
A little moment deigneth to delay:
Soon will his legions sweep through these their way;
The West must own the Scourger of the world.[cp]
Ah! Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning-day,
When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurled,[cq]
And thou shall view thy sons in crowds to Hades hurled.
And must they fall? the young, the proud, the brave,
To swell one bloated Chiefs unwholesome reign?
No step between submission and a grave?
The rise of Rapine and the fall of Spain?
And doth the Power that man adores ordain
Their doom, nor heed the suppliant's appeal?
Is all that desperate Valour acts in vain?
And Counsel sage, and patriotic Zeal--
The Veteran's skill--Youth's fire--and Manhood's heart of steel?
Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused,
Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar,
And, all unsexed, the Anlace hath espoused,
Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war?
And she, whom once the semblance of a scar
Appalled, an owlet's 'larum chilled with dread,
Now views the column-scattering bay'net jar,[cr]
The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead
Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to tread.
Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,
Oh! had you known her in her softer hour,
Marked her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil,
Heard her light, lively tones in Lady's bower,
Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power,
Her fairy form, with more than female grace,
Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower
Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face,
Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase.
Her lover sinks--she sheds no ill-timed tear;
Her Chief is slain--she fills his fatal post;
Her fellows flee--she checks their base career;
The Foe retires--she heads the sallying host:
Who can appease like her a lover's ghost?
Who can avenge so well a leader's fall?
What maid retrieve when man's flushed hope is lost?
Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,
Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall?[11.B.]
Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love:
Though thus in arms they emulate her sons,
And in the horrid phalanx dare to move,
'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove,
Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate:
In softness as in firmness far above
Remoter females, famed for sickening prate;
Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great.
The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed[cs]
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch:[12.B.]
Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest,
Bid man be valiant ere he merit such:
Her glance how wildly beautiful! how much
Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek,
Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch!
Who round the North for paler dames would seek?
How poor their forms appear! how languid, wan, and weak!
Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud;
Match me, ye harems of the land! where now
I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud
Beauties that ev'n a cynic must avow;[ct]
Match me those Houries, whom ye scarce allow
To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind,
With Spain's dark-glancing daughters--deign to know,
There your wise Prophet's Paradise we find,
His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind.
Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,[13.B.]
Not in the phrensy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,[cu]
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain-majesty!
What marvel if I thus essay to sing?
The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by
Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string,
Though from thy heights no more one Muse will wave her wing.
Oft have I dreamed of Thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
And now I view thee--'tis, alas, with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee!
Happier in this than mightiest Bards have been,
Whose Fate to distant homes confined their lot,
Shall I unmoved behold the hallowed scene,
Which others rave of, though they know it not?
Though here no more Apollo haunts his Grot,
And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave,
Some gentle Spirit still pervades the spot,
Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the Cave,
And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave.[cv]
Of thee hereafter.--Ev'n amidst my strain
I turned aside to pay my homage here;
Forgot the land, the sons, the maids of Spain;
Her fate, to every freeborn bosom dear;
And hailed thee, not perchance without a tear.
Now to my theme--but from thy holy haunt
Let me some remnant, some memorial bear;[cw]
Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant,
Nor let thy votary's hope be deemed an idle vaunt.
But ne'er didst thou, fair Mount! when Greece was young,
See round thy giant base a brighter choir,
Nor e'er did Delphi, when her Priestess sung
The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire,
Behold a train more fitting to inspire
The song of love, than Andalusia's maids,
Nurst in the glowing lap of soft Desire:
Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades
As Greece can still bestow, though Glory fly her glades.
Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast
Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days;[14.B.]
But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast,
Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise.
Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways!
While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape[cx]
The fascination of thy magic gaze?
A Cherub-Hydra round us dost thou gape,
And mould to every taste thy dear delusive shape.
When Paphos fell by Time--accurséd Time!
The Queen who conquers all must yield to thee--
The Pleasures fled, but sought as warm a clime;
And Venus, constant to her native Sea,
To nought else constant, hither deigned to flee,
And fixed her shrine within these walls of white:
Though not to one dome circumscribeth She
Her worship, but, devoted to her rite,
A thousand Altars rise, for ever blazing bright.
From morn till night, from night till startled Morn
Peeps blushing on the Revel's laughing crew,
The Song is heard, the rosy Garland worn;
Devices quaint, and Frolics ever new,
Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu
He bids to sober joy that here sojourns:
Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu[cy]
Of true devotion monkish incense burns,
And Love and Prayer unite, or rule the hour by turns.[cz]
The Sabbath comes, a day of blessed rest:
What hallows it upon this Christian shore?
Lo! it is sacred to a solemn Feast:
Hark! heard you not the forest-monarch's roar?
Crashing the lance, he snuffs the spouting gore
Of man and steed, o'erthrown beneath his horn;
The thronged arena shakes with shouts for more;
Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn,
Nor shrinks the female eye, nor ev'n affects to mourn.
The seventh day this--the Jubilee of man!
London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer:
Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan,
And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:
Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,
And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da]
To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair;
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.[db]
Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribboned fair,[dc]
Others along the safer turnpike fly;
Some Richmond-hill ascend, some scud to Ware,
And many to the steep of Highgate hie.
Ask ye, Boeotian Shades! the reason why?[15.B.]
'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn,
Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery,
In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
And consecrate the oath with draught, and dance till morn.
All have their fooleries--not alike are thine,
Fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea!
Soon as the Matin bell proclaimeth nine,
Thy Saint-adorers count the Rosary:
Much is the VIRGIN teased to shrive them free
(Well do I ween the only virgin there)
From crimes as numerous as her beadsmen be;
Then to the crowded circus forth they fare:
Young, old, high, low, at once the same diversion share.
The lists are oped, the spacious area cleared,
Thousands on thousands piled are seated round;
Long ere the first loud trumpet's note is heard,
Ne vacant space for lated wight is found:
Here Dons, Grandees, but chiefly Dames abound,
Skilled in the ogle of a roguish eye,
Yet ever well inclined to heal the wound;
None through their cold disdain are doomed to die,
As moon-struck bards complain, by Love's sad archery.
Hushed is the din of tongues--on gallant steeds,
With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-poised lance,
Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds,
And lowly-bending to the lists advance;
Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance:
If in the dangerous game they shine to-day,
The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance,
Best prize of better acts! they bear away,
And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay.
In costly sheen and gaudy cloak arrayed.
But all afoot, the light-limbed Matadore
Stands in the centre, eager to invade
The lord of lowing herds; but not before
The ground, with cautious tread, is traversed o'er,
Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed:
His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more
Can Man achieve without the friendly steed--
Alas! too oft condemned for him to bear and bleed.
Thrice sounds the Clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The den expands, and Expectation mute
Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls.
Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,
And, wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot,
The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe:
Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit
His first attack, wide-waving to and fro
His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.
Sudden he stops--his eye is fixed--away--
Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear:
Now is thy time, to perish, or display
The skill that yet may check his mad career!
With well-timed croupe the nimble coursers veer;
On foams the Bull, but not unscathed he goes;
Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear:
He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes;
Dart follows dart--lance, lance--loud bellowings speak his woes.
Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail,
Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse;
Though Man and Man's avenging arms assail,
Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force.
One gallant steed is stretched a mangled corse;
Another, hideous sight! unseamed appears,
His gory chest unveils life's panting source;
Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears;
Staggering, but stemming all, his Lord unharmed he bears.
Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last,
Full in the centre stands the Bull at bay,
Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,
And foes disabled in the brutal fray:
And now the Matadores around him play,
Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand:
Once more through all he bursts his thundering way--
Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand,
Wraps his fierce eye--'tis past--he sinks upon the sand![dd]
Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine,
Sheathed in his form the deadly weapon lies.
He stops--he starts--disdaining to decline:
Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries,
Without a groan, without a struggle dies.
The decorated car appears--on high
The corse is piled--sweet sight for vulgar eyes--[de]
Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy,
Hurl the dark bulk along, scarce seen in dashing by.
Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain.
Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights
In vengeance, gloating on another's pain.
What private feuds the troubled village stain!
Though now one phalanxed host should meet the foe,
Enough, alas! in humble homes remain,
To meditate 'gainst friend the secret blow,
But Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts,
His withered Centinel, Duenna sage!
And all whereat the generous soul revolts,[df]
Have passed to darkness with the vanished age.
Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen,
(Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage,)
With braided tresses bounding o'er the green,
While on the gay dance shone Night's lover-loving Queen?
Oh! many a time and oft, had Harold loved,
Or dreamed he loved, since Rapture is a dream;
But now his wayward bosom was unmoved,
For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream;
And lately had he learned with truth to deem
Love has no gift so grateful as his wings:
How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem,
Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs[dg]
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.[16.B.]
Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind,
Though now it moved him as it moves the wise;
Not that Philosophy on such a mind
E'er deigned to bend her chastely-awful eyes:
But Passion raves herself to rest, or flies;
And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb,
Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise:[dh]
Pleasure's palled Victim! life-abhorring Gloom
Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom.
Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
But viewed them not with misanthropic hate:
Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song;
But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
Nought that he saw his sadness could abate:
Yet once he struggled 'gainst the Demon's sway,
And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,
Poured forth his unpremeditated lay,
To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.
Nay, smile not at my sullen brow;
Alas! I cannot smile again:
Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain.
And dost thou ask what secret woe
I bear, corroding Joy and Youth?
And wilt thou vainly seek to know
A pang, ev'n thou must fail to soothe?
It is not love, it is not hate,
Nor low Ambition's honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I prized the most:
It is that weariness which springs
From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
The fabled Hebrew Wanderer bore;
That will not look beyond the tomb,
But cannot hope for rest before.
What Exile from himself can flee?
To zones though more and more remote,[di]
Still, still pursues, where'er I be,
The blight of Life--the Demon Thought.
Yet others rapt in pleasure seem,
And taste of all that I forsake;
Oh! may they still of transport dream,
And ne'er--at least like me--awake!
Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,
With many a retrospection curst;
And all my solace is to know,
Whate'er betides, I've known the worst.
What is that worst? Nay do not ask--
In pity from the search forbear:
Smile on--nor venture to unmask
Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there.
Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!
Who may forget how well thy walls have stood?
When all were changing thou alone wert true,
First to be free and last to be subdued;
And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude,
Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye,
A Traitor only fell beneath the feud: [17.B.]
Here all were noble, save Nobility;
None hugged a Conqueror's chain, save fallen Chivalry!
Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her Fate!
They fight for Freedom who were never free,
A Kingless people for a nerveless state;
Her vassals combat when their Chieftains flee,
True to the veriest slaves of Treachery:
Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,
Pride points the path that leads to Liberty;
Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
War, war is still the cry, "War even to the knife!"[18.B.]
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know[dj]
Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife:
Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe
Can act, is acting there against man's life:
From flashing scimitar to secret knife,
War mouldeth there each weapon to his need--
So may he guard the sister and the wife,
So may he make each curst oppressor bleed--
So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!
Flows there a tear of Pity for the dead?
Look o'er the ravage of the reeking plain;
Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,
Then to the vulture let each corse remain,
Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw;
Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain,
Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe:
Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw!
Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done;
Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees:
It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
Fall'n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees
More than her fell Pizarros once enchained:
Strange retribution! now Columbia's ease
Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustained,
While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrained.
Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight,
Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
Have won for Spain her well asserted right.
When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?
How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
And Freedom's stranger-tree grow native of the soil!
And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe[dk][19.B.]
Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain--
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain:
But thus unlaurelled to descend in vain,
By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest?
Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most![dl]
Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear![dm]
Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier,[dn]
Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,
And mourned and mourner lie united in repose.
Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage:
Ye who of him may further seek to know,
Shall find some tidings in a future page,
If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so:
Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld
In other lands, where he was doomed to go:
Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,
Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.
 "The first and second cantos of _Childe Harold_ were written in
"_The cheerless thing, the man without a friend_,"
 [The phrase occurs in _The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement_
 [Passages relating to the Queen of Tahiti, in _Hawkesworth's
"Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen,
I rest a perfect Timon, not nineteen."]
 [John Moore (1729-1802), the father of the celebrated Sir John
 [In 1814, when the dedication was published, Byron completed his
 {13} [For the modulation of the verse, compare Pope's lines--
"Correctly cold, and regularly low."
_Essay on Criticism_, line 240.
"Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes."
_And long as kinder eyes shall deign to cast_
_A look along my page, that name enshrined_
_Shalt thou be_ first _beheld, forgotten_ last.--[MS.]
or, --_wooed thee, drank the vaunted rill_.--[D.]
_He chused the bad, and did the good affright_
 ["We [i.e. Byron and C.S. Matthews] went down [April, 1809] to
 {17} ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means
That is _hight_ Good-fellow Robin."
 [William, fifth Lord Byron (the poet's grand-uncle), mortally
"And burning pride and high disdain
Forbade the rising tears to flow."]
_And strait he fell into a reverie_.--[MS.]
 [_Vide post_, stanza xi. line 9, note.]
_Now Paphian jades were heard to sing and smile_.--[MS. erased.]
 [The brass eagle which was fished out of the lake at Newstead in
"'Hail, venerable pile!' whose ivied walls
Proclaim the desolating lapse of years:
And hail, ye hills, and murmuring waterfalls,
Where yet her head the ruin'd Abbey rears.
No longer now the matin tolling bell,
Re-echoing loud among the woody glade,
Calls the fat abbot from his drowsy cell,
And warns the maid to flee, if yet a maid.
No longer now the festive bowl goes round,
Nor monks get drunk in honour of their God."]
_Of all his train there was a henchman page,_
_peasant_              _served_
_A {-dark eyed-} boy, who {-loved-} his master well;_
_And often would his pranksome prate engage_
_Childe {-Burun's-} ear, when his proud heart did swell_
_With sable thoughts that he disdained to tell_.
_Then would he smile on him, as {-Rupert-} smiled,_
_When aught that from his young lips archly fell_
_The gloomy film from {-Burun's-} eye beguiled;_
_And pleased the Childe appeared nor ere the boy reviled_.}
_And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe_.   }
_Him and one yeoman only did he take_
_To travel Eastward to a far countree;_
_And though the boy was grieved to leave the lake_
_On whose firm banks he grew from Infancy,_
_Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily_
_With hope of foreign nations to behold,_
_And many things right marvellous to see,_
_vaunting_
_Of which our {-lying-} voyagers oft have told,_
_{-From Mandevilles' and scribes of similar mold.-}_ }
or, _In tomes pricked out with prints to monied ... sold_}
_In many a tome as true as Mandeville's of old_.     }
_And none did love him though to hall and bower_
_Haughty he gathered revellers from far and near_
_{-An evil smile just bordering on a sneer-}_
_He knew them flatterers of the festal hour_
_The heartless Parasites of present cheer,_
_{-And deemed no mortal wight his peer-}_
_Yea! none did love him not his lemmans dear_
_{-To gentle Dames still less he could be dear-}_
_{-Were aught-} But pomp and power alone are Woman's care_
_{-But-} And where these are let no Possessor fear_
 [The "trivial particular" which suggested to Byron the
 The word "lemman" is used by Chaucer in both senses, but more
frequently in the feminine.--[_MS. M._]
"As with the woful _fere_,
And father of that chaste dishonoured dame."
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye."
"This night is my departing night,
For here nae langer mun I stay;
There's neither friend nor foe of mine,
But wishes me away.
What I have done thro' lack of will,
I never, never can recall;
I hope ye're a' my friends as yet.
Good night, and joy be with you all."]
 {26} [Robert Rushton, the son of one of the Newstead tenants.
_Our best gos-hawk can hardly fly_
_Our best greyhound can hardly fly_.--[D. erased.]
_My mother is a high-born dame_,
_And much misliketh me;_
_She saith my riot bringeth shame_
_On all my ancestry_.
_I had a sister once I ween_,
_Whose tears perhaps will flow;_
_But her fair face I have not seen_
_For three long years and moe._
_Oh master dear I do not cry_
_From fear of wave or wind_.--[MS.]
 {28} [William Fletcher, Byron's valet. He was anything but
_Enough, enough, my yeoman good_.
_All this is well to say;_
_But if I in thy sandals stood_
_For who would trust a paramour_
_Or e'en a wedded feere_--
_Though her blue eyes were streaming o'er_,
_And torn her yellow hair?_--[MS.]
 ["I leave England without regret--I shall return to it without
_Methinks it would my bosom glad_,
_To change my proud estate_,
_And be again a laughing lad_
_With one beloved playmate_.
_Since youth I scarce have pass'd an hour_
_Without disgust or pain_,
_Except sometimes in Lady's bower_,
_Or when the bowl I drain_.
Byron was recalling an incident which had befallen him some time
 {31} [Cintra's "needle-like peaks," to the north-west of Lisbon,
 ["_Lisboa_ is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best.
_Which poets, prone to lie, have paved with gold_.--[MS.]
_Which poets sprinkle o'er with sands of gold_.--[MS. pencil.]
_Which fabling poets_--[D. pencil.]
 {33} [For Byron's estimate of the Portuguese, see _The Curse of
_Who hate the very hand that waves the sword_
_Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee_.--[MS.]
 {35} [The convent of Nossa Señora (now the Palazio) da Peña, and
"Hic Honorius vitam finivit;
Et ideo cum Deo in coelis revivit."]
materials ... but for correctness of costume ... and power of
_When Wealth and Taste their worst and best have done_,
_Meek Peace pollution's lure voluptuous still must shun_.--[MS.]
_But now thou blasted Beacon unto man_.--[MS.]
In golden characters right well designed
First on the list appeareth one "Junot;"
Then certain other glorious names we find,
(Which Rhyme compelleth me to place below:)
Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe,
Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due,
Stand, worthy of each other in a row--
Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew
Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t'other tew.
Convention is the dwarfy demon styled
That failed the knights in Marialva's dome:
Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
For well I wot, when first the news did come
That Vimiera's field by Gaul was lost,
For paragraph ne paper scarce had room,
Such Pæans teemed for our triumphant host,
But when Convention sent his handy work
Pens, tongues, feet, hands combined in wild uproar;
Mayor, Aldermen, laid down the uplifted fork;
The Bench of Bishops half forgot to snore;
Stern Cobbett,[§]--who for one whole week forbore
To question aught, once more with transport leapt,
And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore
With foes such treaty never should be kept,
Thus unto Heaven appealed the people: Heaven
Which loves the lieges of our gracious King,
Decreed that ere our Generals were forgiven,
Enquiry should be held about the thing.
But Mercy cloaked the babes beneath her wing;
And as they spared our foes so spared we them;
(Where was the pity of our Sires for Byng?)[§§§]
Then live ye gallant Knights! and bless your Judges' phlegm!
complaisantly carry the bone for him." The rest of the article is
 [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached
_Less swoln with culture soon the vales extend_
_And long horizon-bounded realms appear_.--[MS. erased.]
 [If, as stanza xliii. of this canto (added in 1811) intimates,
Byron passed through "Albuera's plain" on his way from Lisbon to
_For ever famed--in many a native song_.--[MS. erased.]
"Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis
Scuta virûm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."]
 [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (_La Cruz de la
 [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerías of the
sixteenth century.]
_Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath_
_Fragments on fragments in contention knock_.--[MS. erased, D.]
 "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows
 {49} [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two
_Their rival scarfs that shine so gloriously_.--[MS. erased.]
_There shall they rot--while rhymers tell the fools_
_How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!_
"There Honour comes a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay."
_As if they compassed half that hails their sway_.--[MS. erased.]
 [In this "particular" Childe Harold did not resemble his _alter
 [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The
 {55} [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the classical _Montes
 [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon
"The Time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek."]
-----_the column-scattering bolt afar,_
_The seal Love's rosy finger has imprest_
_On her fair chin denotes how soft his touch:_
_Her lips where kisses make voluptuous nest_.--[MS. erased.]
 [Writing to his mother (August 11, 1809), Byron compares "the
"Oh never talk again to me
Of northern climes and British ladies."
"She cannot step as doth an Arab barb,
Or Andalusian girl from mass returning.
But though the soil may give you time and trouble,
Well cultivated, it will render double."]
_Beauties that need not fear a broken vow_.--[MS. erased.]
 [The summit of Parnassus is not visible from Delphi or the
_Let me some remnant of thy Spirit bear_
_Some glorious thought to my petition grant_.--[MS. erased, D.]
 {63} [In his first letter from Spain (to F. Hodgson, August 6,
_While boyish blood boils gaily, who can 'scape_
_The lurking lures of thy enchanting gaze_.--[MS. erased.]
"Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit
Læta suas, ubi templum illi, centumque Sabæo
Ture calent aræ."]
 [Compare Milton's _Paradise Lost_, i.--
... from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.]
 [It was seldom that Byron's memory played him false, but here a
_Of true devotion monkish temples share_
_The hours misspent, and all in turns is Love or Prayer_.----
 {67} [M. Darmesteter quotes a striking passage from Gautier's
physionomie de Cadix en une seule touche:
 [One bull-fight, one matador. In describing the last act Byron
_The trophy corse is reared--disgusting prize_.
or, _The corse is reared--sparkling the chariot flies_.--[MS. M.]
"Pedibusque informe cadaver
Protrahitur. Nequeunt expleri corda tuendo--"]
 [Byron's "orthodoxy" of the word "centinel" was suggested by the
_And all whereat the wandering soul revolts_
_Full from the heart of Joy's delicious springs_
_Some Bitter bubbles up, and even on Roses stings_.--[MS.]
 [The Dallas Transcript reads "itself," but the MS. and earlier
editions "herself."]
_Had buried then his hopes, no more to rise:_
_Drugged with dull pleasure! life-abhorring Gloom_
_Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's wandering doom_.--
"Patriæ quis exsul
Se quoque fugit?"]
_To other zones howe'er remote_
_Still, still pursuing clings to me._--[MS. erased.]
"In the remotest wood and lonely grot
Certain to meet that worst of evils--_thought."_]
 {77} [Cadiz was captured from the Moors by Alonso el Sabio, in
 {78} [Charles IV. abdicated March 19, 1808, in favour of his son
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
Go hie ye hence to Paternoster Row--
Are they not written in the Boke of Carr,[§1]
Green Erin's Knight and Europe's wandering star!
Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink,
Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar;
All those are cooped within one Quarto's brink,
This borrow, steal,--don't buy,--and tell us what you think.
There may you read with spectacles on eyes,
How many Wellesleys did embark for Spain,[§2]
As if therein they meant to colonise,
How many troops y-crossed the laughing main
That ne'er beheld the said return again:
How many buildings are in such a place,
How many leagues from this to yonder plain,
How many relics each cathedral grace,
And where Giralda stands on her gigantic base.[§3]
There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John!
That these my words prophetic may not err)[§4]
All that was said, or sung, and lost, or won,
By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,[§a]
He that wrote half the "Needy Knife-Grinder,"[§5]
Thus Poesy the way to grandeur paves--[§b]
Who would not such diplomatists prefer?
But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves,
Leave legates to the House, and armies to their graves.
Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made,[§c][§6]
Who for the Junta modelled sapient laws,
Taught them to govern ere they were obeyed:
Certes fit teacher to command, because
His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes;
Blest with a Dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,--
With her let silent Admiration pause!--
True to her second husband and her first:
On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst.
_None better known for doing things by halves_
_As many in our Senate did aver_.--[MS. erased.]
 {81} [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xciii., which record the battles of
_And thou, my friend! since thus my selfish woe_
{_to weaken in_
_Bursts from my heart,_ {_however light my strain,_
_Had the sword laid thee, with the mighty, low_
_Pride had forbade me of thy fall to plain_.--[MS. D.]
 [Compare the In Memoriam stanzas at the end of Beattie's
_Minstrel_--"And am I left to unavailing woe?" II. 63, line 2.]
"Oh, known the earliest and _beloved_ the most,
I shall alter the epithet to '_esteemed_ the most.'"]
Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine.
Stanza i. line 6.
And rest ye at "Our Lady's house of Woe."
Stanza xx. line 4.
Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life.
Stanza xxi. line 9.
Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!
Stanza xxiv. line 1.
The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Marchese
Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay.
Stanza xxix. line 1.
Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.
Stanza xxxiii. lines 8 and 9.
When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore.
Stanza xxxv. lines 3 and 4.
No! as he speeds, he chants "Vivā el Rey!"
Stanza xlviii. line 5.
Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet.
Stanza l. lines 2 and 3.
The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.
The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match.
Stanza li. line 9.
Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.
Stanza lvi. line 9.
Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour
Napier, "neither wholly believing nor absolutely denying these
"... the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade."]
The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch.
Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.
"Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo
Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem."
Oh, thou Parnassus!
Stanza lx. line 1.
These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of
Parnassus, now called Λιακυρα [Liakyra] (Liakura), Dec. , 1809.
Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast
Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days.
Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2.
Ask ye, Boeotian Shades! the reason why?
Stanza lxx. line 5.
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.
Stanza lxxxii. line 9.
"Medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipseis floribus angat."
A Traitor only fell beneath the feud.
Stanza lxxxv. line 7.
abilities, courage, and unblemished character have never been
"War even to the knife!"
Stanza lxxxvi. line 9.
And thou, my friend! etc.
Stanza xci. line 1.
"Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,
And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."
superiority. [To an objection made by Dallas to this note, Byron
Come, blue-eyed Maid of Heaven!--but Thou, alas!
Didst never yet one mortal song inspire--
Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
And is, despite of War and wasting fire,[1.B.]
And years, that bade thy worship to expire:
But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,[2.B.]
Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire
Of men who never felt the sacred glow
That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow.
Ancient of days! august Athena! where,[do]
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were:[dp]
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away--is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The Warrior's weapon and the Sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.[dq]
Son of the Morning, rise! approach you here!
Come--but molest not yon defenceless Urn:
Look on this spot--a Nation's sepulchre!
Abode of Gods, whose shrines no longer burn.[dr]
Even Gods must yield--Religions take their turn:
'Twas Jove's--'tis Mahomet's--and other Creeds
Will rise with other years, till Man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;
Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.[ds]
Bound to the Earth, he lifts his eye to Heaven--
Is't not enough, Unhappy Thing! to know
Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,
That being, thou would'st be again, and go,
Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so
On Earth no more, but mingled with the skies?
Still wilt thou dream on future Joy and Woe?[dt]
Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies:
That little urn saith more than thousand Homilies.
Or burst the vanished Hero's lofty mound;
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:[3.B.]
He fell, and falling nations mourned around;
But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell.[du]
Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps:
Is that a Temple where a God may dwell?
Why ev'n the Worm at last disdains her shattered cell!
Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit
And Passion's host, that never brooked control:
Can all Saint, Sage, or Sophist ever writ,
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?
Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
"All that we know is, nothing can be known."
Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan
With brain-born dreams of Evil all their own.
Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best;
Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron:
There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome Rest.
Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be[dv]
A land of Souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the Doctrine of the Sadducee
And Sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;
How sweet it were in concert to adore
With those who made our mortal labours light!
To hear each voice we feared to hear no more!
Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the Right!
There, Thou!--whose Love and Life together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain--
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead
When busy Memory flashes on my brain?
Well--I will dream that we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
Be as it may Futurity's behest,[dw]
For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!
Here let me sit upon this massy stone,
The marble column's yet unshaken base;
Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne:[4.B.]
Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace
The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.
It may not be: nor ev'n can Fancy's eye
Restore what Time hath laboured to deface.
Yet these proud Pillars claim no passing sigh;
Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.
But who, of all the plunderers of yon Fane
On high--where Pallas linger'd, loth to flee
The latest relic of her ancient reign--
The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?[dx]
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
England! I joy no child he was of thine:
Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;
Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,
And hear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.[5.B.]
But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast,[dy]
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:[6.B.]
Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared.
Aught to displace Athenæ's poor remains:
Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains,[7.B.]
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.
What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,[dz]
Albion was happy in Athena's tears?
Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,
Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears;
The Ocean Queen, the free Britannia, bears
The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:
Yes, she, whose generous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.[ea]
Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appalled[eb]
Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?[8.B.]
Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthralled.
His shade from Hades upon that dread day
Bursting to light in terrible array!
What! could not Pluto spare the Chief once more,
To scare a second robber from his prey?
Idly he wandered on the Stygian shore,
Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before.
Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on Thee,
Nor feels as Lovers o'er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved[ec]
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored:--
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatched thy shrinking Gods to Northern climes abhorred!
But where is Harold? shall I then forget
To urge the gloomy Wanderer o'er the wave?
Little recked he of all that Men regret;
No loved-one now in feigned lament could rave;
No friend the parting hand extended gave,
Ere the cold Stranger passed to other climes:
Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave;
But Harold felt not as in other times,
And left without a sigh the land of War and Crimes.
He that has sailed upon the dark blue sea
Has viewed at times, I ween, a full fair sight,
When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
The white sail set, the gallant Frigate tight--
Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
The glorious Main expanding o'er the bow,
The Convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
The dullest sailer wearing bravely now--
So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.
And oh, the little warlike world within!
The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy,[9.B.]
The hoarse command, the busy humming din,
When, at a word, the tops are manned on high:
Hark, to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry!
While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides;
Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by,
Strains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides,
And well the docile crew that skilful Urchin guides.[ed]
White is the glassy deck, without a stain,
Where on the watch the staid Lieutenant walks:
Look on that part which sacred doth remain[ee]
For the lone Chieftain, who majestic stalks,
Silent and feared by all--not oft he talks
With aught beneath him, if he would preserve
That strict restraint, which broken, ever balks
Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve
From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve[ef].
Blow! swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale!
Till the broad Sun withdraws his lessening ray:
Then must the Pennant-bearer slacken sail,
That lagging barks may make their lazy way.
Ah! grievance sore, and listless dull delay,
To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze!
What leagues are lost, before the dawn of day,
Thus loitering pensive on the willing seas,
The flapping sail hauled down to halt for logs like these!
The Moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve!
Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand;
Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe[eg]:
Such be our fate when we return to land!
Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand[eh]
Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love;
A circle there of merry listeners stand
Or to some well-known measure featly move,
Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove.
Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;[ei]
Europe and Afric on each other gaze!
Lands of the dark-eyed Maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze:
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays!
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase;
But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,
From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.
'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel
We once have loved, though Love is at an end:
The Heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,[ej]
Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?
Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,
Death hath but little left him to destroy!
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?[ek]
Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,[el]
The Soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,[em]
And flies unconscious o'er each backward year;
None are so desolate but something dear,[en]
Dearer than self, possesses or possessed
A thought, and claims the homage of a tear;
A flashing pang! of which the weary breast
Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.
To sit on rocks--to muse o'er flood and fell--
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;[ep]
This is not Solitude--'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
And roam along, the World's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of Splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less,
Of all that flattered--followed--sought, and sued:
This is to be alone--This, This is Solitude![eq]
More blest the life of godly Eremite,
Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,
Watching at eve upon the Giant Height,
Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene,
That he who there at such an hour hath been
Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;
Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene,
Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,
Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.
Pass we the long unvarying course, the track
Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
Pass we the calm--the gale--the change--the tack,
And each well known caprice of wave and wind;
Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
Cooped in their wingéd sea-girt citadel;
The foul--the fair--the contrary--the kind--
As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,
Till on some jocund morn--lo, Land! and All is well!
But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,[10.B.]
The sister tenants of the middle deep;
There for the weary still a Haven smiles,
Though the fair Goddess long hath ceased to weep,
And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep
For him who dared prefer a mortal bride:
Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap
Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide;
While thus of both bereft, the Nymph-Queen doubly sighed.
Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
But trust not this; too easy Youth, beware!
A mortal Sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
And thou may'st find a new Calypso there.
Sweet Florence could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:
But checked by every tie, I may not dare
To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for _mine_.
Thus Harold deemed, as on that Lady's eye
He looked, and met its beam without a thought,
Save Admiration glancing harmless by:
Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,
Who knew his Votary often lost and caught,
But knew him as his Worshipper no more,
And ne'er again the Boy his bosom sought:
Since now he vainly urged him to adore,
Well deemed the little God his ancient sway was o'er.
Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze,
One who, 'twas said, still sighed to all he saw,
Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze,
Which others hailed with real or mimic awe,
Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law;
All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims:
And much she marvelled that a youth so raw
Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames,
Which though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.
Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
Now masked in silence or withheld by Pride,
Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,
And spread its snares licentious far and wide;
Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside,
As long as aught was worthy to pursue:
But Harold on such arts no more relied;
And had he doted on those eyes so blue,
Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.
Not much he kens, I ween, of Woman's breast,
Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs;
What careth she for hearts when once possessed?
Do proper homage to thine Idol's eyes;
But not too humbly, or she will despise
Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes:
Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise;
Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes:[er]
Pique her and soothe in turn--soon Passion crowns thy hopes.
'Tis an old lesson--Time approves it true,
And those who know it best, deplore it most;
When all is won that all desire to woo,
The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
Youth wasted--Minds degraded--Honour lost--[es]
These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these!
If, kindly cruel, early Hope is crost,
Still to the last it rankles, a disease,
Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please.
Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
For we have many a mountain-path to tread,
And many a varied shore to sail along,
By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led--
Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head[et]
Imagined in its little schemes of thought;[eu]
Or e'er in new Utopias were ared,
To teach Man what he might be, or he ought--
If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.
Dear Nature is the kindest mother still!
Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.[ev]
Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,
Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:
To me by day or night she ever smiled,
Though I have marked her when none other hath,
And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.
Land of Albania! where Iskander rose,
Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,
And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes
Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize:
Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes[11.B.]
On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!
The Cross descends, thy Minarets arise,
And the pale Crescent sparkles in the glen,
Through many a cypress-grove within each city's ken.
Childe Harold sailed, and passed the barren spot,
Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave;[12.B.]
And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
The Lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave.
Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save
That breast imbued with such immortal fire?
Could she not live who life eternal gave?
If life eternal may await the lyre,
That only Heaven to which Earth's children may aspire.
'Twas on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve
Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar;
A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave:
Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war,
Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight
(Born beneath some remote inglorious star)
In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight,
But loathed the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial wight.[ew]
But when he saw the Evening star above
Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe,
And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,[14.B.]
He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow:
And as the stately vessel glided slow
Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount,
He watched the billows' melancholy flow,
And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,[ex]
More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front.
Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania's hills,
Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak,
Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,
Arrayed in many a dun and purple streak,
Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,
Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer:
Here roams the wolf--the eagle whets his beak--
Birds--beasts of prey--and wilder men appear,
And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.
Now Harold felt himself at length alone,
And bade to Christian tongues a long adieu;
Now he adventured on a shore unknown,
Which all admire, but many dread to view:
His breast was armed 'gainst fate, his wants were few
Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet:
The scene was savage, but the scene was new;
_This_ made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet,
Beat back keen Winter's blast, and welcomed Summer's heat.
Here the red Cross, for still the Cross is here,
Though sadly scoffed at by the circumcised,
Forgets that Pride to pampered priesthood dear;
Churchman and Votary alike despised.
Foul Superstition! howsoe'er disguised,
For whatsoever symbol thou art prized,
Thou sacerdotal gain, but general loss!
Who from true Worship's gold can separate thy dross?
Ambracia's gulf behold, where once was lost
A world for Woman, lovely, harmless thing![ey]
In yonder rippling bay, their naval host
Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.]
To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring:
Look where the second Cæsar's trophies rose![16.B.]
Now, like the hands that reared them, withering:
Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez]
GOD! was thy globe ordained for such to win and lose?
From the dark barriers of that rugged clime,
Ev'n to the centre of Illyria's vales,
Childe Harold passed o'er many a mount sublime,
Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales:
Yet in famed Attica such lovely dales
Are rarely seen; nor can fair Tempe boast
A charm they know not; loved Parnassus fails,
Though classic ground and consecrated most,
To match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast.
He passed bleak Pindus, Acherusia's lake,[17.B.]
And left the primal city of the land,
And onwards did his further journey take
To greet Albania's Chief, whose dread command[18.B.]
Is lawless law; for with a bloody hand
He sways a nation,--turbulent and bold:
Yet here and there some daring mountain-band
Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold
Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold.[19.B.]
Monastic Zitza! from thy shady brow,[20.B.]
Thou small, but favoured spot of holy ground!
Where'er we gaze--around--above--below,--
What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,
And bluest skies that harmonise the whole:
Beneath, the distant Torrent's rushing sound
Tells where the volumed Cataract doth roll
Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.
Amidst the grove that crowns yon tufted hill,
Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh
Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still,
Might well itself be deemed of dignity,
The Convent's white walls glisten fair on high:
Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,[21.B.]
Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee
From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen to see.
Here in the sultriest season let him rest,
Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees;
Here winds of gentlest wing will fan his breast,[fa]
From Heaven itself he may inhale the breeze:
The plain is far beneath--oh! let him seize
Pure pleasure while he can; the scorching ray
Here pierceth not, impregnate with disease:
Then let his length the loitering pilgrim lay,
And gaze, untired, the Morn--the Noon--the Eve away.
Dusky and huge, enlarging on the sight,
Nature's volcanic Amphitheatre,[22.B.]
Chimæra's Alps extend from left to right:
Beneath, a living valley seems to stir;
Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain-fir
Nodding above; behold black Acheron![23.B.]
Once consecrated to the sepulchre.
Pluto! if this be Hell I look upon,
Close shamed Elysium's gates, my shade shall seek for none[fb].
Ne city's towers pollute the lovely view;
Unseen is Yanina, though not remote,
Veiled by the screen of hills: here men are few,
Scanty the hamlet, rare the lonely cot:
But, peering down each precipice, the goat[fc]
Browseth; and, pensive o'er his scattered flock,
The little shepherd in his white capote[24.B.]
Doth lean his boyish form along the rock,
Or in his cave awaits the Tempest's short-lived shock.[fd]
Oh! where, Dodona! is thine agéd Grove,
Prophetic Fount, and Oracle divine?
What valley echoed the response of Jove?
What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine?
All, all forgotten--and shall Man repine
That his frail bonds to fleeting life are broke?
Cease, Fool! the fate of Gods may well be thine:
Wouldst thou survive the marble or the oak?
When nations, tongues, and worlds must sink beneath the stroke!
Epirus' bounds recede, and mountains fail;
Tired of up-gazing still, the wearied eye
Reposes gladly on as smooth a vale
As ever Spring yclad in grassy dye:
Ev'n on a plain no humble beauties lie,
Where some bold river breaks the long expanse,
And woods along the banks are waving high,
Whose shadows in the glassy waters dance,
Or with the moonbeam sleep in Midnight's solemn trance.
The Sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit,[25.B.]
And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by;[26.B.]
The shades of wonted night were gathering yet,
When, down the steep banks winding warily,
Childe Harold saw, like meteors in the sky,
The glittering minarets of Tepalen,
Whose walls o'erlook the stream; and drawing nigh,
He heard the busy hum of warrior-men
Swelling the breeze that sighed along the lengthening glen.
He passed the sacred Haram's silent tower,
And underneath the wide o'erarching gate
Surveyed the dwelling of this Chief of power,
Where all around proclaimed his high estate.
Amidst no common pomp the Despot sate,
While busy preparation shook the court,
Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;[fe]
Within, a palace, and without, a fort:
Here men of every clime appear to make resort.
Richly caparisoned, a ready row
Of arméd horse, and many a warlike store,
Circled the wide-extending court below;
Above, strange groups adorned the corridore;
And oft-times through the area's echoing door
Some high-capped Tartar spurred 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.[ff]
The wild Albanian kirtled to his knee,
With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see;
The crimson-scarféd men of Macedon;
The Delhi with his cap of terror on,
And crooked glaive--the lively, supple Greek
And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son;
The bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,
Master of all around, too potent to be meek,
Are mixed conspicuous: 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!"
Just at this season Ramazani's fast
Through the long day its penance did maintain:
But when the lingering twilight hour was past,
Revel and feast assumed the rule again:
Now all was bustle, and the menial train
Prepared and spread the plenteous board within;
The vacant Gallery now seemed made in vain,
But from the chambers came the mingling din,
As page and slave anon were passing out and in.
Here woman's voice is never heard: apart,
And scarce permitted, guarded, veiled, to move,[fg]
She yields to one her person and her heart,
Tamed to her cage, nor feels a wish to rove:
For, not unhappy in her Master's love,[fh]
And joyful in a mother's gentlest cares,
Blest cares! all other feelings far above!
Herself more sweetly rears the babe she bears
Who never quits the breast--no meaner passion shares.
In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
ALI reclined, a man of war and woes:
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that agéd venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.
It is not that yon hoary lengthening beard
Ill suits the passions which belong to Youth;[fi]
Love conquers Age--so Hafiz hath averr'd,
So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth--
But crimes that scorn the tender voice of ruth,[fj]
Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
In years, have marked him with a tiger's tooth;
Blood follows blood, and, through their mortal span,
In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.[fk]
'Mid many things most new to ear and eye[fl]
The Pilgrim rested here his weary feet,
And gazed around on Moslem luxury,
Till quickly, wearied with that spacious seat
Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat
Of sated Grandeur from the city's noise:
And were it humbler it in sooth were sweet;
But Peace abhorreth artificial joys,
And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys.
Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack
Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.
Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
Who can so well the toil of War endure?
Their native fastnesses not more secure
Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,
When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,
Unshaken rushing on where'er their Chief may lead.
Childe Harold saw them in their Chieftain's tower
Thronging to War in splendour and success;
And after viewed them, when, within their power,
Himself awhile the victim of distress;
That saddening hour when bad men hotlier press:
But these did shelter him beneath their roof,
When less barbarians would have cheered him less,
And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof--[27.B.]
In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof!
It chanced that adverse winds once drove his bark
Full on the coast of Suli's shaggy shore,
When all around was desolate and dark;
To land was perilous, to sojourn more;
Yet for awhile the mariners forbore,
Dubious to trust where Treachery might lurk:
At length they ventured forth, though doubting sore
That those who loathe alike the Frank and Turk
Might once again renew their ancient butcher-work.
Vain fear! the Suliotes stretched the welcome hand,
Led them o'er rocks and past the dangerous swamp,
Kinder than polished slaves though not so bland,
And piled the hearth, and wrung their garments damp,
And filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful lamp,
And spread their fare; though homely, all they had:
Such conduct bears Philanthropy's rare stamp:
To rest the weary and to soothe the sad,
Doth lesson happier men, and shames at least the bad.
It came to pass, that when he did address
Himself to quit at length this mountain-land,
Combined marauders half-way barred egress,
And wasted far and near with glaive and brand;
And therefore did he take a trusty band
To traverse Acarnania's forest wide,
In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned,
Till he did greet white Achelous' tide,
And from his further bank Ætolia's wolds espied.
Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,
And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
As winds come lightly whispering from the West,
Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene:--
Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,
For many a joy could he from Night's soft presence glean.
On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed,
The feast was done, the red wine circling fast,[28.B.]
And he that unawares had there ygazed
With gaping wonderment had stared aghast;
For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past,
The native revels of the troop began;
Each Palikar his sabre from him cast,[29.B.]
And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man,
Yelling their uncouth dirge, long daunced the kirtled clan.
Childe Harold at a little distance stood
And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie,
Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude:
In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see
Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee;
And, as the flames along their faces gleamed,
Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free,
The long wild locks that to their girdles streamed,
While thus in concert they this lay half sang,
Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar[fm][31.B.]
Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war;
All the Sons of the mountains arise at the note,
Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!
Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,
In his snowy camese and his shaggy capote?
To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,
And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.
Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive[fn]
The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?
Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?
What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?
Macedonia sends forth her invincible race;
For a time they abandon the cave and the chase:
But those scarfs of blood-red shall be redder, before
The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o'er.
Then the Pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves,
And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar,
And track to his covert the captive on shore.
I ask not the pleasures that riches supply,
My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy;
Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair,[fo]
And many a maid from her mother shall tear.
I love the fair face of the maid in her youth,[fp]
Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe;[fq]
Let her bring from the chamber her many-toned lyre,
And sing us a song on the fall of her Sire.
Remember the moment when Previsa fell,[32.B.]
The shrieks of the conquered, the conquerors' yell;
The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared,
The wealthy we slaughtered, the lovely we spared.
I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear;
He neither must know who would serve the Vizier:
Since the days of our Prophet the Crescent ne'er saw
A chief ever glorious like Ali Pashaw.
Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped,
Let the yellow-haired Giaours
view his horse-tail with dread;
When his Delhis come dashing in blood o'er the banks,
How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks!
Selictar! unsheathe then our chief's Scimitār;
Tambourgi! thy 'larum gives promise of War.[fr]
Ye Mountains, that see us descend to the shore,
Shall view us as Victors, or view us no more!
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth![33.B.]
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The helpless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylæ's sepulchral strait--
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow[34.B.]
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carle can lord it o'er thy land;
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.[fs]
In all save form alone, how changed! and who
That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,
Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew
With thy unquenchéd beam, lost Liberty![ft]
And many dream withal the hour is nigh
That gives them back their fathers' heritage:
For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,
Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,
Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page.
Hereditary Bondsmen! know ye not
_Who_ would be free _themselves_ must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True--they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's Altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe!
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thine years of shame.
The city won for Allah from the Giaour
The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest;
And the Serai's impenetrable tower
Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;[35.B.]
Or Wahab's rebel brood who dared divest
The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,[36.B.]
May wind their path of blood along the West;
But ne'er will Freedom seek this fated soil,
But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.
Yet mark their mirth--ere Lenten days begin,
That penance which their holy rites prepare
To shrive from Man his weight of mortal sin,
By daily abstinence and nightly prayer;
But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear,
Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,
To take of pleasaunce each his secret share,
In motley robe to dance at masking ball,
And join the mimic train of merry Carnival.
And whose more rife with merriment than thine,
Oh Stamboul! once the Empress of their reign?
Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine,
And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:
(Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)
Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,
All felt the common joy they now must feign,
Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song,
As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.
Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore,
Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone,
And timely echoed back the measured oar,
And rippling waters made a pleasant moan:
The Queen of tides on high consenting shone,
And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave,
'Twas, as if darting from her heavenly throne,
A brighter glance her form reflected gave,
Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave.
Glanced many a light Caique along the foam,
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
No thought had man or maid of rest or home,
While many a languid eye and thrilling hand
Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
Or gently prest, returned the pressure still:
Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill!
But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,
Even through the closest searment half betrayed?
To such the gentle murmurs of the main
Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;
To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd
Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain:
How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,
And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!
This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,
If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast:
Not such as prate of War, but skulk in Peace,
The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,
Yet with smooth smile his Tyrant can accost,
And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:
Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most--
Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record
Of hero Sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!
When riseth Lacedemon's Hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,[fu]
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can Man its shattered splendour renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost Gods and godlike men, art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,[37.B.]
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded _Worth_:
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;[38.B.]
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
Ages, but not Oblivion, feebly brave;
While strangers, only, not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe Bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain-air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:[fv]
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of Wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon;
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athenæ's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
The Sun, the soil--but not the slave, the same;--
Unchanged in all except its foreign Lord,
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame[fw]
The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;[39.B.]
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear[fx]
The camp, the host, the fight, the Conqueror's career,[fy]
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow--[fz]
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above--Earth's, Ocean's plain below--
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene--what now remaineth here?
What sacred Trophy marks the hallowed ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?[ga]
The rifled urn, the violated mound,
The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.
Yet to the remnants of thy Splendour past[gb]
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of Battle and of Song:
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the agéd! lesson of the young!
Which Sages venerate and Bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.
The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;
He that is lonely--hither let him roam,
And gaze complacent on congenial earth.
Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth:
But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,
And scarce regret the region of his birth,
When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,
Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.
Let such approach this consecrated Land,
And pass in peace along the magic waste;
But spare its relics--let no busy hand
Deface the scenes, already how defaced!
Not for such purpose were these altars placed:
Revere the remnants Nations once revered:
So may our Country's name be undisgraced,
So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was reared,
By every honest joy of Love and Life endeared!
For thee, who thus in too protracted song
Hast soothed thine Idlesse with inglorious lays,
Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng
Of louder Minstrels in these later days:
To such resign the strife for fading Bays--
Ill may such contest now the spirit move
Which heeds nor keen Reproach nor partial Praise,[gc]
Since cold each kinder heart that might approve--
And none are left to please when none are left to love.
Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
Whom Youth and Youth's affections bound to me;
Who did for me what none beside have done,
Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see--
Would they had never been, or were to come!
Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam![gd]
Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.[ge]
All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
Hath snatched the little joy that Life had yet to lend.
Then must I plunge again into the crowd,
And follow all that Peace disdains to seek?
Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,
False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek,
To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak;
Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer,
To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique:
Smiles form the channel of a future tear,
Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.
What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from Life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,[gf]
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.
 {99} [Stanzas i.-xv. form a kind of dramatic prologue to the
"Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep."]
 [The demigods Erechtheus and Theseus "appeared" at Marathon, and
 [Socrates affirmed that true self-knowledge was to know that we
 [Stanzas viii. and ix. are not in the MS.
_Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I_
_Look not for Life, where life may never be:_
_I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;_
_Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,_
_Thou bold Discoverer in an unknown sea_
_Of happy Isles and happier Tenants there;_
_I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;_[§1]
_Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,_[§2]
_Which if it be thy sins will never let thee share_.[§3]
_But look upon a scene that once was fair_.--[Erased.]
_Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair_.--[Erased.]
 {104} [Byron forwarded this stanza in a letter to Dallas, dated
_Whate'er beside_}
_Howe'er may be_ }
Or seeing thee no more to sink in sullen rest_.--[MS. D.]
 {106} [For note on the "Elgin Marbles," see _Introduction to the
_The last, the worst dull Robber, who was he?_
_Blush Scotland such a slave thy son could be_--
_England! I joy no child he was of thine:_
_Thy freeborn men revere what once was free,_
_Nor tear the Sculpture from its saddening shrine,_
_This be the wittol Picts ignoble boast_.--[MS. D.]
_To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time hath spared:_
_Cold and accursed as his native coast_.--[MS. D. erased]
 ["On the plaster wall of the Chapel of Pandrosos adjoining the
Erechtheum, these words have been very deeply cut--
'Quod non fecerunt Goti,
Hoc fecerunt Scoti'"
volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian
What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy while Athenæ mourned?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned
With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned,
From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign,
Like Attila the Hun was surely horned,[§1]
Who wrought the ravage amid works divine:
What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athenæ's tears?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[§2]
The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
Come then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,
Dark Hamilton[§1] and sullen Aberdeen,
Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
All that yet consecrates the fading scene:
Ah! better were it ye had never been,
Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight.
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen.
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[§2] hight,
Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenæ's site.
Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[§3]
That mighty limner of a bird's eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell:
Who can with him the folio's limit swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw?
Who can topographize or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,
 [The Athenians believed, or feigned to believe, that the marbles
 An additional "misery to human life!"--lying to at sunset for a
_Meantime some rude musician's restless hand_
_Ply's the brisk instrument that sailors love_.--[MS. D. erased.]
 [Campbell, in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, Canto I. stanza ii. line 6,
_Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal_.--[D.]
_And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend_.--[MS.]
or, _Far from affection's chilled or changing zeal_.--[MS.]
_Divided far by fortune, wave or steel_
_Though friendless now we once have had a friend_.--
 [In this stanza M. Darmesteter detects "l'accent Wordsworthien"
"And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost,
What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast,
And view th' enormous waste of vapour, tost
In billows, lengthening to th' horizon round,
Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd!
And hear the voice of mirth, and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound."
 [There are none to bless us, for when we are in distress the
success. Neither do they bless us, or we them.]
Hobhouse's journals.
The actual mount, "the giant height [6350 feet], rears itself in
Janissary, is careful to record that "Athos itself is said to be
 {120} [More than one commentator gravely "sets against" this
"Adde quod absumunt viris pereuntque labore,
Labitur interea res, et Babylonica fiunt:
Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans."]
 ["Were counselled or advised." The passive "were ared" seems to
_Her not unconscious though her weakly child_.
 [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto
"My joy was in the wilderness; to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain-top--
In them my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim."
"In sooth he was a strange and wayward youth.
Fond of each gentle and each dreadful scene.
In darkness and in storm he found delight;
Not less than when on ocean-wave serene
The Southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen;
Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul."
"Would run a visionary boy
When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky."
 {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a
"One was Olympias; the floating snake
Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist
Knotted," etc.
" ... The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst."
 [Byron and Hobhouse sailed for Malta in the brig-of-war _Spider_
 {125} [The meaning of this passage is not quite so obvious as it
_And roused him more from thought than he was wont_
 [By "Suli's rocks" Byron means the mountainous district in the
 [Compare Byron's _Stanzas written on passing the Ambracian
 [Nicopolis, "the city of victory," which Augustus, "the second
_Imperial wretches, doubling human woes!_
 {129} [The travellers left Prevesa on October 1, and arrived at
 {130} ["The prior of the monastery, a humble, meek-mannered man,
_But frequent is the lamb, the kid, the goat_--
_And watching pensive with his browsing flock_.--[MS. erased.]
"bouquets de chêne," sprung it may be from the offspring of the
"Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni
Dell' alte sue ruini il lido serba.
Muojono le città; muojono i regni:
Copre i fasti, e le pompe, arena ed erba;
E l'uom d'esser mortal par cue si sdegni!"
frontier village of Illyria, to Libokhovo.]
 {134} ["Yclad," used as a preterite, not a participle (compare
Coleridge's "I wis" [_Christabel_, part i. line 92]), is a
Byronism--"archaisme incorrect," says M. Darmesteter.]
"When Rhamazan's last sun was set,
And flashing from each minaret.
Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast
Of Bairam through the boundless East.")]
 {135} ["A kind of dervish or recluse ... regarded as a
 {136} ["We were disturbed during the night by the perpetual
_For boyish minions of unhallowed love_
_The shameless torch of wild desire is lit_,
_Caressed, preferred even to woman's self above_,
_Whose forms for Nature's gentler errors fit_
_All frailties mote excuse save that which they commit_.
 [In a letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Byron writes, "He
 [Anacreon sometimes bewails, but more often defies old age.
 [In the first edition the reading (see _var_. ii.) is, "But
_Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy_
_Yet what they spake it boots not to repeat;_
_Converse may little charm strange ear or eye;_
_Albeit he rested on that spacious seat,_
_Of Moslem luxury the choice retreat_.--[MS. D. erased.]
_Four days he rested on that worthy seat_.-[MS. erased.]
 {141} [The travellers left Janina on November 3, and reached
 {143} [The route from Utraikey to Gouria (November 15-18) lay
through "thick woods of oak," with occasional peeps of the open
 [With this description Mr. Tozer compares Virgil, _Æneid_, i.
"Amidst these isles a lone recess is found,
Where circling shores the subject flood resound ...
Within the waves repose in peace serene;
Black forests nod above, a silvan scene!"]
 {144} ["In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations
Κλέφτεις ποτὲ Πάργα! [Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]
Κλέφτεις ποτὲ Πάργα! [Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]
 {145} [This was not Byron's first experience of an Albanian
 {146} [Tambourgi, "drummer," a Turkish word, formed by affixing
the termination _-gi_, which signifies "one who discharges any
 [The _camese_ is the _fustanella_ or white kilt of the Toska, a
branch of the Albanian, or Shkipetar, race. Spenser has the forms
Albanians against their common foe, the Russians.]
 [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent
 Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians.
 The insignia of a Pacha.
 {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M.
 Sword-bearer.
 [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (_Don Juan_, Canto
"Earth! render back from out thy heart
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!"
The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia
 [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed
 {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e.
 {153} [These _al-fresco_ festivities must, it is presumed, have
There's nothing like young love at last."]
 [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The
"And dronkennesse is eke a foul recórd
Of any man, and namely of a lord."]
 {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the
 [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain
Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya--
"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quæ vertice nata
Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quietâ
Vultus vidit aquâ, posuitque in margine plantas,
Et se dilectâ Tritonida dixit ab undâ."]
 [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24,
 ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two
following day.]
 ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky
 [The "Ionian blast" is the western wind that brings the voyager
across the Ionian Sea.]
 {160} [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]
The 'he' refers to 'Wanderer' and anything is better than
_I I I I_ always _I_.
 [Compare Young's _Night Thoughts_ ("The Complaint," Night i.).
_Though Time not yet hath ting'd my locks with snow,_[§]
_Yet hath he reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd_.--[D.]
Despite of War and wasting fire.
Stanza i. line 4.
But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire.
Stanza i. lines 6, 7.
according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but
sacrifice. But--
"Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep."
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps.
Stanza v. line 2.
Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne.
Stanza x. line 3.
And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.
Stanza xi. line 9.
The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago.
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared.
Stanza xii. line 2.
At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already
devastation; and like the Greek _finder_ of Verres in Sicily, who
"priggism"--quarrelled with another, _Gropius_ by name (a very
good name too for his business), and muttered something about
Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains.
Stanza xii. lines 7 and 8.
Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appalled
Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?
Stanza xiv. lines i and 2.
mischievous as the Scottish peer.--See Chandler.
The netted canopy.
Stanza xviii. line 2.
But not in silence pass Calypso's isles.
Stanza xxix. line 1.
Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.
"a sea-girt isle,
Where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle."
Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!
Stanza xxxviii. lines 5 and 6.
Scanderbeg (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth
When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. Hobhouse for
squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the
ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek
For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my
Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens.
And passed the barren spot,
Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave.
Stanza xxxix. lines 1 and 2.
Actium--Lepanto--fatal Trafalgar.
Stanza xl. line 5.
And hailed the last resort of fruitless love.
Stanza xli. line 3.
Many a Roman chief and Asian King.
Stanza xlv. line 4.
Cleopatra_, act iii. sc. 6, lines 68-75), quoting Plutarch almost
"Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus,
Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king
Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;
King Malchus of Arabia; king of Pont;
The kings of Mede and Lycaonia,
With a more larger list of sceptres."
Look where the second Cæsar's trophies rose.
Stanza xlv. line 6.
Acherusia's lake.
Stanza xlvii. line 1.
To greet Albania's Chief.
Stanza xlvii. line 4.
The celebrated Ali Pacha. Of this extraordinary man there is an
Yet here and there some daring mountain-band
Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold
Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold.
Stanza xlvii. lines 7, 8, and 9.
leaders, Botzaris and Koutsonika and others, finally
Monastic Zitza! etc.
Stanza xlviii. line 1.
Here dwells the caloyer.
Stanza xlix. line 6.
The Greek monks are so called.
Nature's volcanic Amphitheatre.
Stanza li. line 2.
The Chimariot mountains appear to have been volcanic.
Behold black Acheron!
Stanza li. line 6.
Now called Kalamas.
In his white capote.
Stanza lii. line 7.
Albanese cloak.
The Sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit.
Stanza lv. line 1.
Tepalen, and therefore the sun could not set behind it" (_Childe
Ruines_, 1878, p. 8). (For the Aöus and approach to Tepeleni, see
And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by.
Stanza lv. line 2.
The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it; and,
And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof.
Stanza lxvi. line 8.
Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall.
The red wine circling fast.
Stanza lxxi. line 2.
Each Palikar his sabre from him cast.
Stanza lxxi. line 7.
While thus in concert, etc.
Stanza lxxii. line 9.
Naciarura, popuso.               be thou silent.
Ha pen derini ti hin.            door that I may enter.
Ti vin ti mar servetini.         that I may take my turban.
Ea ha pe pse dua tive.           eyes, open the gate that
I may enter.
Gi egem spirta esimiro.
Ede vete tunde tunde.            garb, walks with graceful pride.
Ti mi put e poi mi le.           eyes, give me a kiss.
what hast thou gained?
Si mi ri ni veti udo gia.        My soul is consumed with fire.
Celo more, more celo.            gently, and gently still.
"Caliriotes," for what reason I inquired in vain.
Vettimi upri vi lofsa.         have loved but to scorch myself.
Sitti eve tulati dua.        but thine eyes and eyelashes.
Qu mi sini vetti dua.          want not, but thee only.
Roba ti siarmi tildi eni.     let the portion feed the flames.
simi rin ti hapti              with a sincere soul, but
Eti mi bire a piste si gui      thou hast left me like
dendroi tiltati.               a withered tree.
cicova cilti mora              thy bosom, what have I gained?
Udorini talti hollna u ede       my hand is withdrawn, but
caimoni mora.                  retains the flame.
Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar.
Song, stanza 1, line 1.
Remember the moment when Previsa fell.
Song, stanza 8, line 1.
It was taken by storm from the French [October, 1798].
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth! etc.
Stanza lxxiii. line 1.
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train.
Stanza lxxiv. lines 1 and 2.
Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest.
Stanza lxxvii. line 4.
The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil.
Stanza lxxvii. line 6.
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow.
Stanza lxxxv. line 3.
On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave.
Stanza lxxxvi. lines 1 and 2.
When Marathon became a magic word.
Stanza lxxxix. line 7.
"Siste Viator--heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count
volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a
perceptible. But I fear Hesiod will still be found correct in his
We found at Livadia an "esprit fort" in a Greek bishop, of all
phenomenon (with the exception indeed of Thebes, the remains of
The fountain of Dirce turns a mill: at least my companion (who,
From Fort Phyle, of which large remains still exist, the plain of
"Sternitur, et _dulces_ moriens reminiscitur Argos."
_Greeks_; for Joannina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst
M. Roque, a French merchant of respectability long settled in
Eton and Sonnini have led us astray by their panegyrics and
themselves of the Ionian republic, Corfu excepted. But whoever
"I must have some talk with this learned Theban."
unpleasant controversy with M. Gail, a Parisian commentator and
him "Μετὰ τὸν Θουκυδίδην καὶ Ξενοφώντα ἄριστος Ἑλλήνων [Meta\ to
_Ecclesiastical History_, iv.).
Panagiotes Kodrikas, the translator of Fontenelle, and Kamarases,
Christodoulus, and more particularly Psalida, whom I have
conversed with in Joannina, are also in high repute among their
The Reviewer mentions a school established at Hecatonesi, and
The Reviewer mentions a plan "_we believe_" by Potemkin for the
"Ὠ Ἀθῆναι, πρώτη χώρα [Ô) A)thê~nai, prô/tê chô/ra],
Τί γαιδάρους τρέφεις τώρα [Ti/ gaida/rous tre/pheis tô/ra];"
thousand in the army of Vely Pacha) praised for their Greek, but
often laughed at for their provincial barbarisms.
information, at least from themselves. As far as my own slight
The lower orders are in as tolerable discipline as the rabble in
With regard to that ignorance of which they are so generally, and
I remember Mahmout, the grandson of Ali Pacha, asking whether my
fellow-traveller and myself were in the upper or lower House of
In all the mosques there are schools established, which are very
 [For Herr Gropius, _vide post_, note 6.]
 ["Mirandum in modum (canes venaticos diceres) ita odorabantur
omnia et pervestigabant, ut, ubi quidque esset, aliqua ratione
 [M. Fauvel was born in Burgundy, circ. 1754. In 1787 he was
 {169} In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon,
there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.[§1] To the
"Here in the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,[§3]
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep."
deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians:
"The hireling artist plants his paltry desk,
And makes degraded nature picturesque."
September, 1769, he embarked for India as purser of the _Aurora_
 {171} ["It was, however, during our stay in the place, to be
 This word, in the cant language, signifies thieving.--Fielding's
 [_A Journey through Albania during the Years 1809-10_, London,
generally Mussulmans (Finlay's _History of Greece_, i. 35).]
 {176} [The mayor of the village; in Greek, προεστός [proestos].]
 [See _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, p.64.]
 {186} [François Mercy de Lorraine, who fought against the
 [Miss Owenson (Sydney, Lady Morgan), 1783-1859, published her
 {188} [For the Disdar's extortions, see _Travels in Albania_, i.
Grow sick, and damn the climate like a lord."
 Nonsense; humbug.
 {189} [Hobhouse pronounced it to be the Fountain of Ares, the
Paraporti Spring, "which serves to swell the scanty waters of the
 [_Travels in Greece_, ch. lxvii.]
 [Cornelius de Pauw (1739-1799), Dutch historian, published, in
surrendered till the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815.]
 [The Mainotes or Mainates, who take their name from Maina, near
 ["I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban." Shakespeare,
 [Diamant or Adamantius Coray (1748-1833), scholar and
 I have in my possession an excellent lexicon "τρίγλωσσον
(Bentotes, or Bendotes) of Joanina. The book was in Hobhouse's
 In Gail's pamphlet against Coray, he talks of "throwing the
insolent Hellenist out of the windows." On this a French critic
exclaims, "Ah, my God! throw an Hellenist out of the window! what
published at Vienna, in 1794, a Greek translation of Fontenelle's
 Christodoulos, an Acarnanian, published a work, Περὶ Φιλοσόφου,
Φιλοσοφίας, Φυσιῶν, Μεταφυσικῶν, κ.τ.λ. [Peri\ Philoso/phou,
 Athanasius Psalidas published, at Vienna, in 1791, a sceptical
work entitled, _True Felicity_ (Ἀληθὴς Εὐδαιμονία [A)lêthê\s
 Hobhouse mentions a patriotic poet named Polyzois, "the new
 {199} [By Blackbey is meant Bey of Vlack, i.e. Wallachia. (See a
 [Constantine Rhigas (born 1753), the author of the original of
 {200} [The Hecatonnesi are a cluster of islands in the Gulf of
 {201} In a former number of the _Edinburgh Review_, 1808, it is
"Cædimus, inque vicem præbemus crura sagittis."
_Alexiad_, a history of her father's reign.]
 [The Caimacam was the deputy or lieutenant of the grand Vizier.]
 [Scott published "_Sir Tristrem, a Metrical Romance of the
 [Captain Lismahago, a paradoxical and pedantic Scotchman, the
For Aberdeen and Hamilton, see _English Bards, etc._, line 509:
For Gell, see _English Bards, etc._, line 1034, note 1: _Poetical
The Rev. Robert Walpole (1781-1856), in addition to his share in
 {207} [The "Nizam Gedidd," or new ordinance, which aimed at
"Afin que cette application vous forcât à penser à autre chose.
Il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps."--_Lettres
representatives (see, for a report of the case in the _Morning
fragment, _The Tempest_," was issued in 1817. It is a dull and,
"There was a sternness in his eye,
Which chilled the soul--one knew not why--
But when returning vigour came,
And kindled the dark glare to flame,
So fierce it flashed, one well might swear,
A thousand souls were centred there."
"This puissant spirit
Yet shall reascend,
Self-raised, and repossess its native seat!"
Scott, in the "tenderest strain" of Virgilian melody--
"I decus, i nostrum, melioribus utere fatis!"
"This copy is to be printed from--subject to comparison with the
notes in this copy are more complete and extended than in the
former--and there is also _one stanza more_ inserted and added to
Diodati, near y^e Lake of Geneva."
Claire's Transcription (C.) occupies the first 119 pages of a
Is thy face like thy mothers, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,--not as now we part,
But with a hope.--
Awaking with a start,
The waters heave around me; and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.[gh]
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,[gi]
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.
In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years
Plod the last sands of life,--where not a flower appears.
Since my young days of passion--joy, or pain--
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string--
And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing[gj]:
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness--so it fling
Forgetfulness around me--it shall seem
To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.
He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him--nor below
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance--he can tell
Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul's haunted cell.[gk]
'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense that we endow[gl]
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now--
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow--
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth.
Yet must I think less wildly:--I _have_ thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:[gm]
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poisoned. 'Tis too late:
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what Time can not abate,[gn]
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.
Something too much of this:--but now 'tis past,
And the spell closes with its silent seal--
Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last;
He of the breast which fain no more would feel,[go]
Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;
Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found
The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again,
And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
And deemed its spring perpetual--but in vain!
Still round him clung invisibly a chain
Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,
And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain,
Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
Entering with every step he took through many a scene.
Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed[gp]
Again in fancied safety with his kind,
And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed
And sheathed with an invulnerable mind,
That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind;
And he, as one, might 'midst the many stand
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
Fit speculation--such as in strange land
He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand.[gq]
But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek[gr]
To wear it? who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of Beauty's cheek,
Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?[gs]
Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?
Harold, once more within the vortex, rolled
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
Yet with a nobler aim than in his Youth's fond prime.[gt]
But soon he knew himself the most unfit[gu]
Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To Spirits against whom his own rebelled,
Proud though in desolation--which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;[gv]
Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake.
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,[gw]
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.[gx]
But in Man's dwellings he became a thing[gy]
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage--so the heat
Of his impeded Soul would through his bosom eat.
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With nought of Hope left--but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though 'twere wild,--as on the plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,--
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.
Stop!--for thy tread is on an Empire's dust!
An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?
Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
None; but _the moral's truth_ tells simpler so.--[gz]
As the ground was before, thus let it be;--[ha]
How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
And is this all the world has gained by thee,
Thou first and last of Fields! king-making Victory?
And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo![hb]
How in an hour the Power which gave annuls
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!--
In "pride of place" here last the Eagle flew,[1.B.]
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,[hc]
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through;
Ambition's life and labours all were vain--
He wears the shattered links of the World's broken chain.[hd]
Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit
And foam in fetters;--but is Earth more free?
Did nations combat to make _One_ submit?
Or league to teach all Kings true Sovereignty?[he]
What! shall reviving Thraldom again be
The patched-up Idol of enlightened days?
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we
Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
And servile knees to Thrones? No! _prove_ before ye praise!
If not, o'er one fallen Despot boast no more!
In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears
For Europe's flowers long rooted up before
The trampler of her vineyards; in vain, years
Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,
Have all been borne, and broken by the accord
Of roused-up millions: all that most endears
Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a Sword,
Such as Harmodius[2.B.] drew on Athens' tyrant Lord.
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's Capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry--and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;[hf]
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;[3.B.]
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it?--No--'twas but the Wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet--
But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer--clearer--deadlier than before![hg]
Arm! Arm! it is--it is--the cannon's opening roar![hh]
Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated Chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well[hi]
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.
Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro--
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,[hj]
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness--
And there were sudden partings, such as press[hk]
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise![hl]
And there was mounting in hot haste--the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war--
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the Morning Star;
Or whispering, with white lips--"The foe! They come! they come!"
And wild and high the "Cameron's Gathering" rose!
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes;--
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instils
The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan's--Donald's[4.B.] fame rings in each clansman's ears!
And Ardennes[5.B.] waves above them her green leaves,[hn]
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass--
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,--alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
Of living Valour, rolling on the foe
And burning with high Hope, shall moulder cold and low.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life;--
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
The Midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
The Morn the marshalling in arms,--the Day
Battle's magnificently-stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,--friend,--foe,--in one red burial blent!
Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And partly that I did his Sire some wrong,
And partly that bright names will hallow song;[ho]
And his was of the bravest, and when showered
The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
Even where the thickest of War's tempest lowered,
They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.[6.B.]
I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake
The fever of vain longing, and the name
So honoured but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.
They mourn, but smile at length--and, smiling, mourn:
The tree will wither long before it fall;
The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;[hp]
The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
In massy hoariness; the ruined wall
Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
The bars survive the captive they enthral;
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;[hq]
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
Even as a broken Mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies--and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same--and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise; and still, and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
There is a very life in our despair,
Vitality of poison,--a quick root
Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were
As nothing did we die; but Life will suit
Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,[7.B.]
All ashes to the taste: Did man compute
Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er
Such hours 'gainst years of life,--say, would he name threescore?
The Psalmist numbered out the years of man:
They are enough; and if thy tale be _true_,[hr]
Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span,
More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo!
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children's lips shall echo them, and say--
"Here, where the sword united nations drew,[hs]
Our countrymen were warring on that day!"
And this is much--and all--which will not pass away.
There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose Spirit, antithetically mixed,
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed;[ht]
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For Daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st[hu]
Even now to re-assume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
Conqueror and Captive of the Earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name[hv]
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who wooed thee once, thy Vassal, and became[hw]
The flatterer of thy fierceness--till thou wert
A God unto thyself; nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.
Oh, more or less than man--in high or low--
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
An Empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of War,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest Star.
Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it Wisdom, Coldness, or deep Pride,[hx]
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled[hy]
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;--
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.
Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them[hz]
Ambition steeled thee on too far to show
That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
_Their_ admiration thy best weapon shone;
The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy Purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men--
For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.[8.B.]
But Quiet to quick bosoms is a Hell,
And _there_ hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the Soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire[ia]
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,[ib]
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach Mankind the lust to shine or rule:
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast[ic]
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.[id]
Though high _above_ the Sun of Glory glow,
And far _beneath_ the Earth and Ocean spread,
_Round_ him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,[ie]
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.
Away with these! true Wisdom's world will be[if]
Within its own creation, or in thine,
Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,[ig]
Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
There Harold gazes on a work divine,
A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.[ih]
And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
All tenantless, save to the crannying Wind,
Or holding dark communion with the Cloud
There was a day when they were young and proud;
Banners on high, and battles passed below;
But they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
And those which waved are shredless dust ere now,[ii]
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.
Beneath these battlements, within those walls,
Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state
Each robber chief upheld his arméd halls,
Doing his evil will, nor less elate
Than mightier heroes of a longer date.
What want these outlaws conquerors should have[ij][9.B.]
But History's purchased page to call them great?
A wider space--an ornamented grave?
In their baronial feuds and single fields,
What deeds of prowess unrecorded died!
And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields,
With emblems well devised by amorous pride,
Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide;
But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on
Keen contest and destruction near allied,
And many a tower for some fair mischief won,
Saw the discoloured Rhine beneath its ruin run.
But Thou, exulting and abounding river!
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow
Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever
Could man but leave thy bright creation so,
Nor its fair promise from the surface mow[il]
With the sharp scythe of conflict, then to see
Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know
Earth paved like Heaven--and to seem such to me,[im]
Even now what wants thy stream?--that it should Lethe be.
A thousand battles have assailed thy banks,
But these and half their fame have passed away,
And Slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks:
Their very graves are gone, and what are they?
Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday,
And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
Glassed, with its dancing light, the sunny ray;[in]
But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.
Thus Harold inly said, and passed along,
Yet not insensible to all which here
Awoke the jocund birds to early song
In glens which might have made even exile dear:
Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place
Of feelings fierier far but less severe--
Joy was not always absent from his face,
But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace.
Nor was all Love shut from him, though his days
Of Passion had consumed themselves to dust.
It is in vain that we would coldly gaze
On such as smile upon us; the heart must
Leap kindly back to kindness, though Disgust[io]
Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt,
For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet Trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.
And he had learned to love,--I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood,
The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.
And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,[ip]
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the church links withal; and--though unwed,
_That_ love was pure--and, far above disguise,[iq]
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour![ir]
The castled Crag of Drachenfels[10.B.]
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert _thou_ with me.
And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this Paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray;
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay,
Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine,--
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!
I send the lilies given to me--
Though long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must withered be,
But yet reject them not as such;
For I have cherished them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine!
The river nobly foams and flows--
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To Nature and to me so dear--
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!
By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
There is a small and simple Pyramid,
Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
Beneath its base are Heroes' ashes hid--
Our enemy's--but let not that forbid
Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb[is]
Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid,
Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.
Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,--
His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes;
And fitly may the stranger lingering here
Pray for his gallant Spirit's bright repose;--
For he was Freedom's Champion, one of those,
The few in number, who had not o'erstept
The charter to chastise which she bestows
On such as wield her weapons; he had kept
The whiteness of his soul--and thus men o'er him wept.[11.B.]
Here Ehrenbreitstein,[12.B.] with her shattered wall
Black with the miner's blast, upon her height
Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball
Rebounding idly on her strength did light:--
A Tower of Victory! from whence the flight
Of baffled foes was watched along the plain:
But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain--
On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain.
Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted
The stranger fain would linger on his way!
Thine is a scene alike where souls united
Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey[it]
On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,[iu]
Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.
Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is coloured by thy every hue;
And if reluctantly the eyes resign
Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
More mighty spots may rise--more glaring shine,[iv]
But none unite in one attaching maze
The brilliant, fair, and soft,--the glories of old days,
The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,--
The wild rocks shaped, as they had turrets been,
In mockery of man's art; and these withal
A race of faces happy as the scene,
Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall.
But these recede. Above me are the Alps,
The Palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,[iw]
And throned Eternity in icy halls
Of cold Sublimity, where forms and falls
The Avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,
There is a spot should not be passed in vain,--
Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man
May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,
Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain;
Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host,
A bony heap, through ages to remain,
Themselves their monument;--the Stygian coast
Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each
While Waterloo with Cannæ's carnage vies,
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
They were true Glory's stainless victories,
Won by the unambitious heart and hand
Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band,
All unbought champions in no princely cause
Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land[iy]
Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws
Making Kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.
By a lone wall a lonelier column rears
A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days;
'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,
And looks as with the wild-bewildered gaze
Of one to stone converted by amaze,
Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands
Making a marvel that it not decays,
When the coeval pride of human hands,
Levelled Aventicum,[14.B.] hath strewed her subject lands.
And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!--
Julia--the daughter--the devoted--gave
Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim
Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.
Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
The life she lived in--but the Judge was just--
And then she died on him she could not save.[iz]
Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,[ja]
And held within their urn one mind--one heart--one dust.[15.B.]
But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the Earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay,
The enslavers and the enslaved--their death and birth;
The high, the mountain-majesty of Worth
Should be--and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality, look forth
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,[16.B.]
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:[jb]
There is too much of Man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.
To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[jc]
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.[jd]
There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own Soul turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of Night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
To those that walk in darkness: on the sea
The boldest steer but where their ports invite--
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity[je]
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
Is it not better, then, to be alone,
And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,[17.B.]
Or the pure bosom of its nursing Lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;--[jf]
Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see[jg]
Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be[jh]
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky--the peak--the heaving plain[ji]
Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle--and not in vain.
And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:--
I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,
Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer, but remount at last[jj]
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the Blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.[jk]
And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
From what it hates in this degraded form,[jl]
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,--
When Elements to Elements conform,
And dust is as it should be, shall I not
Feel all I see less dazzling but more warm?
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?[jm]
Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part[jn]
Of me and of my Soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turned below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?[jo]
But this is not my theme; and I return[jp]
To that which is immediate, and require
Those who find contemplation in the urn,
To look on One, whose dust was once all fire,--
A native of the land where I respire
The clear air for a while--a passing guest,
Where he became a being,--whose desire
Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest,
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.
Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,[jq]
The apostle of Affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over Passion, and from Woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew
The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
How to make Madness beautiful, and cast
O'er erring deeds and thoughts, a heavenly hue[jr]
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.
His love was Passion's essence--as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.[js]
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal Beauty, which became
In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.
_This_ breathed itself to life in Julie, _this_
Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss[18.B.]
Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,
From hers, who but with friendship his would meet;
But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast
Flashed the thrilled Spirit's love-devouring heat;[jt]
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.
His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose,
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,[ju]
'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was phrensied, wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which Skill could never find;[jv]
But he was phrensied by disease or woe,
To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.
For then he was inspired, and from him came,
As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore,
Those oracles which set the world in flame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more:
Did he not this for France? which lay before
Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?
Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore,
Till by the voice of him and his compeers,
Roused up to too much wrath which follows o'ergrown fears?
They made themselves a fearful monument!
The wreck of old opinions--things which grew,[jw]
Breathed from the birth of Time: the veil they rent,
And what behind it lay, all earth shall view.[jx]
But good with ill they also overthrew,
Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild
Upon the same foundation, and renew
Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled,
As heretofore, because Ambition was self-willed.
But this will not endure, nor be endured!
Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.
They might have used it better, but, allured
By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt
On one another; Pity ceased to melt
With her once natural charities. But they,
Who in Oppression's darkness caved had dwelt,
They were not eagles, nourished with the day;
What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
It came--it cometh--and will come,--the power
To punish or forgive--in _one_ we shall be slower.[jy]
Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn Ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.
He is an evening reveller, who makes[jz]
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;[ka]
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy--for the Starlight dews
All silently their tears of Love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.[kb]
Ye Stars! which are the poetry of Heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,--'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A Beauty and a Mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That Fortune,--Fame,--Power,--Life, have named themselves a Star.
All Heaven and Earth are still--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:--
All Heaven and Earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentered in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of Being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt[kc]
In solitude, where we are _least_ alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of Music, which makes known[kd]
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty;--'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.
Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places, and the peak
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains,[19.B.] --and thus take
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak
Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings--Goth or Greek--
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air--
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh Night,[20.B.]
And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in Woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the Night:--Most glorious Night![ke]
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,--
A portion of the tempest and of thee![kf]
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,[kg]
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black,--and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young Earthquake's birth.[kh]
Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted[ki]
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted:
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage
Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:--
Itself expired, but leaving them an age
Of years all winters,--war within themselves to wage:[kj]
Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand:
For here, not one, but many, make their play,
And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around: of all the band,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings,--as if he did understand,
That in such gaps as Desolation worked,
There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.
With night, and clouds, and thunder--and a Soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices, is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest.
But where of ye, O Tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?
Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,--could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul--heart--mind--passions--feelings--strong or weak--
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel--and yet breathe--into _one_ word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.
The Morn is up again, the dewy Morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom--
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,--
And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence: and thus I,
Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room
And food for meditation, nor pass by
Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.
Clarens! sweet Clarens birthplace of deep Love!
Thine air is the young breath of passionate Thought;
Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above,[kk]
The very Glaciers have his colours caught,
And Sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought[21.B.]
By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks,[kl]
The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought
In them a refuge from the worldly shocks,
Which stir and sting the Soul with Hope that woos, then mocks.
Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,--[km]
Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne
To which the steps are mountains; where the God
Is a pervading Life and Light,--so shown[kn]
Not on those summits solely, nor alone
In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower
His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown,
His soft and summer breath, whose tender power[ko]
Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.
All things are here of _Him_; from the black pines,
Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar
Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines
Which slope his green path downward to the shore,
Where the bowed Waters meet him, and adore,
Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the Wood,
The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar,
But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood,[kp]
Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude.
A populous solitude of bees and birds,
And fairy-formed and many-coloured things,
Who worship him with notes more sweet than words,[kq]
And innocently open their glad wings,
Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs,
And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend
Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings
The swiftest thought of Beauty, here extend
Mingling--and made by Love--unto one mighty end.
He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore,
And make his heart a spirit; he who knows
That tender mystery, will love the more;
For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes,
And the world's waste, have driven him far from those,[kr]
For 'tis his nature to advance or die;
He stands not still, but or decays, or grows
Into a boundless blessing, which may vie
With the immortal lights, in its eternity!
'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot,
Peopling it with affections; but he found
It was the scene which Passion must allot
To the Mind's purified beings; 'twas the ground
Where early Love his Psyche's zone unbound,
And hallowed it with loveliness: 'tis lone,
And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound,
And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone
Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne.
Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes
Of Names which unto you bequeathed a name;[22.B.]
Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads,
A path to perpetuity of Fame:
They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile
Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
Of Heaven again assailed--if Heaven, the while,
On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.
The one was fire and fickleness, a child
Most mutable in wishes, but in mind
A wit as various,--gay, grave, sage, or wild,--
Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;[ks]
He multiplied himself among mankind,
The Proteus of their talents: But his own
Breathed most in ridicule,--which, as the wind,
Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,--
Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,[kt]
And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
In meditation dwelt--with learning wrought,
And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
The lord of irony,--that master-spell,
Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear[ku]
And doomed him to the zealot's ready Hell,
Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.
Yet, peace be with their ashes,--for by them,
If merited, the penalty is paid;
It is not ours to judge,--far less condemn;
The hour must come when such things shall be made
Known unto all,--or hope and dread allayed
By slumber, on one pillow, in the dust,[kv]
Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decayed;
And when it shall revive, as is our trust,
'Twill be to be forgiven--or suffer what is just.
But let me quit Man's works, again to read
His Maker's, spread around me, and suspend
This page, which from my reveries I feed,
Until it seems prolonging without end.
The clouds above me to the white Alps tend,
And I must pierce them, and survey whate'er
May be permitted, as my steps I bend
To their most great and growing region, where
The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air.
Italia too! Italia! looking on thee,
Full flashes on the Soul the light of ages,
Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee,
To the last halo of the Chiefs and Sages
Who glorify thy consecrated pages;
Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still,
The fount at which the panting Mind assuages
Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,
Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill.
Thus far have I proceeded in a theme
Renewed with no kind auspices:--to feel
We are not what we have been, and to deem
We are not what we should be,--and to steel
The heart against itself; and to conceal,
With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,--
Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,--
Which is the tyrant Spirit of our thought,
Is a stern task of soul:--No matter,--it is taught.
And for these words, thus woven into song,
It may be that they are a harmless wile,--[kw]
The colouring of the scenes which fleet along,[kx]
Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile
My breast, or that of others, for a while.
Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not[ky]
So young as to regard men's frown or smile,
As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;--
I stood and stand alone,--remembered or forgot.
I have not loved the World, nor the World me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coined my cheek to smiles,--nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo: in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such--I stood
Among them, but not of them--in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.[23.B.]
I have not loved the World, nor the World me,--
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,--hopes which will not deceive,
And Virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve--[kz][24.B.]
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,--
That Goodness is no name--and Happiness no dream.
My daughter! with thy name this song begun!
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end!--
I see thee not--I hear thee not--but none
Can be so wrapt in thee; Thou art the Friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend:
Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart,--when mine is cold,--
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
To aid thy mind's developement,--to watch
Thy dawn of little joys,--to sit and see
Almost thy very growth,--to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee!
To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me--
Yet this was in my nature:--as it is,
I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me: though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me--though to drain
_My_ blood from out thy being were an aim,
And an attainment,--all would be in vain,--
Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain.
The child of Love! though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire
These were the elements,--and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee,--but thy fire
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher!
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As--with a sigh--I deem thou might'st have been to me![la]
 {209} [D'Alembert (Jean-le-Rond, philosopher, mathematician, and
 {215} ["If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon
"Those who view mathematical science not merely as a vast body of
It would seem, however, that she "wore her learning lightly as a
 Compare _Henry V._, act iii. sc. 1, line 1--"Once more unto the
breach, dear friends, once more."
 {217} [Compare _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (now attributed to
"Oh, never
Shall we two exercise like twins of Honour
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses
Like proud seas under us."
 ["The metaphor is derived from a torrent-bed, which, when dried
"Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epoch."]
"Out of these create he can
Forms more real than living man--
"The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."
_A brighter being that we thus endow_
"Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment."]
 [Of himself as distinct from Harold he will say no more. On the
_He of the breast that strove no more to feel,_
_Who can behold the flower at noon, nor seek_
_To pluck it? who can stedfastly behold_.--[MS.]
 [The Temple of Fame is on the summit of a mountain; "Clouds
"From my youth upwards
My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."
_Where there were mountains there for him were friends_.
_Where there was Ocean--there he was at home_.--[MS.]
_Like the Chaldean he could gaze on stars_.--[MS.]
_But in Man's dwelling--Harold was a thing_
_Restless and worn, and cold and wearisome_.--[MS.]
 [The mound with the Belgian lion was erected by William I. of
 [Stanzas xvii., xviii., were written after a visit to Waterloo.
"Here his last flight the haughty Eagle flew,
Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain,
Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through ..."
"'Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain.'"
_Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew_.--[MS.]
_Then bit with bloody beak the rent plain_.--[MS. erased.]
"I know
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time."
"Be just, be grateful; nor, the oppressor's creed
Reviving heavier chastisement deserve
Than ever forced unpitied hearts to bleed."
"Peace hath she won ... with her victorious hand
Hath won thro' rightful war auspicious peace;
Nor this alone, but that in every land
The withering rule of violence may cease.
Was ever War with such blest victory crowned!
Did ever Victory with such fruits abound!"]
_The lamps shone on lovely dames and gallant men_.--[MS.]
_Arm! arm, and out! it is the opening cannon's roar_.--[MS.]
 [Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick (1771-1815), brother to
_His heart replying knew that sound too well_.--[MS.]
_And the hoped vengeance for a Sire so dear_
_As him who died on Jena--whom so well_
_His filial heart had mourned through many a year_
_Roused him to valiant fury nought could quell_.--[MS. erased.]
"Here from the heaps who strewed the fatal plain
Was Howard's corse by faithful hands conveyed;
And not to be confounded with the slain,
Here in a grave apart with reverence laid,
Till hence his honoured relics o'er the seas
Were borne to England, where they rest in peace."]
"Yet Nature everywhere resumed her course;
Low pansies to the sun their purple gave,
And the soft poppy blossomed on the grave."
 [So, too, Coleridge. "Have you never seen a stick broken in the
Embalming all the sorrows of the heart,
Sits at the altar which she raised to woe,
And finds the scene whence tears eternal flow."
"And as a looking-glass, from the aspect,
Whilst it is whole doth but one face reflect,
But being crack'd or broken, there are shewn
Many half-faces, which at first were one.
 [The "tale" or reckoning of the Psalmist, the span of threescore
_Here where the sword united Europe drew_
_I had a kinsman warring on that day_.--[MS.]
_For thou hast risen as fallen--even now thou seek'st_
 [Byron seems to have been unable to make up his mind about
As a schoolboy at Harrow, Byron fought for the preservation of
 [The stanza was written while Napoleon was still under the
_Was ne'er more rife within men's mouths than now_.--[MS.]
_To watch thee shrinking calmly hadst thou smiled._--[MS.]
_With a sedate tho' not unfeeling eye._--[MS. erased.]
_Greater than in thy fortunes; for in them_
_Ambition lured thee on too far to show_
_Which stir the blood too boiling in its springs_.--[MS. erased.]
 [For the archaic use of "battles" for "battalions," compare
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 4, line 4; and Scott's _Lord of the Isles_,
"In battles four beneath their eye,
The forces of King Robert lie."]
_What want these outlaws that a king should have_
 [The most usual device is a bleeding heart.]
_Nor mar it frequent with an impious show_
 {246} [Compare Moore's lines, _The Meeting of the Waters_--
"There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the wide waters meet."]
_Earth's dreams of Heaven--and such to seem to me_
illustration of Canto II. stanza liii.]
_Glassed with its wonted light, the sunny ray;_
_But o'er the mind's marred thoughts--though but a dream_.--[MS.]
 [Two lyrics, entitled _Stanzas to Augusta_, and the _Epistle to
 [It has been supposed that there is a reference in this passage,
_Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour_.--[MS.]
 [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crushing the
 {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_--
"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken'd air."]
_More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring shine_
_But none unite in one enchanted gaze_
_The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.]
_Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_
_The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.]
"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!"
The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1--
"Around his waist are forests braced,
The Avalanche in his hand;
But ere its fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command."]
 {255} [The inscription on the ossuary of the Burgundian troops
Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiæ ducis exercitus, Moratum
obsidens, ab Helvetiis cæsus, hoc sui monumentum reliquit."]
"Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ululasse per agros
Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt."
 [Byron's point is that at Morat 15,000 men were slain in a
 ["Haunted and hunted by the British tourist and gossip-monger,
"Nor do words,
Which practised talent readily affords,
Prove that his hand has touched responsive chords
Nor has his gentle beauty power to move
With genuine rapture and with fervent love
The soul of Genius, if he dare to take
Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;
Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
Of all the truly great and all the innocent.
But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine,
Through good and evil there, in just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy."
"And by that vision splendid
Was on his way attended."]
 [The metaphor is derived from a hot spring which appears to boil
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues! and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries."]
 [Shelley seems to have taken Byron at his word, and in the
_Adonais_ (xxx. 3, _seq._) introduces him in the disguise of--
"The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument."
 {261} [The name "Tigris" is derived from the Persian _tîr_
(Sanscrit _Tigra_), "an arrow." If Byron ever consulted Hofmann's
authority for his natural and beautiful simile.]
 [Compare _Tintern Abbey_. In this line, both language and
sentiment are undoubtedly Wordsworth's--
"The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours, and their forms, were then to me
An appetite, a _feeling_, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm."
"To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
To chasten and subdue."
_A link reluctant in a living chain_
"Et udam
Spernit humum fugiente pennâ."]
"Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears
Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream,"
 [Compare Coleridge's _Dejection. An Ode_, iv. 4-9--
"And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd;
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth."]
_O'er sinful deeds and thoughts the heavenly hue_
_With words like sunbeams dazzling as they passed_
 [As, for instance, with Madame de Warens, in 1738; with Madame
 ["He was possessed, as holier natures than his have been, by an
l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes_) in 1750 and 1753; _Émile, ou, de
l'Education_, and _Du Contrat Social_ in 1762.]
 ["What Rousseau's Discourse [_Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inégalité_,
----_thoughts which grew_
 [The substitution of "one" for "both" (see _var._ i.) affords
 [Compare Anacreon (Εἰς τέττιγα [Ei)s te/ttiga]), _Carm._ xliii.
Τὸ δὲ γῆρας οὒ σε τείρει [To\ de\ gê~ras ou)\ se tei/rei.].]
"Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The _star_ which rises o'er her steep," etc.?
And the allusion to Napoleon's "star," stanza xxxviii. line 9--
"Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest _Star_."
"Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the _star_ of my fate has declined."
"The soul of Adonais, like a _star_."]
 {271} [Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a Beauteous," etc.--
"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration."]
 [As the cestus of Venus endowed the wearer with magical
 [Compare Herodotus, i. 131, Οἱ δὲ νομίζουσι Διἰ μὲν, ἐπὶ τὰ
"The Persian--zealous to reject
Altar and image and the inclusive walls
And roofs and temples built by human hands--
To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops
With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow,
Presented sacrifice to moon and stars."
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."]
_Hills which look like brethren with twin heights_
The latter half of the quotation runs thus--
"But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining--
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once had been."]
 [There are numerous instances of the use of "knoll" as an
alternative form of the verb "to knell;" but Byron seems, in this
Rousseau, Nature is a means to an end, a conduct of refined and
heightened fancy; whereas, to Byron, "her reward was with her," a
_Clarens--sweet Clarens--thou art Love's abode_--
_Undying Love's--who here hath made a throne_.--[MS.]
_And girded it with Spirit which is shown_
_From the steep summit to the rushing Rhone_.--[MS. erased.]
----_whose searching power_
_Surpasses the strong storm in its most desolate hour_.--[MS.]
"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit,
Quique amavit eras amet."
("Let those love now, who never loved before;
Let those who always loved, now love the more.")
Parnell's _Vigil of Venus: British Poets_, 1794, vii. 7.]
 [Compare _Confessions of J. J. Rousseau_, lib. iv., _passim._]
 {281} [In his appreciation of Voltaire, Byron, no doubt, had in
_Coping with all and leaving all behind_
_Within himself existed all mankind_--
_And laughing at their faults betrayed his own_
_His own was ridicule which as the Wind_.--[MS.]
 {282} [In his youth Voltaire was imprisoned for a year (1717-18)
The first half of the line may be illustrated by his quarrel with
----_concentering thought_
 [The first three volumes of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the
 [There is no reason to suppose that this is to be taken
 {284} [The poet would follow in the wake of the clouds. He must
 [The Roman Empire engulfed and comprehended the great empires of
_Fame is the dream of boyhood--I am not_
_So young as to regard the frown or smile_
"For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
Regard me as I do not flatter."]
"My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine."]
 {289} [The Countess Guiccioli is responsible for the statement
 [For a biographical notice of Ada Lady Lovelace, including
In "pride of place" here last the Eagle flew.
Stanza xviii. line 5.
"An eagle towering in his pride of place
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed."
Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant Lord.
Stanza xx. line 9.
"With myrtle my sword will I wreathe," etc.
"Hence," says Mr. Tozer, "'the sword in myrtles drest' (Keble's
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
Stanza xxi. line 8.
And Evan's--Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!
Stanza xxvi. line 9.
"Where through battle's rout and reel,
Storm of shot and hedge of steel,
Led the grandson of Lochiel,
And Morven long shall tell,
And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe,
How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,
Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra
Of conquest as he fell."
"And Cameron, in the shock of steel.
Die like the offspring of Lochiel."]
And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves.
Stanza xxvii. line 1.
The wood of Soignies is supposed to be a remnant of the forest of
I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.
Stanza xxx. line 9.
comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain,
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore.
Stanza xxxiv. line 6.
For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.
Stanza xli. line 9.
What want these outlaws conquerors should have?
Stanza xlviii. line 6.
"What wants that knave that a king should have?" was King James's
accoutrements. See the Ballad.
"There hang nine targats at Johnie's hat,
And ilk ane worth three hundred pound--
'What wants that knave a king suld have
But the sword of honour and the crown'?"
The castled Crag of Drachenfels.
Song, stanza 1, line 1.
The whiteness of his soul--and thus men o'er him wept.
Stanza lvii. line 9.
suspicions of poison.
to its Commander-in-Chief
"'Hic cineres, ubique nomen.'
"Ici repose Marceau, né à Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, soldat à seize
ans, général à vingtdeux ans. Il mourut en combattant pour sa
cendres."
Here Ehrenbreitstein with her shattered wall.
Stanza lviii. line 1.
Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.
Stanza lxiii. line 9.
Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.
Stanza lxv. line 9.
And held within their urn one mind--one heart--one dust.
Stanza lxvi. line 9.
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow.
Stanza lxvii. line 8.
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone.
Stanza lxxi. line 3.
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss.
Stanza lxxix. line 3.
Nevertheless, his mother was right. There was a resemblance, and
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take.
Stanza xci. line 3.
It is to be recollected, that the most beautiful and impressive
"Je ne trouve pas de plus digne hommage à la Divinité que cette
extase à l'Auteur des merveilles qui les frappent? ... Dans ma
chambre je prie plus rarement et plus sèchement; mais à l'aspect
d'un beau paysage je me sens ému sans pourvoir dire de quoi."
Compare, too, Coleridge's lines "To Nature"--
"So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields,
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only, God! and Thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice."
The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh Night!
Stanza xcii. line 1.
And Sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought.
Stanza xcix. line 5.
Of Names which unto you bequeathed a name.
Stanza cv. line 2.
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
Stanza cxiii. line 9.
For Banquo's issue have I _filed_ my mind."
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve.
Stanza cxiv. line 7.
 [The Clef, is now a café on the Grande Place, and still
Rousseau with St. Preux, and mixing the man with the book."]
 {304} [Claire, afterwards Madame Orbe, is Julie's cousin and
 {305} [Byron mentions the "squall off Meillerie" in a letter to
Murray, dated Ouchy, near Lausanne, June 27, 1816. Compare, too,
Quel monte che divide, e quel che serra
Italia, e un mare e l'altro che la bagna."
Henceforth the works of man absorb his attention. Pompey's "dread
clxxviii.) were forwarded to Murray in the early spring of 1818.
Of these additions the most notable are four stanzas on Venice
Charlotte" (stanzas clxvii.-clxxii.); "Nemi" (stanzas clxxiii.,
clxxiv.); "The Desert and one fair Spirit" (stanzas clxxvii.,
archæology and art. Byron testifies (September 14, 1817) that his
The Fourth Canto was published on Tuesday, April 28, 1818. It was
Stanza i. "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,"--
Stanza xv. "Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file,"--
Stanza liii. "I leave to learnéd fingers, and wise hands,"--
Stanza lxi.-lxxix. "There be more things to greet the heart and
eyes,"--"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,"--
Stanza lxxxiv. "The dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine,"--
Stanza xcix.-cviii. "There is a stern round tower of other
days,"--"There is the moral of all human tales,"--
Stanza cx. "Tully was not so eloquent as thou,"--
Stanza cxi. "Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,"--
Stanza cxxxviii.-cli. "The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread
Power!"--"The starry fable of the Milky Way,"--
Stanza cliii.-clxvi. "But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous
Dome,"--"And send us prying into the abyss,"--
Stanza clxxv. "But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,"--
Stanza clxxvi. "Upon the blue Symplegades: long years,"--
Stanza clxxix. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!"--
Stanza clxxx. "His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields,"--
Stanza xl. "Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,"--
Stanza ii. "She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean,"--
Stanza xii.-xiv. "The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns,"
Stanza xvi. "When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,"--
Stanza xvii. "Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,"--
Stanza xlvii. "Yet, Italy! through every other land,"--
Stanza li. "Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?"--
Stanza lii. "Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,"--
Stanza lxxxv. "Sylla was first of victors; but our own,"--
Stanza cxii.-cxiv. "Where is the rock of Triumph, the high
place,"--"Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,"--
Stanza cxxxv.-cxxxvii. "That curse shall be Forgiveness,--Have I
not,"--"But I have lived, and have not lived in vain,"--
Stanza clii. "Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,"--
Stanza clxvii.-clxxii. "Hark! forth from the abyss a voice
proceeds,"--(On the death of the Princess Charlotte, November 6,
Stanza clxxiii. "Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills,"--
Stanza clxxiv. "And near, Albano's scarce divided waves,"--
Stanza clxxxi. "The armaments which thunderstrike the walls,"--
Stanza xli. "The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,"--
Stanza xcvii. "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,"--
Stanza cxx. "Alas! our young affections run to waste,"--
Stanza cxxi. "Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art,"--
Stanza cxxii. "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,"--
Stanza cxxiv. "We wither from our youth, we gasp away,"--
(Seven stanzas.)
My dear Hobhouse,
existence, but which cannot poison my future while I retain the
these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.
dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still--Canova,
highest--Europe--the World--has but one Canova.
"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."
Your obliged
And affectionate friend,
I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;"[1.H.]
A Palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the Enchanter's wand:
A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles![lb]
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A Ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was;--her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East[lc]
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.[ld]
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,[2.H.]
And silent rows the songless Gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And Music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here.
States fall--Arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,[le]
The Revel of the earth--the Masque of Italy!
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
And Pierre, can not be swept or worn away--
The keystones of the Arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
The Beings of the Mind are not of clay:
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life in this our state[lf]
Of mortal bondage, by these Spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
Such is the refuge of our youth and age--
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this wan feeling peoples many a page--[lg]
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:[lh]
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues[li]
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:
I saw or dreamed of such,--but let them go,--
They came like Truth--and disappeared like dreams;
And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so:
I could replace them if I would; still teems
My mind with many a form which aptly seems
Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
Let these too go--for waking Reason deems
Such over-weening phantasies unsound,
And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with--aye, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,--
Not without cause; and should I leave behind[lj]
The inviolate Island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,[lk]
Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My Spirit shall resume it--if we may[ll]
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,--
If my Fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honoured by the Nations--let it be--
And light the Laurels on a loftier head!
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me--
"Sparta hath many a worthier son than he."
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need--
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her Lord,[lm]
And annual marriage now no more renewed--
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood[3.H.]
Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,[ln]
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a Queen with an unequalled dower.
The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--[4.H.]
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; Nations melt
From Power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like Lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt;
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo![5.H.]
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.[lo]
Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria's menace come to pass?[6.H.]
Are they not bridled?--Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, unto whence she rose![lp]
Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes,[lq]
From whom Submission wrings an infamous repose.
In youth She was all glory,--a new Tyre,--
Her very by-word sprung from Victory,
The "Planter of the Lion," which through fire
And blood she bore o'er subject Earth and Sea;
Though making many slaves, Herself still free,
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite;
Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!
For ye are names no Time nor Tyranny can blight.
Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,[7.H.]
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.
When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,
Her voice their only ransom from afar:[lr]
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o'ermastered Victor stops--the reins
Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar
Starts from its belt--he rends his captive's chains,
And bids him thank the Bard for Freedom and his strains.[ls]
Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot--
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot[lt]
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,--most of all,
Albion! to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.[lu]
I loved her from my boyhood--she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea--
Of Joy the sojourn, and of Wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,[lv]
Had stamped her image in me, and even so,
Although I found her thus, we did not part;[lw]
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe,
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.
I can repeople with the past--and of
The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chastened down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:
There are some feelings Time can not benumb,[lx]
But from their nature will the Tannen grow[ly]
Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,
Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks
Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks
The howling tempest, till its height and frame
Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks
Of bleak, gray granite into life it came,[lz]
And grew a giant tree;--the Mind may grow the same.
Existence may be borne, and the deep root
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
In bare and desolated bosoms: mute[ma]
The camel labours with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence--not bestowed
In vain should such example be; if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day.
All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,
Even by the sufferer--and, in each event,
Ends:--Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,
Return to whence they came--with like intent,
And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time,
And perish with the reed on which they leant;
Some seek devotion--toil--war--good or crime,
According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.
But ever and anon of griefs subdued
There comes a token like a Scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
And slight withal may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside for ever: it may be a sound--
A tone of music--summer's eve--or spring--[mb]
A flower--the wind--the Ocean--which shall wound,
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound;
And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The Spectres whom no exorcism can bind,--
The cold--the changed--perchance the dead, anew--
The mourned--the loved--the lost--too many! yet how few!
But my Soul wanders; I demand it back
To meditate amongst decay, and stand
A ruin amidst ruins; there to track
Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land
Which _was_ the mightiest in its old command,
And _is_ the loveliest, and must ever be
The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,--
The beautiful--the brave--the Lords of earth and sea,
The Commonwealth of Kings--the Men of Rome!
And even since, and now, fair Italy!
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree;
Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
Thy very weeds are beautiful--thy waste
More rich than other climes' fertility;
Thy wreck a glory--and thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.
The Moon is up, and yet it is not night--
Sunset divides the sky with her--a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be,--
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,--
Where the Day joins the past Eternity;
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air--an island of the blest!
A single star is at her side, and reigns
With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny Sea heaves brightly, and remains
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaimed her order:--gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,
Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,
Comes down upon the waters! all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse:
And now they change--a paler Shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting Day
Dies like the Dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away--
The last still loveliest, till--'tis gone--and all is gray.
There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air,
Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover: here repair
Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
The Pilgrims of his Genius. He arose
To raise a language, and his land reclaim
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:
Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name[8.H.]
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame.
They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died--[9.H.]
The mountain-village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride--
An honest pride--and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre--both plain[mc]
And venerably simple--such as raise
A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a Pyramid formed his monumental fane.[md]
And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt
Is one of that complexion which seems made
For those who their mortality have felt,
And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,
Which shows a distant prospect far away
Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,
For they can lure no further; and the ray
Of a bright Sun can make sufficient holiday,
Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers,
And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,
Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye
Idlesse it seem, hath its morality--
If from society we learn to live,[me]
'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers--Vanity can give
No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive:[mf]
Or, it may be, with Demons, who impair
The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey
In melancholy bosoms--such as were
Of moody texture from their earliest day,
And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay
Deeming themselves predestined to a doom
Which is not of the pangs that pass away;[mg]
Making the Sun like blood, the Earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell--and Hell itself a murkier gloom.[mh]
Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,
Whose symmetry was not for solitude,
There seems as 'twere a curse upon the Seats
Of former Sovereigns, and the antique brood
Of Este, which for many an age made good
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore
Patron or Tyrant, as the changing mood
Of petty power impelled, of those who wore
The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.
And Tasso is their glory and their shame--
Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!
And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,
And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell:
The miserable Despot could not quell
The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end
Scattered the clouds away--and on that name attend
The tears and praises of all time, while thine
Would rot in its oblivion--in the sink
Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line
Is shaken into nothing--but the link
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn:
Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink
From thee! if in another station born,[mi]
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn:
_Thou!_ formed to eat, and be despised, and die,
Even as the beasts that perish--save that thou
Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty:--
_He!_ with a glory round his furrowed brow,
Which emanated then, and dazzles now,
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[10.H.]
And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj]
No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,
That whetstone of the teeth--Monotony in wire![mk]
Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
Aimed with her poisoned arrows,--but to miss.
Oh, Victor unsurpassed in modern song!
Each year brings forth its millions--but how long
The tide of Generations shall roll on,
And not the whole combined and countless throng
Compose a mind like thine? though all in one[ml]
Condensed their scattered rays--they would not form a Sun.[mm]
Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
The Bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose
The Tuscan Father's Comedy Divine;
Then, not unequal to the Florentine,
The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth
A new creation with his magic line,
And, like the Ariosto of the North,
Sang Ladye-love and War, Romance and Knightly Worth.
The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust[11.H.]
The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
Nor was the ominous element unjust,
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves[12.H.]
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below[13.H.]
Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.
Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of Beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past--
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,[mn]
And annals graved in characters of flame.
Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness
Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
Then might'st thou more appal--or, less desired,
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored[mo]
For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
Would not be seen the arméd torrents poured
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
Be thy sad weapon of defence--and so,
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.
Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind,
The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
Came Megara before me, and behind
Ægina lay--Piræus on the right,
And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
Along the prow, and saw all these unite
In ruin--even as he had seen the desolate sight;
For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
Which only make more mourned and more endeared
The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
And the crashed relics of their vanished might.
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
These sepulchres of cities, which excite[mp]
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
That page is now before me, and on mine
_His_ Country's ruin added to the mass
Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
And I in desolation: all that _was_
Of then destruction _is_; and now, alas!
Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
The skeleton of her Titanic form,
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
Yet, Italy! through every other land
Thy wrongs should ring--and shall--from side to side;
Mother of Arts! as once of Arms! thy hand
Was then our Guardian, and is still our Guide;
Parent of our Religion! whom the wide
Nations have knelt to for the keys of Heaven!
Europe, repentant of her parricide,
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.
But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls:
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
Her corn, and wine, and oil--and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[mq]
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.
There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills[mr][14.H.]
The air around with Beauty--we inhale[ms]
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality--the veil
Of heaven is half undrawn--within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
And to the fond Idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a Soul could mould:
We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with Beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there--
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
We stand as captives, and would not depart.
Away!--there need no words, nor terms precise,
The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes:
Blood--pulse--and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.
Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
In all thy perfect Goddess-ship, when lies
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are
With lava kisses melting while they burn,
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love--[mt]
Their full divinity inadequate
That feeling to express, or to improve--
The Gods become as mortals--and man's fate[mu]
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go!
We can recall such visions, and create,
From what has been, or might be, things which grow
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.
I leave to learnéd fingers, and wise hands,
The Artist and his Ape, to teach and tell
How well his Connoisseurship understands
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
Let these describe the undescribable:
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that Image shall for ever dwell--
The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie[15.H.]
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos:--here repose
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.[17.H.]
These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation:--Italy![mv]
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny[mw]
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin:--thy Decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.
But where repose the all Etruscan three--
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative Spirit! he[mx]
Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their Country's Marbles nought to say?
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,[18.H.]
Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore:[19.H.]
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the Bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown[20.H.]
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His Life, his Fame, his Grave, though rifled--not thine own.
Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed[my][21.H.]
His dust,--and lies it not her Great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?
That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigot's wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for _whom!_
And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[mz]
The immortal Exile;--Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps.
What is her Pyramid of precious stones?[22.H.]
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews
Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
Whose names are Mausoleums of the Muse,
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.
There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
Where Sculpture with her rainbow Sister vies;
There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;
For I have been accustomed to entwine
My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
Calls for my Spirit's homage, yet it yields
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields
Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,[na]
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er.
Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save Carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An Earthquake reeled unheededly away![23.H.]
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet--
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!
The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity--they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, recked not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[nb]
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
Stumble o'er heaving plains--and Man's dread hath no words.
Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her agéd trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en--
A little rill of scanty stream and bed--
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.[nc]
But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river-Nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes--the purest God of gentle waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters--
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!
And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps
Upon a mild declivity of hill,[nd]
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails[ne]
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a Zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.
The roar of waters!--from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:--how profound[nf]
The gulf! and how the Giant Element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,[ng]
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent
To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale:--Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an Eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
Once more upon the woody Apennine--
The infant Alps, which--had I not before
Gazed on their mightier Parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar[nh]
The thundering Lauwine--might be worshipped more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near--
And in Chimari heard the Thunder-Hills of fear,
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the Eagles fly
Like Spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame.
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
These hills seem things of lesser dignity;
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake,
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes--I abhorred
Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,[nj]
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
By the impatience of my early thought,
That, with the freshness wearing out before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore
Its health--but what it then detested, still abhor.[nl]
Then farewell, Horace--whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse;
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone Mother of dead Empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress--hear the owl--and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples--Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm]
empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,[nn]
And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
The double night of ages, and of her,[no]
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The Ocean hath his chart, the Stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert--where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka!" "it is clear"--
When but some false Mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The Conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,[np]
And Livy's pictured page!--but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
Of hoarded vengeance till thine Eagles flew
O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates;--Roman, too,
With all thy vices--for thou didst lay down
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown,
Thy dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?[nq]
She who was named Eternal, and arrayed
Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr]
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,
Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was Almighty hailed!
Sylla was first of victors; but our own,[ns]
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
Down to a block--immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
And famous through all ages! but beneath
His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
His day of double victory and death
Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.
The third of the same Moon whose former course
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day
Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
And laid him with the Earth's preceding clay.
And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
Were they but so in Man's, how different were his doom!
And thou, dread Statue! yet existent in[24.H.]
The austerest form of naked majesty--
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie,
Folding his robe in dying dignity--
An offering to thine altar from the Queen
Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome![25.H.]
She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
The milk of conquest yet within the dome
Where, as a monument of antique art,
Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart,
Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
And thy limbs black with lightning--dost thou yet
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead--
The men of iron; and the World hath reared
Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
In imitation of the things they feared,
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
At apish distance; but as yet none have,
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
Save one vain Man, who is not in the grave--
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave--
The fool of false dominion--and a kind
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,[26.H.]
With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,
And an immortal instinct which redeemed
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold--
Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
At Cleopatra's feet,--and now himself he beamed,
And came--and saw--and conquered! But the man
Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,
Which he, in sooth, long led to Victory,
With a deaf heart which never seemed to be
A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
With but one weakest weakness--Vanity--[nt]
Coquettish in ambition--still he aimed--
And what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?[nu]
And would be all or nothing--nor could wait
For the sure grave to level him; few years
Had fixed him with the Cæsars in his fate
On whom we tread: For _this_ the conqueror rears
The Arch of Triumph! and for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
An universal Deluge, which appears
Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, God![nv]
What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weighed in Custom's falsest scale;
Opinion an Omnipotence,--whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and Men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and Earth have too much light.
And thus they plod in sluggish misery,[nw]
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,[nx]
Bequeathing their hereditary rage
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
War for their chains, and rather than be free,
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
Within the same Arena where they see
Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.
I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between
Man and his Maker--but of things allowed,
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen--
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
And the intent of Tyranny avowed,
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
And Freedom find no Champion and no Child
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefined?
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar[ny]
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz]
And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa]
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
Because the deadly days which we have seen,
And vile Ambition, that built up between
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
And the base pageant last upon the scene,
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst--his second fall.
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm _against_ the wind;
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the Tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts,--and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
There is a stern round tower of other days
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of Eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by Time o'erthrown;--
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so locked, so hid?--A woman's grave.[ob]
But who was she, the Lady of the dead,
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed?
What race of Chiefs and Heroes did she bear?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not
So honoured--and conspicuously there,
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?
Was she as those who love their lords, or they
Who love the lords of others? such have been
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
Profuse of joy--or 'gainst it did she war,
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
Love from amongst her griefs?--for such the affections are.[oc]
Perchance she died in youth--it may be, bowed
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
That weighed upon her gentle dust: a cloud
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favourites--early death--yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.
Perchance she died in age--surviving all,
Charms--kindred--children--with the silver gray
On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
It may be, still a something of the day
When they were braided, and her proud array
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
By Rome--But whither would Conjecture stray?
Thus much alone we know--Metella died,
The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!
I know not why--but standing thus by thee
It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
With recollected music, though the tone
Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind[od]
Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind:
And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,
Built me a little bark of hope, once more
To battle with the Ocean and the shocks
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
Which rushes on the solitary shore
Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:
But could I gather from the wave-worn store
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.[oe]
Then let the Winds howl on! their harmony
Shall henceforth be my music, and the Night
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry,
As I now hear them, in the fading light
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,
Answering each other on the Palatine,
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright,
And sailing pinions.--Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs?--let me not number mine.
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown
Matted and massed together--hillocks heaped
On what were chambers--arch crushed, column strown
In fragments--choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,[of]
Deeming it midnight:--Temples--Baths--or Halls?
Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls--
Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the Mighty falls.
There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory--when that fails,
Wealth--Vice--Corruption,--Barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but _one_ page,--'tis better written here,
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that Eye or Ear,
Heart, Soul could seek--Tongue ask--Away with words! draw near,
Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here
There is such matter for all feeling:--Man![og]
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and Realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of Empires pinnacled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van[oh]
Till the Sun's rays with added flame were filled!
Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build?
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column with the buried base!
What are the laurels of the Cæsar's brow?
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus or Trajan's? No--'tis that of Time:
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace[oi]
Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars: they had contained
A Spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,
The Roman Globe--for, after, none sustained,
But yielded back his conquests:--he was more
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues--still we Trajan's name adore.
Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes?--where the steep
Tarpeian?--fittest goal of Treason's race,
The Promontory whence the Traitor's Leap[oj]
Cured all ambition? Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep--
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero![ok]
The field of Freedom--Faction--Fame--and Blood:
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of Empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer failed;
But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assailed
Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.
Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame--
The friend of Petrarch--hope of Italy--
Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree
Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be--
The Forum's champion, and the people's chief--
Her new-born Numa thou--with reign, alas! too brief.
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart[27.H.]
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air,
The nympholepsy of some fond despair--[ol]
Or--it might be--a Beauty of the earth,
Who found a more than common Votary there
Too much adoring--whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful Thought, and softly bodied forth.
The mosses of thy Fountain still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
Of thy cave-guarded Spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed Genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep
Prisoned in marble--bubbling from the base
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
The rill runs o'er--and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep
Fantastically tangled: the green hills
Are clothed with early blossoms--through the grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles--and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
The sweetness of the Violet's deep blue eyes,
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.
Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy--and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love--the earliest Oracle!
And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;[om]
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart
The purity of Heaven to earthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart--
The dull satiety which all destroys--
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert! whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
O'er the World's wilderness, and vainly pants
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.
Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art--[on]
An unseen Seraph, we believe in thee,--
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled Heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,
And to a thought such shape and image given,
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation:--where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreached Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.
We wither from our youth, we gasp away--
Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first--
But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice--'tis the same,
Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst--
For all are meteors with a different name,[oo]
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual God
And Miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
Whose touch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod.
Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of Sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,
Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--
Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see,
And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our right of thought--our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the Faculty divine
Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the Truth should shine
Too brightly on the unpreparéd mind,
The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind.
Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches--for divine
Should be the light which streams here,--to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the Palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.
Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin--Comforter
And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the Avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate--
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate:--
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain--shall _they_ not mourn?
And Thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis![28.H.]
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long--
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution--just,
Had it but been from hands less near--in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must.
It is not that I may not have incurred,
For my ancestral faults or mine, the wound[op]
I bleed withal; and, had it been conferred
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground--
To thee I do devote it--_Thou_ shalt take
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found--
Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake--
But let that pass--I sleep--but Thou shalt yet awake.
And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now[oq]
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!
That curse shall be Forgiveness.--Have I not--
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!--
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would _seem_ true--
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.
The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow upon the spot--all-seeing but unseen.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres--where the chief actors rot.
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow[os]
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low--
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,[ot]
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now[ou]
The arena swims around him--he is gone,[ov]
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
Were with his heart--and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay--
_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
_There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday--[ow][29.H.]
All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire
And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;--
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd--[ox][30.H.]
My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays[oy]
On the arena void--seats crushed--walls bowed--
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.
A Ruin--yet what Ruin! from its mass
Walls--palaces--half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,[oz]
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there--
When the stars twinkle through the loops of Time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,[pa]
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head--
When the light shines serene but doth not glare--
Then in this magic circle raise the dead;--
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.[pb]
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World." From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome![pc]
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.
There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
What do I gaze on? Nothing--Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight--
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:[pd]
It is not so--I see them full and plain--
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?[pe]
Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where _on_ the heart and _from_ the heart we took
Our first and sweetest nurture--when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook[pf]
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives[pg]
Man knows not--when from out its cradled nook
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves--
What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's.
But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,
The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth:--No--he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
The starry fable of the Milky Way
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest Nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy Sire's heart, replenishing its source[ph]
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the Universe.
Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,
Colossal copyist of deformity--
Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
To build for Giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this Dome: How smiles
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,[pi]
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!
But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous Dome,[pj]
To which Diana's marvel was a cell--
Christ's mighty shrine above His martyr's tomb![pk]
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle--
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyæna and the jackal in their shade;
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell[pl]
Their glittering mass i' the Sun, and have surveyed[pm]
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;
But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone--with nothing like to thee--
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty--
Power--Glory--Strength--and Beauty all are aisled
In this eternal Ark of worship undefiled.
Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessened--but thy mind,
Expanded by the Genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of Immortality--and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies--nor be blasted by his brow.[pn]
Thou movest--but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance--
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize--[po]
All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles, richer painting--shrines where flame[pp]
The lamps of gold--and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim.
Thou seest not all--but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the Ocean many bays will make
That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll[pq]
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The Glory which at once upon thee did not dart,
Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense[pr]
Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our Spirits to the size of that they contemplate.
Then pause, and be enlightened; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of Art and its great Masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan:[ps]
The fountain of Sublimity displays
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of Man[pt]
Its golden sands, and learn what great Conceptions can.[pu]
Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoön's torture dignifying pain--
A Father's love and Mortal's agony
With an Immortal's patience blending:--Vain
The struggle--vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The Old Man's clench; the long envenomed chain[pv]
Rivets the living links,--the enormous Asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.[pw]
Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
With an Immortal's vengeance--in his eye
And nostril beautiful Disdain, and Might
And Majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
But in his delicate form--a dream of Love,
Shaped by some solitary Nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision--are exprest
All that ideal Beauty ever blessed
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each Conception was a heavenly Guest--
A ray of Immortality--and stood,
Starlike, around, until they gathered to a God![px]
And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure--it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
With an eternal Glory--which, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought--
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught
But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song,
The Being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more--these breathings are his last--
His wanderings done--his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing:--if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed
With forms which live and suffer--let that pass--
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,[py]
Which gathers shadow--substance--life, and all
That we inherit in its mortal shroud--
And spreads the dim and universal pall
Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud
Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allowed
To hover on the verge of darkness--rays
Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,
And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this--
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear,--but never more,
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:--
It is enough in sooth that _once_ we bore
These fardels of the heart--the heart whose sweat was gore.
Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;--
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground--
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the Chief
Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief--
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.
Scion of Chiefs and Monarchs, where art thou?
Fond Hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the Grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less belovéd head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled
The present happiness and promised joy
Which filled the Imperial Isles so full it seemed to cloy.
Peasants bring forth in safety.--Can it be,
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for Kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
Her many griefs for _One_; for she had poured
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head[pz]
Beheld her Iris.--Thou, too, lonely Lord,
And desolate Consort--vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!
Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,
The love of millions! How we did entrust
Futurity to her! and, though it must
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed
Our children should obey her child, and blessed
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed
Like stars to shepherd's eyes:--'twas but a meteor beamed.
Woe unto us--not her--for she sleeps well:
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of Monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung
Nations have armed in madness--the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,--[qa]
These might have been her destiny--but no--
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a Bride and Mother--and now _there!_
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an Earthquake's, and opprest
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.
Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting Wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The Ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears[qb]
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.
And near, Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley;--and afar[31.H.]
The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
"Arms and the Man," whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire:--but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome;--and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight[qc]
The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary Bard's delight.
But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,--so let it be,--
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the Sea;
The Midland Ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled
Upon the blue Symplegades:[32.H.] long years--
Long, though not very many--since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears[qd]
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run--
We have had our reward--and it is here,--
That we can yet feel gladdened by the Sun,
And reap from Earth--Sea--joy almost as dear
As if there were no Man to trouble what is clear.
Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted--Can ye not
Accord me such a Being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express--yet can not all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan--
Without a grave--unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.[qe]
His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For Earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies--
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to Earth:--there let him lay.[qf]
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals,
The oak Leviathans, whose huge ribs make[qg]
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War--
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
Assyria--Greece--Rome--Carthage--what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,[qh]
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,[qi]
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm--
Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime--
The image of Eternity-the throne[qj]
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made--each Zone
Obeys thee--thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a Child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.
My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit[qk]
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ,--
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been--and my visions flit
Less palpably before me--and the glow
Which in my Spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been--
A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql]
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm]
Which is his last--if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his--if on ye swell
A single recollection--not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain,
If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.
 {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession of
 {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--
"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song....
He is no more--these breathings are his last."]
 {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day,"
sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--
"Here's a happy new year!--but with reason
I beg you'll permit me to say--
Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_,
But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]
 {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a
 [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]
 {325} [Shelley (notes M. Darmesteter), in his preface to the
circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change."
"Capability" in the sense of "undeveloped faculty or property; a
"It must be so--_Plato_, thou reason'st well!--
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?"]
 [Shelley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines
"My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived----"]
 {326} [_The substance of some letters written by an Englishman
 [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft
"In Venice '_but_'s' a traitor.
But me no '_buts_,' unless you would pass o'er
The Bridge which few repass."
 Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of
Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad_ A.C. 1504. His
"Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat ætas,
Scribentem capit hæc Coccion urna brevis."
Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cybēle), the "mother of the
 ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least
 [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious
Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue
 [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate
"He sung,
As in the time when Venice was Herself,
Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars
We rested; and the verse was verse divine!
We could not err--Perhaps he was the last--
For none took up the strain, none answer'd him;
And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear
A something like the dying voice of Venice!"
 {331} [The Rialto, or Rivo alto, "the middle group of islands
Otway--"master of the tragic art"--and the title of his
Too soon will break, and wake us to our sorrow;
Come, come to bed, and bid thy cares Good night!"]
"The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."
The ideal personages of the poet's creations have the promise of
And now because I feel it growing dull."
_Don Juan_, Canto XIV. stanza x.
_Albeit is not my nature, and I twine_.--[MS. M. erased]
 {335} The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian
general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.
 [The Bucentaur, "the state barge in which, on Ascension Day, the
splendour, makes us forget the original....
"She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea."
 {336} [For "Lion," see Hobhouse's note iii. The "Horses of St.
"Jam Papa perisset in arto,
Cæsar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum."
 {337} ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" was the exclamation of a
"O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!"
"Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers,
To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown."
"The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, the
 [Compare the opening lines of Byron's _Ode on Venice_--
"Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"
especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with
miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.
St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as Παντελεήμων
 {340} Shakespeare is my authority for the word "Ottomite" for
 ["On 29th September (1669) Candia, and the island of Candia,
 ["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours....
 {341} [The story is told in Plutarch's _Life of Nicias_, cap.
trustworthiness ... is much inferior to its pathos and
 [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which
"That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion,
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror."]
_The Past at least is mine--whate'er may come_.
throughout the mountainous region of Central Europe.]
 [Cicero, _De Finibus_, II. xxix., controverts the maxim of
Epicurus, that a great sorrow is necessarily of short duration, a
 {346} [Compare Bishop Blougram's lament on the instability of
unfaith--
"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears.
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there."
_A tone of music--eventide in spring_.
"They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."]
"How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
Looking upon the evening, and the flood,
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar
And aëry Alps towards the north appeared,
Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue,
Brighter than burning gold."]
 {349} [The Brenta rises in Tyrol, and flowing past Padua falls
 {350} [The Abbé de Sade, in his _Mémoires pour la vie de
 {351} ["He who would seek, as I have done, the last memorials of
"The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."]
 The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with
 [Byron passed a single day at Ferrara in April, 1817; went over
the castle, cell, etc., and a few days after wrote _The Lament of
 {355} [It is a fact that Tasso was an involuntary inmate of the
confinement." It was, as Shelley says (see his letter to Peacock,
 [Hobhouse, in his note x., quotes Boileau, but not in full. The
passage runs thus--
"Tous les jours, à la cour, un sot de qualité
Peut juger de travers avec impunité,
A Malherbe, à Racan, préfère Théophile,
Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile."
different criticism on French poetry in general--
"En vain vos légions l'environnent sans nombre,
Il n'a qu'à se lever pour couvrir de son ombre
A la fois tous vos fronts;
Il n'a qu'à dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix grèles,
Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes
De mille moucherons!"
_Les Feuilles d'Automne_, par Victor Hugo,
 [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint
"Le Donne, i Cavaliér', l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesíe, l'audaci imprese io canto."
horse-chestnuts for chestnut horses."]
Dono infelice di bellezza, ond'hai
Funesta dote d'infiniti guai
Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte:
Deh fossi tu men bella, o almen più forte,
Onde assai più ti paventasse, o assai
T'amasse men, chi del tuo bello ai rai
Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte,
Chè or giù dall' Alpi non vedrei torrenti
Scender d'armati, nè di sangue tinta
Bever l'onda del Po gallici armenti;
Nè te vedrei, del non tuo ferro cinta,
Pugnar col braccio di straniere genti,
Per servir sempre, o vincitrice, o vinta."]
_And on thy brow in characters of flame_
_To write the words of sorrow and of shame_.--[MS. M. erased.]
 ["By the events of the years 1813 and 1814, the house of Austria
 {364} It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon
 [Compare Milton, _Sonnet_ xxii.--
Of which all Europe talks from side to side."]
_Where Luxury might willingly be born_.
_And buried Learning looks forth into fresher morn_,--
 [The wealth which permitted the Florentine nobility to indulge
 [The statue of Venus de' Medici, which stands in the Tribune of
_As from a fountain of immortal hills_.--[MS. M. erased.]
 {366} [Byron's contempt for connoisseurs and dilettanti finds
(A race of mere impostors, when all's done--
I've seen much finer women ripe and real,
Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal)."
Ὀφθαλμοὺς ἑστιᾶν [O)phthalmou\s e(stia~n]
"Atque oculos pascat uterque suos."
"Atque ita, suspiciens tereti cervice reposta,
Pascit amore avidos, inhians in te, Dea, visus;
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore;"
and _Measure for Measure_, act ii. sc. 2, line 179--
"And feast upon her eyes."]
 [As the immortals, for love's sake, divest themselves of their
 {369} ["The church of Santa Croce contains much illustrious
 [Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) is one of numerous real and ideal
"Voici une esquisse du caractère que je manifestais dans les
premières anneés de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille
pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extrêmement pétulant et
contenu plutôt par la crainte d'être grondé que par toute autre
The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent
"Was Angelo born here? and he who wove
Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue,
Indissolubly blent? and he whose song
Laid bare the world below to world above?
And he who from the lonely valley clove
The azure height and trod the stars among?
And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong,
Fount of the people's misery did prove?"]
_And ruin of thy beauty, shall deny_
_And hath denied, to every other sky_
_Spirits that soar like thine; from thy decay_
{_Still springs some son of the Divinity_}
{_Still springs some work of the Divinity_}--[D.]
_And gilds thy ruins with reviving ray_--
_And what these were of yore--Canova is to-day_.--[MS. M.]
 [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent
"In this beloved marble view,
Above the works and thoughts of man,
What nature _could_, but _would not_, do,
And Beauty and Canova can."
"Ravenna! where from Dante's sacred tomb
He had so oft, as many a verse declares,
Drawn inspiration."]
 [Compare Lucan, _Pharsalia_, i. I--"Bella per Emathios plusquam
civilia campos."]
 [Giovanni Boccaccio was born at Paris (or Certaldo) in 1313,
_Boccaccio to his parent earth, bequeathed_
_The dust derived from thence--doth it not lie_
_With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed_
_O'er him who formed the tongue of Italy_
_That music in itself whose harmony_
_Asks for no tune to make it song; No--torn_
_From earth--and scattered while the silent sky_
_Hushed its indignant Winds--with quiet scorn_
_The Hyæna bigots thus forbade a World to mourn_.--
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South."
"And this omission, like that of the bust
Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius."
 [The inscription on Ricci's monument to Dante, in the Church of
 ["I also went to the Medici chapel--fine frippery in great slabs
"Is it really on the earth
This miraculous dome of God?"
 {377} [Byron, contrary to traditional use (see Wordsworth's
"From the Thrasymene, that now
Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold,
And from the shore that once, when armies met,
Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible
The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."
Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of
"When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came,
An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock,
Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock,
Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim,--
Now all is sun-bright peace."]
_Fly to the clouds for refuge and withdraw_
 No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the
"Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxuma taurus
Victima, sæpe tuo perfusi flumine sacro."
" ...et patulis Clitumnus in arvis
Candentes gelido perfundit flumine tauros.")
 {381} ["On my way back [from Rome], close to the temple by its
 [By "disgust," a prosaic word which seems to mar a fine stanza,
Byron does not mean "distaste," aversion from the nauseous, but
 {383} I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different
Magland, on the road between Cluses and Sallanches.]
"'Est locus Italiæ ...
... densis hunc frondibus atrum
Urguet utrimque latus nemoris, medioque fragosus
Dat sonitum saxis et torto vertice torrens.
Hic specus horrendum et sævi spiracula Ditis
Monstrantur, ruptoque ingens Acheronte vorago
Pestiferas aperit fauces.'
_Dares not ascend the summit_----
 In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by
the name of lauwine.
 {386} These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign
 [The construction is somewhat involved, but the meaning is
school-books are "a proof of the narrow extent of his classical
 [The tomb of the Scipios, by the Porta Latina, was discovered by
 [The sepulchres were rifled, says Hobhouse (_ibid_., p. 173),
"either to procure the necessary relics for churches dedicated to
 {390} [The reference is to the historical inundations of the
 [The Goths besieged and sacked Rome under Alaric, A.D. 410, and
 [Compare Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_, "Prophecy of Capys,"
"Blest and thrice blest the Roman
Who sees Rome's brightest day,
Who sees that long victorious pomp
Wind down the Sacred Way,
And through the bellowing Forum,
And round the Suppliant's Grove,
Up to the everlasting gates
stumbling-blocks; and no sooner have we verified an association,
perceive that we have been deluded by a mirage.]
 {392} Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs [i.e. from
_Alas, for Tully's voice, and Titus' sway_
_And Virgil's verse; the first and last must be_
_Into such dust deserted Rome should fade,_
_The Earth beneath her shadow and displayed_
_Her wings as with the horizon and was hailed,_
_Sylla supreme of Victors--save our own_
_The ablest of Usurpers--Cromwell--he_
_Who swept off Senates--while he hewed the Throne_
_Down to a block--immortal Villain! See_
 On the 3rd of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar
; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester
esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.
 {395} [The statue of Pompey in the Sala dell' Udinanza of the
 {396} [The bronze "Wolf of the Capitol" in the Palace of the
 [The Roman "things" whom the world feared, set the fashion of
 {397} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, v.--"The king of kings, and
yet of slaves the slave."]
 [According to Suetonius, i. 37, the famous words, _Veni Vidi,
Vici_, were blazoned on litters in the triumphal procession which
 {398} [By "flee" in the "Gallic van," Byron means "fly towards,
 [Compare Gray's _Elegy_, stanza xv.--
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear."]
"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale."]
_For such existence is as much to die_.--[MS. M. erased.]
Parliamentary reporter _pro hac vice_, scrawled in pencil in his
note-book, the phrase appears as "the nursling and champion of
Jacobinism;" and it is possible that the alternative of the more
_Her span of freedom hath but fatal been_
_To that of any coming age or clime_.--[MS. M.]
 {402} [By the "base pageant" Byron refers to the Congress of
"O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,
Killing its flowers, and leaving its thorns bare!"]
 Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Capo di Bove.
citadel--that is, the tomb." The "fence of stone" refers to the
Ον οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος
Τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν οὐχ αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλ' αἰσχρῶς θανεῖν
_Till I had called forth even from the mind_.--[MS. M. erased.]
"Or climb the Palatine,
Long while the seat of Rome, hereafter found
Less than enough (so monstrous was the brood
Engendered there, so Titan-like) to lodge
One in his madness; and inscribe my name--
My name and date, on some broad aloe-leaf
That shoots and spreads within those very walls
Where Virgil read aloud his tale divine,
When his voice faltered and a mother wept
Tears of delight!"[§]
"Rome has fallen; ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying."]
----_wherein have creeped_
 The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side
towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled
_And show of Glory's gewgaws in the van_
_And the Sun's rays with flames more dazzling filled_.--[MS. M.]
 [The "golden roofs" were those of Nero's _Domus Aurea_, which
"Hic ubi sidereus propius videt astra colossus
Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis
Unaque jam tola stabat in urbe domus."
"Here where the Sun-god greets the Morning Star,
And tow'ring scaffolds block the public way,
Fell Nero's loathed pavilion flashed afar,
Erect and splendid 'mid the town's decay."]
Trajan's "moderation was known unto all men." Pliny, in his
emperor--as the most righteous of lawgivers and senators, who had
 {412} [The archæologists of Byron's day were unable to fix the
regni"--a "depraved ambition for assuming the kingly power."]
_There first did Tully's burning accents glow?_
_Yes--eloquently still--the echoes tell me so_.--[D.]
 [Compare Gray's _Odes_, "The Progress of Poesy," iii. 3, line
 {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic
"For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."]
 {416} [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which
"In vallem Egeriæ; descendimus et speluncas
Dissimiles veris. Quanto præstantius esset
Numen aquæ, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"
"As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds."]
"But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!"]
 [Compare _Hamlet_, act ii. sc. 1, line 292--"This most excellent
_Feel the quick throbbing of a human heart_
_And the sweet sorrows of its deathless dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]
_Oh Love! thou art no habitant of Earth_
_An unseen Seraph we believe in thee_
_And can point out thy time and place of birth_.--[D. erased.]
 [M. Darmesteter traces the sentiment to a maxim (No. 76) of La
"A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."]
 [The Romans had more than one proverb to this effect; e.g.
 [Circumstance is personified as halting Nemesis--"Pede poena
"My griefs not only pain me
As a lingering disease,
But, finding no redress, ferment and rage;
Nor less than wounds immedicable
 "At all events," says the author of the _Academical Questions_
"But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears."]
"Those scarce mortal arches,
Pile above pile of everlasting wall."
materials for subsequent centuries. As an instance of wholesale
 {424} [For a description of the Colosseum by moonlight, see
 {426} [The whole of this appeal to Nemesis (stanzas
'tis not that now
And if my voice break forth--{-it is not that-}
I shrink from what is suffered--let him speak
decline upon my
Who                    {-humbler in-}
{-What-} hath beheld {-me quiver on my-} brow
seen my mind's convulsion leave it {-blenched or-} weak?
Or {-my internal spirit changed or weak-}
{-found my mind convulsed-}
But in this page {-the-} record {-which-} I seek
{-from out of the deep-}
{-stands and-}            {-of that remorse-}
{-Shall stand and when that hour shall come and come-}
{-Shall come--though I be ashes--and shall pile heap-}
{-It will-}                      {-come and wreak-}
{-In fire the measure-}
{-The fiery prophecy-}
{-The fullness of my-}
{-The fullness of my prophecy or heap-}
{-The mountain of my curse-}
Not in the air shall these my words disperse
{-'Tis written that an hour of deep remorse-}
Though I be ashes {-a deep-} far hour shall wreak
{-The fullness Thee-}           this
The deep prophetic fullness of {-my-} verse
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.--[MS. M.]
If to forgive be "heaping coals of Fire"
As God hath spoken--on the heads of foes
Mine should lie a Volcano-and rise higher
Than o'er the Titans crushed Olympus rose
Than Athos soars, or blazing Ætna glows:
True--they who stung were petty things--but what
Than serpent's sting produce more deadly throes.
The Lion may be tortured by the Gnat--
Who sucks the slumberer's blood--the Eagle? no, the Bat.[§]--
 Suetonius [Lib. i. cap. xlv.] informs us that Julius Cæsar was
 {435} "Though plundered of all its brass, except the ring which
tertium. Fecit.) affirms that the temple was built by Agrippa (M.
 {437} The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of
 This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman
_Or even the shrill impatient_ [_cries that brook_].
 {439} [It was fabled of the Milky Way that when Mercury held up
_To its original fountain but repierce_
 The castle of St. Angelo. (See _Historical Illustrations._)
_The now spectator with a sanctioned mirth_
 This and the next six stanzas have a reference to the Church of
St. Peter's. (For a measurement of the comparative length of this
"While still stands
The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar
A dome, its image, while the base expands
Into a fane surpassing all before,
Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in--"
Compare, too, Browning's _Christmas Eve_, sect, x.--
"Is it really on the earth,
This miraculous dome of God?
Has the angel's measuring-rod
Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
'Twixt the gates of the new Jerusalem,
Meted it out,--and what he meted,
Have the sons of men completed?
--Binding ever as he bade,
Columns in the colonnade,
With arms wide open to embrace
The entry of the human race?"]
 [Compare Canto II. stanza lxxix. lines 2, 3--
"Oh Stamboul! once the Empress of their reign,
Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine."]
 [The emphasis is on the word "fit." The measure of "fitness" is
enshrinement and the embodiment of the Spirit of God.]
 [This stanza may be paraphrased, but not construed. Apparently,
_Painting and marble of so many dyes_--
_And glorious high altar where for ever burn_.--[MS. M. erased.]
_Its Giant's limbs and by degrees_----
or, _The Giant eloquence and thus unroll_.--[MS. M. erased.]
_Cannot keep pace with mind_----[MS. M. erased.]
 [Pliny tells us (_Hist. Nat._, xxxvi. 5) that the Laocoon which
 [In his description of the Apollo Belvidere, Byron follows the
 {447} [The "delicate" beauty of the statue recalled the features
"Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep,
'Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove,
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
Yet on that form in wild delirious trance
With more than rev'rence gazed the Maid of France,
Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood
With him alone, nor thought it solitude!
To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care,
Her one fond hope--to perish of despair."
Compare, too, Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, lines 14-16--
"A savage place, as holy and enchanted,
As e'er beneath a wailing moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover."
"Post ignem ætheriâ domo
Subductum, Macies et nova Febrium
Terris incubuit cohors.")]
 [Charlotte Augusta (b. January 7, 1796), only daughter of the
_Her prayers for thee and in thy coming power_
_Beheld her Iris--Thou too lonely Lord_
_And desolate Consort! fatal is thy dower_,
 {452} [Compare Canto III. stanza xxxiv. lines 6, 7--
"Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste."]
Πάντα δέ τ' εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν
"Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."]
"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens."]
 {453} Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth, of a broken heart;
Charles V., a hermit; Louis XIV., a bankrupt in means and glory;
 [The simile of the "earthquake" was repeated in a letter to
_Of girdling mountains circle on the sight_
_The Sabine farm was tilled, the wearied Bard's delight_.--
 ["Calpe's rock" is Gibraltar (compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II.
 ["After the stanza (near the conclusion of Canto 4th) which ends
"'As if there was no man to trouble what is clear,'
 [His desire is towards no light o' love, but for the support and
"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same--
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,--
A world to roam through and a home with thee.
"The first were nothing--had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness."]
 [Compare _Ps_. cvii. 26, "They mount up to the heaven, they go
down again to the depths."]
"Like leviathans afloat,
Lay their bulwarks on the brine."]
 {460} ["When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the
Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the
_The image of Eternity and Space_
 [Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, lv. stanza 6--
"Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him."]
 ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after
"Βή δ' ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης
_Is dying in the echo--it is time_
_To break the spell of this protracted dream_
_And what will be the fate of this my rhyme_
La Mira, near Venice.
La Mira, near Venice,
I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;"
A Palace and a prison on each hand.
Stanza i. lines 1 and 2.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more.
Stanza iii. line 1.
Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l capitano
Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo
Molto egli oprò col senno, e con la mano
Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto;
E in van l' Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano
S' armò d' Asia, e di Libia il popol misto,
Che il Ciel gli diè favore, e sotto a i Santi
Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.
L' arme pietose de cantar gho vogia,
E de Goffredo la immortal braura
Che al fin l' ha libera co strassia, e dogia
Del nostro buon Gesû la Sepoltura
De mezo mondo unite, e de quel Bogia
Missier Pluton non l' ha bu mai paura:
Dio l' ha agiutá, e i compagni sparpagni
Tutti 'l gh' i ha messi insieme i di del Dai.
although the chant is seldom, if ever, voluntary, there are still
extravagant, he has furnished a very exact, as well as agreeable
description:--
gondoliers.
Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church of St.----
St. Moses, opera.
St. Benedict, a comedy of characters.
St. Luke, repose.
St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood
Stanza xi. line 5.
Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has
pacification of the world can excuse such a solecism.
The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt.
Stanza xii. lines 1 and 2.
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
Stanza xii. lines 8 and 9.
But is not Doria's menace come to pass?
Are they not _bridled?_
Stanza xiii. lines 3 and 4.
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals.
Stanza xv. lines 7 and 8.
The population of Venice, at the end of the seventeenth century,
thousand; and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official
employments, which were to be the unexhausted source of Venetian
grandeur, have both expired. Most of the patrician mansions are
Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame.
Stanza xxx. lines 8 and 9.
prejudice.
They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died.
Stanza xxxi. line 1.
Petrarch retired to Arquà immediately on his return from the
Shaksperian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon.
conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately
Mr. Forsyth was not quite correct in saying that Petrarch never
precluded the Italians from the criticism of the living, has
concentrated their attention to the illustration of the dead.
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,
And Boileau, whose rash envy, etc.
Stanza xxxviii. lines 6 and 7.
"À Malherbe, à Racan, préfère Théophile,
Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile."
Bouhours is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose
The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust
The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves.
Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2.
consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen
jealously claimed as the Homer, not of Italy but Ferrara. The
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves.
Stanza xli. lines 4 and 5.
The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine, were
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below.
Stanza xli. line 8.
There, too, the Goddess loves in stone.
Stanza xlix. line 1.
deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her
"The time may come you need not fly."
The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the _Life of Dr.
supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Cæsar.
In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie.
Stanza liv. line 1.
interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family
satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the
incomparable Corinna.
Here repose
Angelo's--Alfieri's bones.
Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7.
theatre. In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.
Stanza liv. line 9.
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar.
Stanza lvii. line 1.
distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the
and though the preference appeared to some casuists "an heretical
There is still much curious information relative to the life and
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore:
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed, etc.
Stanza lvii. lines 2, 3, and 4.
"In così angusta & solitaria uilla
Era grand' huom che d' Aphrica s' appella,
Perche prima col ferro al uiuo aprilla."
And the crown
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown.
Stanza lvii. lines 6, 7, and 8.
Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed
His dust.
Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.
district, the last branch of the house of Medicis, afforded that
"Il flagello de' Principi,
Il divin Pietro Aretino,"
beginning of the last century one would have been hooted at for
What is her Pyramid of precious stones?
Stanza lx. line 1.
An Earthquake reeled unheededly away!
Stanza lxiii. line 5.
The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The
hillocks, Hannibal placed his horse, in the jaws of, or rather
"tumuli." On a summit to the left, above the road, is an old
circular ruin, which the peasants call "the tower of Hannibal the
despatched his Balearic and light-armed troops round through the
The Romans fought desperately for three hours; but the death of
And thou, dread Statue! still existent in
The austerest form of naked majesty.
Stanza lxxxvii. lines 1 and 2.
gravem," than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern
And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!
Stanza lxxxviii. line 1.
mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius _tremblingly_ assents.
Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves
had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the
"Geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos; illam, tereti cervice reflexam,
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguâ."
For the Roman's mind
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould.
Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast.
Stanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3.
This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and
misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes
Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his
"Thence slowly winding down the vale we view
The Egerian _grots_: oh, how unlike the true!"
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long.
Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3.
We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a
worshipped under the name of Nemesis.
He, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
Stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7.
notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology. Besides the
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd.
Stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6.
When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, "He has it," "Hoc
An Englishman who can be much pleased with seeing two men beat
spectacle and the spectators with horror and disgust.
And afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
The Latian coast, etc., etc.
Stanza clxxiv. lines 3 and 4.
"Me quotiens reficit gelidus Digentia rivus,
Quem Mandela bibit rugosus frigore pagus."
The hill which should be Lucretilis is called Campanile, and by
" ... tu frigus amabile
Fessis vomere tauris
Præbes, et pecori vago."
But we must not hope
"To trace the Muses upwards to their spring,"
by exploring the windings of the romantic valley in search of the
Upon the blue Symplegades.
Stanza clxxvi. line 1.
 {472} _Su i Quattro Cavalli della Basilica di S. Marco in
deposita, ovinam mansuetudinem induit."--_Romualdi Salernitani
 {475} See the above-cited Romuald of Salerno. In a second sermon
 Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important _æ_, and has written Romani
 {476} "Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, cæco
 {478} "Nonnullorum e nobilitate immensæ sunt opes, adeo ut vix
 Mr. Gibbon called his _Memoirs_ "a labour of love" (see _Decline
 In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as
Petrarch's mistress was a _chaste_ maid or a _continent_ wife.
"Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei
Dell' immagine tua, se mille volte
N' avesti quel, ch' i' sol una vorrei!"
Sonetto 50, _Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto_.
 {482} "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des
 "And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, he
 _La Manière de bien Penser dans les Ouvrages de l'esprit_, sec.
 For further, and it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was
 It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino's
_Caraffa_, or _Epica poesia_, was published in 1584.
 "Cotanto, potè sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà
 _La Vita di M. L. Ariosto_, scritta dall' Abate Girolamo
_Historical Illustrations, etc._, p. 26.)
 "Appassionato ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' _Omero
"Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non
Sordida, parta meo sed tamen ære domus."
August_., cap. xc., et in _Vit. Tiberii_, cap. lxix.
 {489} Pauli Warnefridi Diaconi _De Gestis Langobard_., lib. iii.
 _Nomina gentesque Antiquæ Italiæ_ (Gibbon, _Miscell. Works_,
 {492} The free expression of their honest sentiments survived
spontaneously expressed, is never wrong. Even the soldiers of the
 {495} So relates Ficino, but some think his coronation only an
 "Vitam Literni egit sine desiderio urbis." See T. Liv., _Hist._,
 The Greek boasted that he was ἰσόνομος [i)so/nomos].
 {498} "E intorno _alla magnifica risposta_," etc. Serassi, _Vita
 {499} "Accingiti innoltre, se ci è lecito ancor l'esortarti, a
 {501} "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens
 {506} _Hist._, lib. iii. cap. 83. The account in Polybius is not
 _Storia delle Arti, etc._, lib. xi. cap. i.
 {510} _Antiq. Rom._, lib. i., Χάλκεα ποιήματα παλαῖας ἐργασίας
 "Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum
"Hic silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix
Martia, quæ parvos Mavortis semine natos
Uberibus gravidis vitali rore rigabat:
Quæ tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu
Concidit, atque avulsa pedum vestigia liquit."
 Nardini, _Roma Vetus_, lib. v. cap. iv.
 See note to stanza lxxx. in _Historical Illustrations_.
 "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis. Et ferrem, si
 _Accurata e succincta Descrizione, etc., di Roma moderna_, dell'
 {515} "Jure cæsus existimetur," says Suetonius, i. 76, after a
 "In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadras solidus, in quo
"'Ægeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camoenis,
Illa Numæ conjunx consiliumque fuit.'
Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc
 Sueton., in _Vit. Augusti_, cap. xci. Casaubon, in the note,
 It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.
 "Fortunæ; hujusce diei." Cicero mentions her, _De Legib._, lib.
 {520} Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy,
brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena.
 Vopiscus, in _Vit. Aurel._, and in _Vit. Claud._, _ibid._
 Augustinus (_Confess._, lib. vi. cap. viii.): "Alypium suum
 {525} "Under our windows and bordering on the beach is the royal