Class _„\1I\AM-^ Book. . S 9 Goipglitl^i? COPYRIGHT DEPOSm Childe Harold and Other Poems By/ Lord Byron With a Critical and Biographical Introduction by Francis Hovey Stoddard Illustrated New York D. Appleton and Company 1899 V. -;ioii ; eoii(|iier()rs and kinK^^ l''(Mind(M'H of seetH and systems, to whom achi .Sophists, bards, statesmen, all iin(|uiet thinj^js Whieli stir too stron^.'.ly tlur soul's seerct springs, And .ire iheiiiselves Ihe tools to those lliey fool; ||',nvii-d, yel liow iiiieii v i.ilile ! what Slin^;s Are I heirs ! < »iir luce. I l.iid open were a school VVhieh would iiiiIi.k h in.inkind Ihe lust to shine or ilile. X I , I V 'I'lieii liiiMlh is agitation, ,ind llieii lile ,\ '.loim whereon IImv i ide, to Miik .it last, And yet so iinrsed and hij^olcd to stiile, That should their days, surviving perils past. Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast With sorrow and supineiiess, and so (lit;; l''veii .IS .1 ll.ime imfed, which runs to waste W'lih II'. own lliekering, or a sword l.iid by, Willi h e,il'. inio ilscdl, and rif.ls injdoi loiisly. Ill- who .i':rends to moiinl.iin lops, sh.ill find riir lollie-.l pe.ik;. most wiapl in clouds A\\t\ snow ; Me wlio '.ni p.is^.es or snbdiies mankind, Must look (lown on the hate of those below. Though high abov<' the sun of ^lory glow. And tar beneath the earth and ocean spread, Koiind him are icy roi Ik dd 1 11}'; < lark coin III 1 1 II ion with t Ik* (loud. 'I'liere was a day vvlnn they weie yoiiiij'_ and pioiid, I la liners on hi).;li, and liall Ic, pa'/icil hclow ; r.iil lli('y who loii;dil aie in a liloody '.liioiid, Aim! thos(r wlii' h waved aie '.Iim dN-.s dir.l eie now, And the bleak hal I leincnl s shall Ih.ii no liilme blow. X. I , \' I I I iJeiieath lln-sc b il I Iciiii-nl s, within those walls, I'ower dwell aiiiid.l Ini |)assioilS; ni |iioiid state l'',aeli robber chiel ii|(lir|(| Ins armed halls, I )()\\\y^ his evil will, iioi Ic/. clalc 'I'haii inijditiei hciocs ol a Iohjmi d.il<-. What, want these outlaws ((iii(|iieior, should haVC, Ihit. history's |iiim ha .ed |ia}'_e lo call I hem )M(sit ? A wider space, an oi iiaiiieiil al }.',rave i* Their hopes were no! le .:■ vvai III, I heii soil Is we le I nil as bravc. X I . I X In I heir bai oiiial fends aii.di''<-; I'.ni si ill iheii II. line vv.is lien cness, and drew on Keen (Oiliest .1 II d de ,1 1 I K I ioii uvi\f allicil, And many a lower for soiint fair mischief won, Saw tin- discoloured Rhine beneath ils rniii run. Hilt Ihoii, exulting and aboiindiii}^ river! IVlakiii).j thy waves a blessin;; .r. Ihey How 'rhroii^^h banks wlmse Ixsiiity would endure forevcr CJould mail bill leave lliy biij^hl crealion s<», 64 BYRON [CANTO in Nor its fair promise from the surface mow 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 Even now what wants thy stream ? — that it should Lethe be. LI 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 ; But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem. LII Thus Harold inly said, and passed along, Yet not insensibly to all which here Awoke the jocund birds to early song In glens which might have made e'en 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. LIII 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 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. LIV 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. CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 65 LV And there was one soft breast, as hath been said, Which unto his was bound by stronger ties Than the church links withal: and, though unwed, That love was pure, and far above disguise, 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! The castled crag of Drachenfels, 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. Where 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: 66 BYRON [CANTO III 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 ! LVI \ 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 Honor to Marceau.! o'er whose early tomb 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. LVIU Here Ehrenbreitstein, 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. I,IX 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 CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 67 On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year. LX 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. But none unite in one attaching maze The brilliant, fair, and soft — the glories of old days. LXI 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. LXII But these recede. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps. 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. LXIII 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 I 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 wandering ghost. 68 BYRON [CANTO III LXIV While Waterloo with Cannae'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 Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause. LXV 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, hath strewed her subject lands. LXVI 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. Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. LXVII 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, Imperishably pure beyond all things below. LXVIII 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: CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 69 There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which 1 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. LXIX 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 In one 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. LXX 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 Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be. LXXI Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, 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 ! — Is it not better thus our lives to wear. Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear? LXXII 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 Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain. Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. yo BYRON [CANTO ill LXXIII 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 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. LXXIV And when, at length, the mind shall be all free From what it hates in this degraded form, 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 ? Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot ? LXXV Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part 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 ? LXXVI But this is not my theme; and I return 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. LXXVII Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The apostle of affliction, he who threw Enchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 71 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 Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. Lxxvm 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. 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. LXXIX This breathed itself to life in Julie, this Invested her with all that's wild and sweet; This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss 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: In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. LXXX 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, 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind, But he was frenzied — wherefore, who may know ? Since cause might be which skill could never find ; But he was frenzied by disease or woe To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show. LXXXI 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 ? 72 BYRON [CANTO III LXXXII They made themselves a fearful monument! The wreck of old opinions — things which grew, Breathed from the birth of time: the veil they rent, And what behind it lay, all earth shall view. 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. LXXXIII 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 ! LXXXIV 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. LXXXV Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world 1 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. LXXXVI 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 CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 73 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; LXXXVII He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill ; 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. LXXXVIII 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. LXXXIX 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. xc Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt 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 Eternal harnjony, 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. 74 BYRON [CANTO in xci Not vainly did the early Persian make His altar the high places and the peak Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek The S]Mrit, in whose honour shrines are weak, Ujireared of human hands. Come, and compare Columns and idol-dwellings, (it)th or Greek, With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air, Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer! XCII The sky is changed ! — and such a change ! O night. 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, lUit every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud. Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud ! xcui And this is in tlie night: — Most glorious night! 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 ! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea. Anil 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. xciv Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between Heights which ajipear as lovers who have parted 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. xcv Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, The mightiest of the storms hath taken his stand : P'or here, not one, but many, make their play. And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand. CANTO 111] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 75 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. xcvr Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye! 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 ? XCVII 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. XCVIII 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. xcix 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 The very glaciers have his colours caught. And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought By rays which sleep there lovingly : the rocks, 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. 76 BYRON [CANTO III c Clarens ! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod — Undying Love's who here ascends a throne To which the steps are mountains; where the god Is a pervading Hfe and light — so shown 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 Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour. CI All things are here of him ; from the black pines, Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar Of torrents, where he Hsteneth, 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, Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude. CII A populous solitude of bees and birds. And fairy-formed and many-coloured things. Who worship him with notes more sweet than words, 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. cm 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, 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 ! CIV '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 CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 17 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. cv Lausanne ! and Ferney ! ye have been the abodes Of names which unto you bequeathed a name; 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. cvi 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; 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. cvii The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought. 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. And doomed him to the zealot's ready hell. Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. CVIII 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. 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. 78 BYRON [CANTO III CIX 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. ex 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 for knowledge, quaffing there her fill. Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill. CXI 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. CXII And for these words, thus woven into song, It may be that they are a harmless wile — The colouring of the scenes which fleet along, 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 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. CXIII 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 CANTO III] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 79 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. cxiv 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 falling: I would also deem O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; That two, or one, are almost what they seem — That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. cxv 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 shouldst 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. cxvi To aid thy mind's development — 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. CXVII 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 wouldst love me, still that more than life retain. 80 BYRON [CANTO IV CXVIII 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 mightst have been to me! CANTO THE FOURTH TO JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A. M., F. R. S., ETC. Mv DEAR HoBHOUSE : After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better ; to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than — though not ungrateful — I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet ; to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril ; to a friend often tried and never found wanting — to yourself. In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth ; and in dedicating to you, in its complete or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery ; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship ; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to with- stand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exer- tion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary 6f the most unfortunate day of my past existence, but which can not poison my future while I retain the source of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself. It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable — Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy ; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pil- grim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last ; and perhaps it may CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE gl be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe ; and however un- worthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, how- ever short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impres- sions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects. With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed deter- mined not to receive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim ; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether — and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that sub- ject, are now a matter of indifference ; the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer ; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I pro- posed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections ; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were neces- sarily limited to the elucidation of the text. It is also a delicate, and no very grateful, task to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an atten- tion and impartiality which would induce us — though perhaps no inatten- tive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people among whom we have recently abode — to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political, party appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language — "Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la piii nobile ed insieme la piu dolce tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto 1' antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still — Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonti, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of art, science, and belles lettres ; and in some the very highest : Europe — the world — has but one Canova. It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce piu robusta in Italia che in qualungue altra terra — e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition — a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours — that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraor- 6 82 BYRON [CANTO IV dinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their concep- tions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and, amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched " longing after immortality " — the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers' chorus, " Roma ! Roma ! Roma ! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was diffi- cult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me — " Non movero mai corda Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda." What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended habeas corpus ; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the south, " Verily they will have their reward," and at no very distant period. Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedi- cate to you this poem in its completed state ; and repeat once more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend, Venice, January 2, 181S. BYRON. CANTO THE FOURTH I I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridg^e of Sighs; 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! II 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 : CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE And such she was ; — her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 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. Ill In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, 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. The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! IV 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 With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, 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. v 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 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. VI Such is the refuge of our youth and age. The first from hope, the last from vacancy; And this worn feeling peoples many a page, And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye; Yet there are things whose strong reality Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky. And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: 83 84 BYRON [CANTO iv VII 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 overweening phantasies unsound. And other voices speak, and other sights surround. VIII 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 — ay, or without mankind; Yet was I born where men are proud to be, Not without cause; and should I leave behind The inviolate island of the sage and free, And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, IX 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 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 X 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. XI The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord ; And, annual marriage now no more renewed, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored. Neglected garment of her widowhood! CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 85 St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. XII The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns — 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 ! Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. XIII 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 ? Are they not bridled ! — Venice, lost and won. Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose ! Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes. From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. XIV In youth she was all glory — a new Tyre — Her very byword 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. XV 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, Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. 86 BYRON [CANTO IV XVI 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: 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. X.VII Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, Were all thy proud heroic deeds forgot, Thy choral memory of the bard divine. Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot 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, XVIII 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, Had stamped her image in me, and even so. Although I found her thus, we did not part, Perchance even dearer in her day of M'oe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. XIX 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, Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb. XX But from their nature will the tannen grow Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks. Rooted in barrenness, where naught below Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 8/ 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. And grew a giant tree ; — the mind may grow the same. XXI Existence may be borne, and the deep root Of life and sufferance make its firm abode In bare and desolated bosoms: mute 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. XXII 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. XXIII 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 forever: it may be a sound — A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring — A flower — the wind — the ocean — which shall wound. Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound ; XXIV 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 ! 88 BYRON [CANTO IV XXV But my soul wanders; I demand it back To meditate amongst decay, and stand A ruin amidst ruins; there to track Fallen 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, XXVI The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome ! And even since, and now, fair Italy ! Thou art the garden of the world, the home 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 can not be defaced, XXVII 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 ! XXVIII A single star is at her side, and reigns With her o'er half the lonely heaven ; but still Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian 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. XXIX 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 : CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 89 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. XXX 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 With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. XXXI They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died ; 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 And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fame. XXXII 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, XXXIII 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, '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: 90 liYRON [lANio IV XXXIV Or, it may be, with (lemons, who impair The strenj^th of better thoujj^hts, ami seek their prey In melancholy bosoms, such as were Of moody texture from their earliest day. And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeminjj themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pansys that jiass away ; Makinj;- the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, 'J'he tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. XXXV Fcrrara ! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, Whose symmetry was not for solitude, There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats (^f former sovereigns, and the anticpie brood Of Isste, which for many an age made good Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore Patron or tyrant, as the changing nuH)d Of jH'tty power impelled, of those who wore The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. X X \ \ 1 And Tasso is their glory and their shame. Mark to his strain ! aiul then survey his cell ! And sec how dearly earned Torquato's fame, And where Alfonso baile his poet dwell. The miserable ilespot coukl not (piell The insulted mind he sought to ciuench, and blend With the surrounding maniacs, in the lu'll Where he had plunged it. Olory without end Scattered the clouds away — and on that name attend X X X \' 1 1 The tears anil praises o( all time, while thine Woiikl rot in its oblivion — in the sink Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line Is shaken into nothing; but the link Thou fi)rmest in his fortunes bids us think Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn — Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink From thee! if in amUher station born, Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn. X \ X \' u 1 Thou! formed to eat, and be despised, and die. Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou Ilailst a m(Me splendid trough ami wider sty: He! with a glory round his furrowed brow, CANTO IV] CIIILDK HAROLD'S IMLCRlMyVGE Which emanated then, and dazzles now In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And IJoileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth — monotony in wire ! XXXIX 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 niillious; 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 Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun. XL Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, Thy cotuitrymen, before thee born to shine, The ]5ards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose The Tuscan father's comedy divine; Then, not une(pial to the l'"lorentine. 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. XLI The lig:htning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust. For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves. And the false semblance but disgraced his brow ; Yet still, if fondly vSuperstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below Whate'er it strikes; — yon head is doubly sacred now! XLI I Italia! O 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, And annals graved in characters of fiame. O God ! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who jjress To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; 91 92 BYRON [CANTO IV XLIII Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored For thy destructive charms ; then, still untired. Would not be seen the armed 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. XLIV 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 ^gina lay, PirKus 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 ; XLV 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 crushed relics of their vanished might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age. These sepulchres of cities, which excite Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. XLVI 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. XLVII 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; CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 93 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. XLVIII 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. And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. XLIX There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills The air around with beauty; we inhale 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 idolators of old Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: L We gaze and turn away, and know not where. Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart Reels with its fulness; there — forever 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 ! 94 BYRON [CANTO IV I. II Glowinj]^, and circumfuscd in speechless love, Their full divinity inadequate That feelinij to express, or to improve, The j;ods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest; but the weight Of earth recoils upon us ; — let it go ! We can recall such visions, and create, l''rom what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. LIJI I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, The artist and his ape, to teach and tell How well his connoisse-urship understands The graceful bend, and the volui)tuous swell : Let these describe the undescribable : I wcMild not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall forever dwell ; The unrulllod mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. LIV In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie Ashes which make it holier, dust which is lf glory's gewgaws shining in the van 'Pill the sun's rays with added tlame were fdled ! Where are its golden roofs ? where those who tlared to build ? rx Tully was not so eloipient as thou, 'Phou nameless column with the buried base! What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow ? C'rown me with ivy from his dwelling-place. CANTO iv] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 107 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, Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, CXI 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. CXII 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 Cured all ambition. Did the conciuerors 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! CXIII 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. cxiv Then turn we to our 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. 38 BYRON [CANTO IV cxv Egeria ! sweet creation of some heart 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; 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. cxvi 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, cxvii 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. CXVIII 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 befell ? This cave was only shaped out for the greeting Of an enamoured goddess, and the cell Haunted by holy Love — the earliest oracle ! cxix And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying. Blend a celestial with a human heart ; And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing. Share with immortal transport? could thine art CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 109 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 ? cxx 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. cxxi O Love ! no habitant of earth thou art — 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. As haunts the unquenched soul— parched— weaned— wrung —and riven. (.^xii 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 ? cxxni 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. no BYRON [CANTO IV CXXIV 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, And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. cxxv 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. cxxvi 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. CXXVII 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 unprepared mind. The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. CXXVIII 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 CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE III 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 cxxix 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. cxxx O 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 : cxxxi 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? CXXXII And thou, who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis ! Here, where the ancient paid the 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. 112 BYRON [CANTO IV CXXXIII It is not that I may not have incurred For my ancestral faults or mine the wound I bleed withal, and had it been conferred With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound; lUit 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, cxxxiv And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 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! cxxxv 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, cxxxvi 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. cxxxvii 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 CANTO ivj CIIILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 113 Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Liice 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. CXXXVIII 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 unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen, cxxxix And there the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared aj^plause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered ? wherefore, but because Such was 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. CXL I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 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. Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him — he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who WO"- CXLI 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, Hut 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 — All this rushed with his blood. — Shall he expire. And unavenged ? — Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! 8 114 BYRON [CANTO IV CXLII 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. My voice sounds much — and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void — seats crushed — walls bowed — And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. CXLIII A ruin — yet what ruin ! from its mass Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ; Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, 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. CXLIV 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, Like laurels on the bald first Caesar'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. CXLV "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. CXLVl Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime — Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time; Looking tranquility, while falls or nods CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 115 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 ! CXLVII 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. CXLVIII 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 : 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 ? CXLIX 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 No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives 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. CL 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 Il6 BYRON [CANTO IV Than Egypt's river : — from that gentle side Drink, drink and live, old man ! heaven's realm holds no such tide. CLI 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: — O holiest nurse! No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. CLII Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high, Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, 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. To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth ! CLIII But lo ! the dome — the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell — Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb ! I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle — Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell The hyena and the jackal in their shade; I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyed Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed; CLIV But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone — with nothing like to thee — Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 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. CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 117 CLV 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. CLVI 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 — All musical in its immensities; Rich marbles — richer painting — shrines where flame 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. CLVII 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 In mighty graduations, part by part. The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, CLVIII Not by its fault — but thine: Our outward sense 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. CLIX 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 Il8 BYRON [CANTO IV Of art and its great masters, who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan; The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. CLX Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Laocoon'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 clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links — the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. CLXI Or view the Lord of the unerring bow. The God of life, and poesy, and light — 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. CLXII 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 expressed 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 ! CLXIII 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; CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE ng And Time himself hath hallowed it, not laid One ringlet in the dust — nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought. CLXIV 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, CLXV 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, CLXVI 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. CLXVII 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. I20 BYRON [CANTO IV CLXVIII 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 beloved head ? In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy. Death hushed that pang forever : with thee fled The present happiness and promised joy Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy. CLXIX Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be, O 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 Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonely lord, And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed ! The husband of a year ! the father of the dead ! CLXX 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 intrust 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 star to shepherds' eyes : — 'twas but a meteor beamed. CLXXI 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 — CLXXIl 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! CANTO IV] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 12 1 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. CLXXIII 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 A deep cold settled aspect naught can shake. All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. CLXXIV And near Albano's scarce divided waves Shine from a sister valley ; — and afar The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, "Arms and the Man," whose reascending star Rose o'er an empire : — but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome : — and where yon bar Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight. The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight. CLXXV 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 CLXXVI Upon the blue Symplegades : long years- Long, though not very many, since have done Their work on both ; some suffering and some tears 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. 122 BYRON [CANTO IV CI.XXVII 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. CLXXVIII There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a raj-jture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes, By the deep vSea, and music in its roar : I love not Man the les's, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all 1 may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What 1 can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. CLXXIX 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. CLXXX His steps are not upon thy paths — thv 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. CLXXXI 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 THE WRECK. Photogravure from a painting by Maurice Frederirl< Hnulrick de Haas 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 p-Qr 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 1.1 Childe Harold's I'il^i unngc, Fourth Canto : CLXX.\ K mml -rr^ivinvolorlT '1;? bnA .riA CANTO IV] Cnil.DK HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 1 23 'Hicir clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy (lake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. CLXXXII 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, 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— Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. CLXXXIII 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 Of the Invisible; even from out thy shme The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. CI-XXXIV 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. CLXXXV My task is done— my song hath ceased— my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit 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 T.ess palpably before me— and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. 124 BYRON [CANTO I CLXXXVI Farewell ! a word that must be, and hath been — A sound which makes us linger; — yet — farewell! Ye ! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene 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. NOTES Canto I I. The little village of Castri stands partly on the site of Delphi. Along the path of the mountain, from Chrysso, are the remains of sepulchres hewn in and from the rock. "One," said the guide, "of a king who broke his neck hunting." His Majesty had certainly chosen the fittest spot for such an achievement. A little above Castri is a cave, supposed the Pythian, of immense depth ; the upper part of it is paved, and now a cow-house. On the other side of Castri stands a Greek monastery, some way above which is the cleft in the rock, with a range of caverns difficult of ascent, and apparently leading to the interior of the mountain, probably to the Corycian Cavern mentioned by Pausanias. From this part descend the fountain and the " Dews of Castalie." XX. The convent of " Our Lady of Punishment," on the summit of the rock. Below is the Cork Convent, where St. Honorius dug his den, over which is his epitaph. From the hills, the sea adds to the beauty of the view. XXI. In the year 1809, the assassinations in the streets of Lisbon and its vicinity were not confined by the Portuguese to their countrymen, but Englishmen were daily butchered ; and, so far from redress being ob- tained, we were requested not to interfere if we perceived any compatriot defending himself against his allies. I was once stopped on the way to the theatre at eight o'clock in the evening, when the streets were not more empty than they generally are at that hour, opposite an open shop, and in a carriage with a friend : had we not fortunately been armed, I have not the least doubt that we should have "adorned a tale" instead of tell- ing one. The crime of assassination is not confined to Portugal : in Sicily and Malta we are knocked on the head at a handsome average nightly, and not a Sicilian or Maltese is ever punished. XXIV. The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Mar- chese Marialva. XXIX. Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad : and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers. XXXIII. As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterized them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident. The late exploits of Lord Wellington have effaced the follies of Cintra. He has, indeed, done wonders : he has, perhaps, changed the character of a nation, reconciled rival superstitions, and baffled an enemy who never retreated before his predecessors. — 1812. XXXV. Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius pre- CANTO II] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 125 served his independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descend- ants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Granada. j 1 :^ ♦!,«. XLVIII " Viva el Rey Fernando ! " Long live King Ferdinand ! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs. They are chiefly in dispraise of the old King Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. I have heard manv of them : some of the airs are beautiful. Don Manuel Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, of an ancient but decayed family, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal ; and was originally in the ranks of the Span- ish guards, till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country. L The red cockade, with " Fernando VII in the centre. LI All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville. ^ ^ , , LVI Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta. .. c * r>»»iio t LXXX The Spaniards are as revengeful as ever. At Santa Utella 1 heard a young peasant threaten to stab a woman (an old one, to be sure, which mitigates the offence), and was told, on expressing some surprise, that this was by no means uncommon. LXXXV. Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1809. , .u • ( LXXXVI. Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege 01 ^^XCl\he Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra, May 14, 1811. I had known him ten years— the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction : " Insatiate archer ! could not one suffice ? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, And thrice ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn." I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired ; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of his friends, who loved him too well to envy his superiority. Canto II I. Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. . . II. We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins ot cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld ; the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues— of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country— appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturb- 126 BYRON [CANTO n ance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest ; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman ! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens ; but it re- mained for the paltry antiquary, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard : it changed its worshippers, but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion : its violation is a triple sacrifice. But — " Man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven As make the angels weep." V. It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead ; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease ; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidus, and others, and at last even Anti- nous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. X. The Temple of Jupiter Olympus, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive : originally there were one hundred and fifty. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon. XIV. According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis ; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer. — See Chandler. XVIII. To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action. XL. Lcucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho is said to have thrown herself. Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The battle of Lepanto, equally bloody and consider- able, but less known, was fought in the Gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his left hand. XLV. It is said that, on the day previous to the battle of Actium, Antony had thirteen kings at his levee. Nicopolis, whose ruins are most extensive, is at some distance from Actium, where the wall of the Hippodrome survives in a few fragments. These ruins are large masses of brickwork, the bricks of which are joined by interstices of mortar, as large as the bricks themselves, and equally durable. XLVII. According to Pouqueville, the lake of Yanina : but Pouque- ville is always out. The celebrated Ali Pacha. Of this extraordinary man there is an in- correct account in Pouqueville's Travels. Five thousand Suliotcs, among the rocks and in the castle of Suli, withstood thirty thousand Albanians for eighteen years ; the castle at last was taken by bribery. In this contest there were several acts per- formed not unworthy of the better days of Greece. XLVIII. The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina, or Yanina, the capital of the pachalic. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and, not far from Zitza, forms a fine cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece, though the ap- proach to Delvinachi and parts of Acarnania and .^tolia may contest the CANTO II] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 127 palm. Delphi, Parnassus, and, in Attica, even Cape Colonna and Port Raphti, are very inferior ; as also every scene in Ionia, or the Troad : I am almost inclined to add the approach to Constantinople ; but, from the different features of the last, a comparison can hardly be made. XLIX. The Greek monks are so called. LI. The Chimariot Mountains appear to have been volcanic. LV. The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it ; and, im- mediately above Tepaleen, was to the eye as wide as the Thames at West- minster — at least in the opinion of the author and his fellow-traveller. In the summer it must be much narrower. It certainly is the finest river in the Levant ; neither Achelous, Alpheus, Acheron, Scamander, nor Cayster approached it in breadth or beauty. LXXI. The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, in- deed, very few of the others. " Palikar," a general name for a soldier among the Greeks and Alban- ese who speak R