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| 1 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE | |
| 2 | |
| 3 By Lord Byron | |
| 4 | |
| 5 List of Contents | |
| 6 | |
| 7 To Ianthe | |
| 8 Canto the First | |
| 9 Canto the Second | |
| 10 Canto the Third | |
| 11 Canto the Fourth | |
| 12 | |
| 13 TO IANTHE. {1} | |
| 14 | |
| 15 Not in those climes where I have late been straying, | |
| 16 Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed, | |
| 17 Not in those visions to the heart displaying | |
| 18 Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed, | |
| 19 Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed: | |
| 20 Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek | |
| 21 To paint those charms which varied as they beamed-- | |
| 22 To such as see thee not my words were weak; | |
| 23 To those who gaze on thee, what language could they speak? | |
| 24 | |
| 25 Ah! mayst thou ever be what now thou art, | |
| 26 Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring, | |
| 27 As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart, | |
| 28 Love's image upon earth without his wing, | |
| 29 And guileless beyond Hope's imagining! | |
| 30 And surely she who now so fondly rears | |
| 31 Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening, | |
| 32 Beholds the rainbow of her future years, | |
| 33 Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears. | |
| 34 | |
| 35 Young Peri of the West!--'tis well for me | |
| 36 My years already doubly number thine; | |
| 37 My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee, | |
| 38 And safely view thy ripening beauties shine: | |
| 39 Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline; | |
| 40 Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed | |
| 41 Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign | |
| 42 To those whose admiration shall succeed, | |
| 43 But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed. | |
| 44 | |
| 45 Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the gazelle's, | |
| 46 Now brightly bold or beautifully shy, | |
| 47 Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells, | |
| 48 Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny | |
| 49 That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh, | |
| 50 Could I to thee be ever more than friend: | |
| 51 This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why | |
| 52 To one so young my strain I would commend, | |
| 53 But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend. | |
| 54 | |
| 55 Such is thy name with this my verse entwined; | |
| 56 And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast | |
| 57 On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined | |
| 58 Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last: | |
| 59 My days once numbered, should this homage past | |
| 60 Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre | |
| 61 Of him who hailed thee, loveliest as thou wast, | |
| 62 Such is the most my memory may desire; | |
| 63 Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require? | |
| 64 | |
| 65 | |
| 66 | |
| 67 | |
| 68 CANTO THE FIRST. | |
| 69 | |
| 70 | |
| 71 | |
| 72 I. | |
| 73 | |
| 74 Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, | |
| 75 Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! | |
| 76 Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, | |
| 77 Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: | |
| 78 Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; | |
| 79 Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine | |
| 80 Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still; | |
| 81 Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine | |
| 82 To grace so plain a tale--this lowly lay of mine. | |
| 83 | |
| 84 II. | |
| 85 | |
| 86 Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth, | |
| 87 Who ne in virtue's ways did take delight; | |
| 88 But spent his days in riot most uncouth, | |
| 89 And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night. | |
| 90 Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, | |
| 91 Sore given to revel and ungodly glee; | |
| 92 Few earthly things found favour in his sight | |
| 93 Save concubines and carnal companie, | |
| 94 And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree. | |
| 95 | |
| 96 III. | |
| 97 | |
| 98 Childe Harold was he hight:--but whence his name | |
| 99 And lineage long, it suits me not to say; | |
| 100 Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame, | |
| 101 And had been glorious in another day: | |
| 102 But one sad losel soils a name for aye, | |
| 103 However mighty in the olden time; | |
| 104 Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay, | |
| 105 Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lines of rhyme, | |
| 106 Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime. | |
| 107 | |
| 108 IV. | |
| 109 | |
| 110 Childe Harold basked him in the noontide sun, | |
| 111 Disporting there like any other fly, | |
| 112 Nor deemed before his little day was done | |
| 113 One blast might chill him into misery. | |
| 114 But long ere scarce a third of his passed by, | |
| 115 Worse than adversity the Childe befell; | |
| 116 He felt the fulness of satiety: | |
| 117 Then loathed he in his native land to dwell, | |
| 118 Which seemed to him more lone than eremite's sad cell. | |
| 119 | |
| 120 V. | |
| 121 | |
| 122 For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run, | |
| 123 Nor made atonement when he did amiss, | |
| 124 Had sighed to many, though he loved but one, | |
| 125 And that loved one, alas, could ne'er be his. | |
| 126 Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss | |
| 127 Had been pollution unto aught so chaste; | |
| 128 Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss, | |
| 129 And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste, | |
| 130 Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste. | |
| 131 | |
| 132 VI. | |
| 133 | |
| 134 And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart, | |
| 135 And from his fellow bacchanals would flee; | |
| 136 'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start, | |
| 137 But pride congealed the drop within his e'e: | |
| 138 Apart he stalked in joyless reverie, | |
| 139 And from his native land resolved to go, | |
| 140 And visit scorching climes beyond the sea; | |
| 141 With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe, | |
| 142 And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below. | |
| 143 | |
| 144 VII. | |
| 145 | |
| 146 The Childe departed from his father's hall; | |
| 147 It was a vast and venerable pile; | |
| 148 So old, it seemed only not to fall, | |
| 149 Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle. | |
| 150 Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile! | |
| 151 Where superstition once had made her den, | |
| 152 Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile; | |
| 153 And monks might deem their time was come agen, | |
| 154 If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men. | |
| 155 | |
| 156 VIII. | |
| 157 | |
| 158 Yet ofttimes in his maddest mirthful mood, | |
| 159 Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow, | |
| 160 As if the memory of some deadly feud | |
| 161 Or disappointed passion lurked below: | |
| 162 But this none knew, nor haply cared to know; | |
| 163 For his was not that open, artless soul | |
| 164 That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow; | |
| 165 Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole, | |
| 166 Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control. | |
| 167 | |
| 168 IX. | |
| 169 | |
| 170 And none did love him: though to hall and bower | |
| 171 He gathered revellers from far and near, | |
| 172 He knew them flatterers of the festal hour; | |
| 173 The heartless parasites of present cheer. | |
| 174 Yea, none did love him--not his lemans dear-- | |
| 175 But pomp and power alone are woman's care, | |
| 176 And where these are light Eros finds a feere; | |
| 177 Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, | |
| 178 And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair. | |
| 179 | |
| 180 X. | |
| 181 | |
| 182 Childe Harold had a mother--not forgot, | |
| 183 Though parting from that mother he did shun; | |
| 184 A sister whom he loved, but saw her not | |
| 185 Before his weary pilgrimage begun: | |
| 186 If friends he had, he bade adieu to none. | |
| 187 Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel; | |
| 188 Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon | |
| 189 A few dear objects, will in sadness feel | |
| 190 Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal. | |
| 191 | |
| 192 XI. | |
| 193 | |
| 194 His house, his home, his heritage, his lands, | |
| 195 The laughing dames in whom he did delight, | |
| 196 Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands, | |
| 197 Might shake the saintship of an anchorite, | |
| 198 And long had fed his youthful appetite; | |
| 199 His goblets brimmed with every costly wine, | |
| 200 And all that mote to luxury invite, | |
| 201 Without a sigh he left to cross the brine, | |
| 202 And traverse Paynim shores, and pass earth's central line. | |
| 203 | |
| 204 XII. | |
| 205 | |
| 206 The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew | |
| 207 As glad to waft him from his native home; | |
| 208 And fast the white rocks faded from his view, | |
| 209 And soon were lost in circumambient foam; | |
| 210 And then, it may be, of his wish to roam | |
| 211 Repented he, but in his bosom slept | |
| 212 The silent thought, nor from his lips did come | |
| 213 One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, | |
| 214 And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept. | |
| 215 | |
| 216 XIII. | |
| 217 | |
| 218 But when the sun was sinking in the sea, | |
| 219 He seized his harp, which he at times could string, | |
| 220 And strike, albeit with untaught melody, | |
| 221 When deemed he no strange ear was listening: | |
| 222 And now his fingers o'er it he did fling, | |
| 223 And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight, | |
| 224 While flew the vessel on her snowy wing, | |
| 225 And fleeting shores receded from his sight, | |
| 226 Thus to the elements he poured his last 'Good Night.' | |
| 227 | |
| 228 Adieu, adieu! my native shore | |
| 229 Fades o'er the waters blue; | |
| 230 The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, | |
| 231 And shrieks the wild sea-mew. | |
| 232 Yon sun that sets upon the sea | |
| 233 We follow in his flight; | |
| 234 Farewell awhile to him and thee, | |
| 235 My Native Land--Good Night! | |
| 236 | |
| 237 A few short hours, and he will rise | |
| 238 To give the morrow birth; | |
| 239 And I shall hail the main and skies, | |
| 240 But not my mother earth. | |
| 241 Deserted is my own good hall, | |
| 242 Its hearth is desolate; | |
| 243 Wild weeds are gathering on the wall, | |
| 244 My dog howls at the gate. | |
| 245 | |
| 246 'Come hither, hither, my little page: | |
| 247 Why dost thou weep and wail? | |
| 248 Or dost thou dread the billow's rage, | |
| 249 Or tremble at the gale? | |
| 250 But dash the tear-drop from thine eye, | |
| 251 Our ship is swift and strong; | |
| 252 Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly | |
| 253 More merrily along.' | |
| 254 | |
| 255 'Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high, | |
| 256 I fear not wave nor wind; | |
| 257 Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I | |
| 258 Am sorrowful in mind; | |
| 259 For I have from my father gone, | |
| 260 A mother whom I love, | |
| 261 And have no friend, save these alone, | |
| 262 But thee--and One above. | |
| 263 | |
| 264 'My father blessed me fervently, | |
| 265 Yet did not much complain; | |
| 266 But sorely will my mother sigh | |
| 267 Till I come back again.'-- | |
| 268 'Enough, enough, my little lad! | |
| 269 Such tears become thine eye; | |
| 270 If I thy guileless bosom had, | |
| 271 Mine own would not be dry. | |
| 272 | |
| 273 'Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman, | |
| 274 Why dost thou look so pale? | |
| 275 Or dost thou dread a French foeman, | |
| 276 Or shiver at the gale?'-- | |
| 277 'Deem'st thou I tremble for my life? | |
| 278 Sir Childe, I'm not so weak; | |
| 279 But thinking on an absent wife | |
| 280 Will blanch a faithful cheek. | |
| 281 | |
| 282 'My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall, | |
| 283 Along the bordering lake; | |
| 284 And when they on their father call, | |
| 285 What answer shall she make?'-- | |
| 286 'Enough, enough, my yeoman good, | |
| 287 Thy grief let none gainsay; | |
| 288 But I, who am of lighter mood, | |
| 289 Will laugh to flee away.' | |
| 290 | |
| 291 For who would trust the seeming sighs | |
| 292 Of wife or paramour? | |
| 293 Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes | |
| 294 We late saw streaming o'er. | |
| 295 For pleasures past I do not grieve, | |
| 296 Nor perils gathering near; | |
| 297 My greatest grief is that I leave | |
| 298 No thing that claims a tear. | |
| 299 | |
| 300 And now I'm in the world alone, | |
| 301 Upon the wide, wide sea; | |
| 302 But why should I for others groan, | |
| 303 When none will sigh for me? | |
| 304 Perchance my dog will whine in vain | |
| 305 Till fed by stranger hands; | |
| 306 But long ere I come back again | |
| 307 He'd tear me where he stands. | |
| 308 | |
| 309 With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go | |
| 310 Athwart the foaming brine; | |
| 311 Nor care what land thou bear'st me to, | |
| 312 So not again to mine. | |
| 313 Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves! | |
| 314 And when you fail my sight, | |
| 315 Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves! | |
| 316 My Native Land--Good Night! | |
| 317 | |
| 318 XIV. | |
| 319 | |
| 320 On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone, | |
| 321 And winds are rude in Biscay's sleepless bay. | |
| 322 Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon, | |
| 323 New shores descried make every bosom gay; | |
| 324 And Cintra's mountain greets them on their way, | |
| 325 And Tagus dashing onward to the deep, | |
| 326 His fabled golden tribute bent to pay; | |
| 327 And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap, | |
| 328 And steer 'twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap. | |
| 329 | |
| 330 XV. | |
| 331 | |
| 332 Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see | |
| 333 What Heaven hath done for this delicious land! | |
| 334 What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree! | |
| 335 What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand! | |
| 336 But man would mar them with an impious hand: | |
| 337 And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge | |
| 338 'Gainst those who most transgress his high command, | |
| 339 With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge | |
| 340 Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen purge. | |
| 341 | |
| 342 XVI. | |
| 343 | |
| 344 What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold! | |
| 345 Her image floating on that noble tide, | |
| 346 Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold, | |
| 347 But now whereon a thousand keels did ride | |
| 348 Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied, | |
| 349 And to the Lusians did her aid afford | |
| 350 A nation swoll'n with ignorance and pride, | |
| 351 Who lick, yet loathe, the hand that waves the sword. | |
| 352 To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord. | |
| 353 | |
| 354 XVII. | |
| 355 | |
| 356 But whoso entereth within this town, | |
| 357 That, sheening far, celestial seems to be, | |
| 358 Disconsolate will wander up and down, | |
| 359 Mid many things unsightly to strange e'e; | |
| 360 For hut and palace show like filthily; | |
| 361 The dingy denizens are reared in dirt; | |
| 362 No personage of high or mean degree | |
| 363 Doth care for cleanness of surtout or shirt, | |
| 364 Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt. | |
| 365 | |
| 366 XVIII. | |
| 367 | |
| 368 Poor, paltry slaves! yet born midst noblest scenes-- | |
| 369 Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men? | |
| 370 Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes | |
| 371 In variegated maze of mount and glen. | |
| 372 Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen, | |
| 373 To follow half on which the eye dilates | |
| 374 Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken | |
| 375 Than those whereof such things the bard relates, | |
| 376 Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates? | |
| 377 | |
| 378 XIX. | |
| 379 | |
| 380 The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned, | |
| 381 The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep, | |
| 382 The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned, | |
| 383 The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep, | |
| 384 The tender azure of the unruffled deep, | |
| 385 The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, | |
| 386 The torrents that from cliff to valley leap, | |
| 387 The vine on high, the willow branch below, | |
| 388 Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow. | |
| 389 | |
| 390 XX. | |
| 391 | |
| 392 Then slowly climb the many-winding way, | |
| 393 And frequent turn to linger as you go, | |
| 394 From loftier rocks new loveliness survey, | |
| 395 And rest ye at 'Our Lady's House of Woe;' | |
| 396 Where frugal monks their little relics show, | |
| 397 And sundry legends to the stranger tell: | |
| 398 Here impious men have punished been; and lo, | |
| 399 Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell, | |
| 400 In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell. | |
| 401 | |
| 402 XXI. | |
| 403 | |
| 404 And here and there, as up the crags you spring, | |
| 405 Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path; | |
| 406 Yet deem not these devotion's offering-- | |
| 407 These are memorials frail of murderous wrath; | |
| 408 For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath | |
| 409 Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife, | |
| 410 Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath; | |
| 411 And grove and glen with thousand such are rife | |
| 412 Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life! | |
| 413 | |
| 414 XXII. | |
| 415 | |
| 416 On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath, | |
| 417 Are domes where whilom kings did make repair; | |
| 418 But now the wild flowers round them only breathe: | |
| 419 Yet ruined splendour still is lingering there. | |
| 420 And yonder towers the prince's palace fair: | |
| 421 There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son, | |
| 422 Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware | |
| 423 When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, | |
| 424 Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun. | |
| 425 | |
| 426 XXIII. | |
| 427 | |
| 428 Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan. | |
| 429 Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow; | |
| 430 But now, as if a thing unblest by man, | |
| 431 Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! | |
| 432 Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow | |
| 433 To halls deserted, portals gaping wide; | |
| 434 Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how | |
| 435 Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied; | |
| 436 Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide. | |
| 437 | |
| 438 XXIV. | |
| 439 | |
| 440 Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened! | |
| 441 Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye! | |
| 442 With diadem hight foolscap, lo! a fiend, | |
| 443 A little fiend that scoffs incessantly, | |
| 444 There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by | |
| 445 His side is hung a seal and sable scroll, | |
| 446 Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry, | |
| 447 And sundry signatures adorn the roll, | |
| 448 Whereat the urchin points, and laughs with all his soul. | |
| 449 | |
| 450 XXV. | |
| 451 | |
| 452 Convention is the dwarfish demon styled | |
| 453 That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome: | |
| 454 Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled, | |
| 455 And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom. | |
| 456 Here Folly dashed to earth the victor's plume, | |
| 457 And Policy regained what Arms had lost: | |
| 458 For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom! | |
| 459 Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host, | |
| 460 Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast. | |
| 461 | |
| 462 XXVI. | |
| 463 | |
| 464 And ever since that martial synod met, | |
| 465 Britannia sickens, Cintra, at thy name; | |
| 466 And folks in office at the mention fret, | |
| 467 And fain would blush, if blush they could, for shame. | |
| 468 How will posterity the deed proclaim! | |
| 469 Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer, | |
| 470 To view these champions cheated of their fame, | |
| 471 By foes in fight o'erthrown, yet victors here, | |
| 472 Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year? | |
| 473 | |
| 474 XXVII. | |
| 475 | |
| 476 So deemed the Childe, as o'er the mountains he | |
| 477 Did take his way in solitary guise: | |
| 478 Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee, | |
| 479 More restless than the swallow in the skies: | |
| 480 Though here awhile he learned to moralise, | |
| 481 For Meditation fixed at times on him, | |
| 482 And conscious Reason whispered to despise | |
| 483 His early youth misspent in maddest whim; | |
| 484 But as he gazed on Truth, his aching eyes grew dim. | |
| 485 | |
| 486 XXVIII. | |
| 487 | |
| 488 To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits | |
| 489 A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul: | |
| 490 Again he rouses from his moping fits, | |
| 491 But seeks not now the harlot and the bowl. | |
| 492 Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet the goal | |
| 493 Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage; | |
| 494 And o'er him many changing scenes must roll, | |
| 495 Ere toil his thirst for travel can assuage, | |
| 496 Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage. | |
| 497 | |
| 498 XXIX. | |
| 499 | |
| 500 Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay, | |
| 501 Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen; | |
| 502 And church and court did mingle their array, | |
| 503 And mass and revel were alternate seen; | |
| 504 Lordlings and freres--ill-sorted fry, I ween! | |
| 505 But here the Babylonian whore had built | |
| 506 A dome, where flaunts she in such glorious sheen, | |
| 507 That men forget the blood which she hath spilt, | |
| 508 And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to garnish guilt. | |
| 509 | |
| 510 XXX. | |
| 511 | |
| 512 O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills, | |
| 513 (Oh that such hills upheld a free-born race!) | |
| 514 Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce fills, | |
| 515 Childe Harold wends through many a pleasant place. | |
| 516 Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase, | |
| 517 And marvel men should quit their easy chair, | |
| 518 The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace. | |
| 519 Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air | |
| 520 And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share. | |
| 521 | |
| 522 XXXI. | |
| 523 | |
| 524 More bleak to view the hills at length recede, | |
| 525 And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend: | |
| 526 Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed! | |
| 527 Far as the eye discerns, withouten end, | |
| 528 Spain's realms appear, whereon her shepherds tend | |
| 529 Flocks, whose rich fleece right well the trader knows-- | |
| 530 Now must the pastor's arm his lambs defend: | |
| 531 For Spain is compassed by unyielding foes, | |
| 532 And all must shield their all, or share Subjection's woes. | |
| 533 | |
| 534 XXXII. | |
| 535 | |
| 536 Where Lusitania and her Sister meet, | |
| 537 Deem ye what bounds the rival realms divide? | |
| 538 Or e'er the jealous queens of nations greet, | |
| 539 Doth Tayo interpose his mighty tide? | |
| 540 Or dark sierras rise in craggy pride? | |
| 541 Or fence of art, like China's vasty wall?-- | |
| 542 Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide, | |
| 543 Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall | |
| 544 Rise like the rocks that part Hispania's land from Gaul | |
| 545 | |
| 546 XXXIII. | |
| 547 | |
| 548 But these between a silver streamlet glides, | |
| 549 And scarce a name distinguisheth the brook, | |
| 550 Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides. | |
| 551 Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook, | |
| 552 And vacant on the rippling waves doth look, | |
| 553 That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow: | |
| 554 For proud each peasant as the noblest duke: | |
| 555 Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know | |
| 556 'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low. | |
| 557 | |
| 558 XXXIV. | |
| 559 | |
| 560 But ere the mingling bounds have far been passed, | |
| 561 Dark Guadiana rolls his power along | |
| 562 In sullen billows, murmuring and vast, | |
| 563 So noted ancient roundelays among. | |
| 564 Whilome upon his banks did legions throng | |
| 565 Of Moor and Knight, in mailed splendour drest; | |
| 566 Here ceased the swift their race, here sunk the strong; | |
| 567 The Paynim turban and the Christian crest | |
| 568 Mixed on the bleeding stream, by floating hosts oppressed. | |
| 569 | |
| 570 XXXV. | |
| 571 | |
| 572 Oh, lovely Spain! renowned, romantic land! | |
| 573 Where is that standard which Pelagio bore, | |
| 574 When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band | |
| 575 That dyed thy mountain-streams with Gothic gore? | |
| 576 Where are those bloody banners which of yore | |
| 577 Waved o'er thy sons, victorious to the gale, | |
| 578 And drove at last the spoilers to their shore? | |
| 579 Red gleamed the cross, and waned the crescent pale, | |
| 580 While Afric's echoes thrilled with Moorish matrons' wail. | |
| 581 | |
| 582 XXXVI. | |
| 583 | |
| 584 Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale? | |
| 585 Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate! | |
| 586 When granite moulders and when records fail, | |
| 587 A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date. | |
| 588 Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate, | |
| 589 See how the mighty shrink into a song! | |
| 590 Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee great? | |
| 591 Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue, | |
| 592 When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong? | |
| 593 | |
| 594 XXXVII. | |
| 595 | |
| 596 Awake, ye sons of Spain! awake! advance | |
| 597 Lo! Chivalry, your ancient goddess, cries, | |
| 598 But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance, | |
| 599 Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies: | |
| 600 Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies, | |
| 601 And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar! | |
| 602 In every peal she calls--'Awake! arise!' | |
| 603 Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore, | |
| 604 When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore? | |
| 605 | |
| 606 XXXVIII. | |
| 607 | |
| 608 Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note? | |
| 609 Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath? | |
| 610 Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote; | |
| 611 Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath | |
| 612 Tyrants and tyrants' slaves?--the fires of death, | |
| 613 The bale-fires flash on high:--from rock to rock | |
| 614 Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe: | |
| 615 Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc, | |
| 616 Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. | |
| 617 | |
| 618 XXXIX. | |
| 619 | |
| 620 Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands, | |
| 621 His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun, | |
| 622 With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, | |
| 623 And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon; | |
| 624 Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon | |
| 625 Flashing afar,--and at his iron feet | |
| 626 Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done; | |
| 627 For on this morn three potent nations meet, | |
| 628 To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. | |
| 629 | |
| 630 XL. | |
| 631 | |
| 632 By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see | |
| 633 (For one who hath no friend, no brother there) | |
| 634 Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery, | |
| 635 Their various arms that glitter in the air! | |
| 636 What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair, | |
| 637 And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey! | |
| 638 All join the chase, but few the triumph share: | |
| 639 The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away, | |
| 640 And Havoc scarce for joy can cumber their array. | |
| 641 | |
| 642 XLI. | |
| 643 | |
| 644 Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice; | |
| 645 Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; | |
| 646 Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies. | |
| 647 The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! | |
| 648 The foe, the victim, and the fond ally | |
| 649 That fights for all, but ever fights in vain, | |
| 650 Are met--as if at home they could not die-- | |
| 651 To feed the crow on Talavera's plain, | |
| 652 And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain. | |
| 653 | |
| 654 XLII. | |
| 655 | |
| 656 There shall they rot--Ambition's honoured fools! | |
| 657 Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay! | |
| 658 Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools, | |
| 659 The broken tools, that tyrants cast away | |
| 660 By myriads, when they dare to pave their way | |
| 661 With human hearts--to what?--a dream alone. | |
| 662 Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? | |
| 663 Or call with truth one span of earth their own, | |
| 664 Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone? | |
| 665 | |
| 666 XLIII. | |
| 667 | |
| 668 O Albuera, glorious field of grief! | |
| 669 As o'er thy plain the Pilgrim pricked his steed, | |
| 670 Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief, | |
| 671 A scene where mingling foes should boast and bleed. | |
| 672 Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed | |
| 673 And tears of triumph their reward prolong! | |
| 674 Till others fall where other chieftains lead, | |
| 675 Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng, | |
| 676 And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song. | |
| 677 | |
| 678 XLIV. | |
| 679 | |
| 680 Enough of Battle's minions! let them play | |
| 681 Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame: | |
| 682 Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay, | |
| 683 Though thousands fall to deck some single name. | |
| 684 In sooth, 'twere sad to thwart their noble aim | |
| 685 Who strike, blest hirelings! for their country's good, | |
| 686 And die, that living might have proved her shame; | |
| 687 Perished, perchance, in some domestic feud, | |
| 688 Or in a narrower sphere wild Rapine's path pursued. | |
| 689 | |
| 690 XLV. | |
| 691 | |
| 692 Full swiftly Harold wends his lonely way | |
| 693 Where proud Sevilla triumphs unsubdued: | |
| 694 Yet is she free--the spoiler's wished-for prey! | |
| 695 Soon, soon shall Conquest's fiery foot intrude, | |
| 696 Blackening her lovely domes with traces rude. | |
| 697 Inevitable hour! 'Gainst fate to strive | |
| 698 Where Desolation plants her famished brood | |
| 699 Is vain, or Ilion, Tyre, might yet survive, | |
| 700 And Virtue vanquish all, and Murder cease to thrive. | |
| 701 | |
| 702 XLVI. | |
| 703 | |
| 704 But all unconscious of the coming doom, | |
| 705 The feast, the song, the revel here abounds; | |
| 706 Strange modes of merriment the hours consume, | |
| 707 Nor bleed these patriots with their country's wounds; | |
| 708 Nor here War's clarion, but Love's rebeck sounds; | |
| 709 Here Folly still his votaries enthralls, | |
| 710 And young-eyed Lewdness walks her midnight rounds: | |
| 711 Girt with the silent crimes of capitals, | |
| 712 Still to the last kind Vice clings to the tottering walls. | |
| 713 | |
| 714 XLVII. | |
| 715 | |
| 716 Not so the rustic: with his trembling mate | |
| 717 He lurks, nor casts his heavy eye afar, | |
| 718 Lest he should view his vineyard desolate, | |
| 719 Blasted below the dun hot breath of war. | |
| 720 No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star | |
| 721 Fandango twirls his jocund castanet: | |
| 722 Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar, | |
| 723 Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret; | |
| 724 The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet. | |
| 725 | |
| 726 XLVIII. | |
| 727 | |
| 728 How carols now the lusty muleteer? | |
| 729 Of love, romance, devotion is his lay, | |
| 730 As whilome he was wont the leagues to cheer, | |
| 731 His quick bells wildly jingling on the way? | |
| 732 No! as he speeds, he chants 'Viva el Rey!' | |
| 733 And checks his song to execrate Godoy, | |
| 734 The royal wittol Charles, and curse the day | |
| 735 When first Spain's queen beheld the black-eyed boy, | |
| 736 And gore-faced Treason sprung from her adulterate joy. | |
| 737 | |
| 738 XLIX. | |
| 739 | |
| 740 On yon long level plain, at distance crowned | |
| 741 With crags, whereon those Moorish turrets rest, | |
| 742 Wide scattered hoof-marks dint the wounded ground; | |
| 743 And, scathed by fire, the greensward's darkened vest | |
| 744 Tells that the foe was Andalusia's guest: | |
| 745 Here was the camp, the watch-flame, and the host, | |
| 746 Here the brave peasant stormed the dragon's nest; | |
| 747 Still does he mark it with triumphant boast, | |
| 748 And points to yonder cliffs, which oft were won and lost. | |
| 749 | |
| 750 L. | |
| 751 | |
| 752 And whomsoe'er along the path you meet | |
| 753 Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue, | |
| 754 Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet: | |
| 755 Woe to the man that walks in public view | |
| 756 Without of loyalty this token true: | |
| 757 Sharp is the knife, and sudden is the stroke; | |
| 758 And sorely would the Gallic foemen rue, | |
| 759 If subtle poniards, wrapt beneath the cloak, | |
| 760 Could blunt the sabre's edge, or clear the cannon's smoke. | |
| 761 | |
| 762 LI. | |
| 763 | |
| 764 At every turn Morena's dusky height | |
| 765 Sustains aloft the battery's iron load; | |
| 766 And, far as mortal eye can compass sight, | |
| 767 The mountain-howitzer, the broken road, | |
| 768 The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed, | |
| 769 The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch, | |
| 770 The magazine in rocky durance stowed, | |
| 771 The holstered steed beneath the shed of thatch, | |
| 772 The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match, | |
| 773 | |
| 774 LII. | |
| 775 | |
| 776 Portend the deeds to come:--but he whose nod | |
| 777 Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway, | |
| 778 A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod; | |
| 779 A little moment deigneth to delay: | |
| 780 Soon will his legions sweep through these the way; | |
| 781 The West must own the Scourger of the world. | |
| 782 Ah, Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning day, | |
| 783 When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurled, | |
| 784 And thou shalt view thy sons in crowds to Hades hurled. | |
| 785 | |
| 786 LIII. | |
| 787 | |
| 788 And must they fall--the young, the proud, the brave-- | |
| 789 To swell one bloated chief's unwholesome reign? | |
| 790 No step between submission and a grave? | |
| 791 The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain? | |
| 792 And doth the Power that man adores ordain | |
| 793 Their doom, nor heed the suppliant's appeal? | |
| 794 Is all that desperate Valour acts in vain? | |
| 795 And Counsel sage, and patriotic Zeal, | |
| 796 The veteran's skill, youth's fire, and manhood's heart of steel? | |
| 797 | |
| 798 LIV. | |
| 799 | |
| 800 Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused, | |
| 801 Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar, | |
| 802 And, all unsexed, the anlace hath espoused, | |
| 803 Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war? | |
| 804 And she, whom once the semblance of a scar | |
| 805 Appalled, an owlet's larum chilled with dread, | |
| 806 Now views the column-scattering bayonet jar, | |
| 807 The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead | |
| 808 Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to tread. | |
| 809 | |
| 810 LV. | |
| 811 | |
| 812 Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale, | |
| 813 Oh! had you known her in her softer hour, | |
| 814 Marked her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil, | |
| 815 Heard her light, lively tones in lady's bower, | |
| 816 Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power, | |
| 817 Her fairy form, with more than female grace, | |
| 818 Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower | |
| 819 Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face, | |
| 820 Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase. | |
| 821 | |
| 822 LVI. | |
| 823 | |
| 824 Her lover sinks--she sheds no ill-timed tear; | |
| 825 Her chief is slain--she fills his fatal post; | |
| 826 Her fellows flee--she checks their base career; | |
| 827 The foe retires--she heads the sallying host: | |
| 828 Who can appease like her a lover's ghost? | |
| 829 Who can avenge so well a leader's fall? | |
| 830 What maid retrieve when man's flushed hope is lost? | |
| 831 Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul, | |
| 832 Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall? | |
| 833 | |
| 834 LVII. | |
| 835 | |
| 836 Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons, | |
| 837 But formed for all the witching arts of love: | |
| 838 Though thus in arms they emulate her sons, | |
| 839 And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, | |
| 840 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove, | |
| 841 Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate: | |
| 842 In softness as in firmness far above | |
| 843 Remoter females, famed for sickening prate; | |
| 844 Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great. | |
| 845 | |
| 846 LVIII. | |
| 847 | |
| 848 The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed | |
| 849 Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch: | |
| 850 Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest, | |
| 851 Bid man be valiant ere he merit such: | |
| 852 Her glance, how wildly beautiful! how much | |
| 853 Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek | |
| 854 Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch! | |
| 855 Who round the North for paler dames would seek? | |
| 856 How poor their forms appear? how languid, wan, and weak! | |
| 857 | |
| 858 LIX. | |
| 859 | |
| 860 Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud; | |
| 861 Match me, ye harems! of the land where now | |
| 862 I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud | |
| 863 Beauties that even a cynic must avow! | |
| 864 Match me those houris, whom ye scarce allow | |
| 865 To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind, | |
| 866 With Spain's dark-glancing daughters--deign to know, | |
| 867 There your wise Prophet's paradise we find, | |
| 868 His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind. | |
| 869 | |
| 870 LX. | |
| 871 | |
| 872 O thou, Parnassus! whom I now survey, | |
| 873 Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye, | |
| 874 Not in the fabled landscape of a lay, | |
| 875 But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky, | |
| 876 In the wild pomp of mountain majesty! | |
| 877 What marvel if I thus essay to sing? | |
| 878 The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by | |
| 879 Would gladly woo thine echoes with his string, | |
| 880 Though from thy heights no more one muse will wave her wing. | |
| 881 | |
| 882 LXI. | |
| 883 | |
| 884 Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name | |
| 885 Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore: | |
| 886 And now I view thee, 'tis, alas, with shame | |
| 887 That I in feeblest accents must adore. | |
| 888 When I recount thy worshippers of yore | |
| 889 I tremble, and can only bend the knee; | |
| 890 Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar, | |
| 891 But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy | |
| 892 In silent joy to think at last I look on thee! | |
| 893 | |
| 894 LXII. | |
| 895 | |
| 896 Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, | |
| 897 Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot, | |
| 898 Shall I unmoved behold the hallowed scene, | |
| 899 Which others rave of, though they know it not? | |
| 900 Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, | |
| 901 And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave, | |
| 902 Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot, | |
| 903 Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave, | |
| 904 And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave. | |
| 905 | |
| 906 LXIII. | |
| 907 | |
| 908 Of thee hereafter.--Even amidst my strain | |
| 909 I turned aside to pay my homage here; | |
| 910 Forgot the land, the sons, the maids of Spain; | |
| 911 Her fate, to every free-born bosom dear; | |
| 912 And hailed thee, not perchance without a tear. | |
| 913 Now to my theme--but from thy holy haunt | |
| 914 Let me some remnant, some memorial bear; | |
| 915 Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant, | |
| 916 Nor let thy votary's hope be deemed an idle vaunt. | |
| 917 | |
| 918 LXIV. | |
| 919 | |
| 920 But ne'er didst thou, fair mount, when Greece was young, | |
| 921 See round thy giant base a brighter choir; | |
| 922 Nor e'er did Delphi, when her priestess sung | |
| 923 The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire, | |
| 924 Behold a train more fitting to inspire | |
| 925 The song of love than Andalusia's maids, | |
| 926 Nurst in the glowing lap of soft desire: | |
| 927 Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades | |
| 928 As Greece can still bestow, though Glory fly her glades. | |
| 929 | |
| 930 LXV. | |
| 931 | |
| 932 Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast | |
| 933 Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days, | |
| 934 But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, | |
| 935 Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. | |
| 936 Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! | |
| 937 While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape | |
| 938 The fascination of thy magic gaze? | |
| 939 A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, | |
| 940 And mould to every taste thy dear delusive shape. | |
| 941 | |
| 942 LXVI. | |
| 943 | |
| 944 When Paphos fell by Time--accursed Time! | |
| 945 The Queen who conquers all must yield to thee-- | |
| 946 The Pleasures fled, but sought as warm a clime; | |
| 947 And Venus, constant to her native sea, | |
| 948 To nought else constant, hither deigned to flee, | |
| 949 And fixed her shrine within these walls of white; | |
| 950 Though not to one dome circumscribeth she | |
| 951 Her worship, but, devoted to her rite, | |
| 952 A thousand altars rise, for ever blazing bright. | |
| 953 | |
| 954 LXVII. | |
| 955 | |
| 956 From morn till night, from night till startled morn | |
| 957 Peeps blushing on the revel's laughing crew, | |
| 958 The song is heard, the rosy garland worn; | |
| 959 Devices quaint, and frolics ever new, | |
| 960 Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu | |
| 961 He bids to sober joy that here sojourns: | |
| 962 Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu | |
| 963 Of true devotion monkish incense burns, | |
| 964 And love and prayer unite, or rule the hour by turns. | |
| 965 | |
| 966 LXVIII. | |
| 967 | |
| 968 The sabbath comes, a day of blessed rest; | |
| 969 What hallows it upon this Christian shore? | |
| 970 Lo! it is sacred to a solemn feast: | |
| 971 Hark! heard you not the forest monarch's roar? | |
| 972 Crashing the lance, he snuffs the spouting gore | |
| 973 Of man and steed, o'erthrown beneath his horn: | |
| 974 The thronged arena shakes with shouts for more; | |
| 975 Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn, | |
| 976 Nor shrinks the female eye, nor e'en affects to mourn. | |
| 977 | |
| 978 LXIX. | |
| 979 | |
| 980 The seventh day this; the jubilee of man. | |
| 981 London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer: | |
| 982 Then thy spruce citizen, washed artizan, | |
| 983 And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: | |
| 984 Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair, | |
| 985 And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl; | |
| 986 To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair; | |
| 987 Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, | |
| 988 Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl. | |
| 989 | |
| 990 LXX. | |
| 991 | |
| 992 Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribboned fair, | |
| 993 Others along the safer turnpike fly; | |
| 994 Some Richmond Hill ascend, some scud to Ware, | |
| 995 And many to the steep of Highgate hie. | |
| 996 Ask ye, Boeotian shades, the reason why? | |
| 997 'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn, | |
| 998 Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery, | |
| 999 In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn, | |
| 2000 Where all around proclaimed his high estate. | |
| 2001 Amidst no common pomp the despot sate, | |
| 2002 While busy preparation shook the court; | |
| 2003 Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait; | |
| 2004 Within, a palace, and without a fort, | |
| 2005 Here men of every clime appear to make resort. | |
| 2006 | |
| 2007 LVII. | |
| 2008 | |
| 2009 Richly caparisoned, a ready row | |
| 2010 Of armed horse, and many a warlike store, | |
| 2011 Circled the wide-extending court below; | |
| 2012 Above, strange groups adorned the corridor; | |
| 2013 And ofttimes through the area's echoing door, | |
| 2014 Some high-capped Tartar spurred his steed away; | |
| 2015 The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor, | |
| 2016 Here mingled in their many-hued array, | |
| 2017 While the deep war-drum's sound announced the close of day. | |
| 2018 | |
| 2019 LVIII. | |
| 2020 | |
| 2021 The wild Albanian kirtled to his knee, | |
| 2022 With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun, | |
| 2023 And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see: | |
| 2024 The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon; | |
| 2025 The Delhi with his cap of terror on, | |
| 2026 And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek; | |
| 2027 And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son; | |
| 2028 The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak, | |
| 2029 Master of all around, too potent to be meek, | |
| 2030 | |
| 2031 LIX. | |
| 2032 | |
| 2033 Are mixed conspicuous: some recline in groups, | |
| 2034 Scanning the motley scene that varies round; | |
| 2035 There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops, | |
| 2036 And some that smoke, and some that play are found; | |
| 2037 Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground; | |
| 2038 Half-whispering there the Greek is heard to prate; | |
| 2039 Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound, | |
| 2040 The muezzin's call doth shake the minaret, | |
| 2041 'There is no god but God!--to prayer--lo! God is great!' | |
| 2042 | |
| 2043 LX. | |
| 2044 | |
| 2045 Just at this season Ramazani's fast | |
| 2046 Through the long day its penance did maintain. | |
| 2047 But when the lingering twilight hour was past, | |
| 2048 Revel and feast assumed the rule again: | |
| 2049 Now all was bustle, and the menial train | |
| 2050 Prepared and spread the plenteous board within; | |
| 2051 The vacant gallery now seemed made in vain, | |
| 2052 But from the chambers came the mingling din, | |
| 2053 As page and slave anon were passing out and in. | |
| 2054 | |
| 2055 LXI. | |
| 2056 | |
| 2057 Here woman's voice is never heard: apart | |
| 2058 And scarce permitted, guarded, veiled, to move, | |
| 2059 She yields to one her person and her heart, | |
| 2060 Tamed to her cage, nor feels a wish to rove; | |
| 2061 For, not unhappy in her master's love, | |
| 2062 And joyful in a mother's gentlest cares, | |
| 2063 Blest cares! all other feelings far above! | |
| 2064 Herself more sweetly rears the babe she bears, | |
| 2065 Who never quits the breast, no meaner passion shares. | |
| 2066 | |
| 2067 LXII. | |
| 2068 | |
| 2069 In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring | |
| 2070 Of living water from the centre rose, | |
| 2071 Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling, | |
| 2072 And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose, | |
| 2073 Ali reclined, a man of war and woes: | |
| 2074 Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace, | |
| 2075 While Gentleness her milder radiance throws | |
| 2076 Along that aged venerable face, | |
| 2077 The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace. | |
| 2078 | |
| 2079 LXIII. | |
| 2080 | |
| 2081 It is not that yon hoary lengthening beard | |
| 2082 Ill suits the passions which belong to youth: | |
| 2083 Love conquers age--so Hafiz hath averred, | |
| 2084 So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth-- | |
| 2085 But crimes that scorn the tender voice of ruth, | |
| 2086 Beseeming all men ill, but most the man | |
| 2087 In years, have marked him with a tiger's tooth: | |
| 2088 Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span, | |
| 2089 In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began. | |
| 2090 | |
| 2091 LXIV. | |
| 2092 | |
| 2093 Mid many things most new to ear and eye, | |
| 2094 The pilgrim rested here his weary feet, | |
| 2095 And gazed around on Moslem luxury, | |
| 2096 Till quickly wearied with that spacious seat | |
| 2097 Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat | |
| 2098 Of sated Grandeur from the city's noise: | |
| 2099 And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet; | |
| 2100 But Peace abhorreth artificial joys, | |
| 2101 And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys. | |
| 2102 | |
| 2103 LXV. | |
| 2104 | |
| 2105 Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack | |
| 2106 Not virtues, were those virtues more mature. | |
| 2107 Where is the foe that ever saw their back? | |
| 2108 Who can so well the toil of war endure? | |
| 2109 Their native fastnesses not more secure | |
| 2110 Than they in doubtful time of troublous need: | |
| 2111 Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure, | |
| 2112 When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed, | |
| 2113 Unshaken rushing on where'er their chief may lead. | |
| 2114 | |
| 2115 LXVI. | |
| 2116 | |
| 2117 Childe Harold saw them in their chieftain's tower, | |
| 2118 Thronging to war in splendour and success; | |
| 2119 And after viewed them, when, within their power, | |
| 2120 Himself awhile the victim of distress; | |
| 2121 That saddening hour when bad men hotlier press: | |
| 2122 But these did shelter him beneath their roof, | |
| 2123 When less barbarians would have cheered him less, | |
| 2124 And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof-- | |
| 2125 In aught that tries the heart how few withstand the proof! | |
| 2126 | |
| 2127 LXVII. | |
| 2128 | |
| 2129 It chanced that adverse winds once drove his bark | |
| 2130 Full on the coast of Suli's shaggy shore, | |
| 2131 When all around was desolate and dark; | |
| 2132 To land was perilous, to sojourn more; | |
| 2133 Yet for awhile the mariners forbore, | |
| 2134 Dubious to trust where treachery might lurk: | |
| 2135 At length they ventured forth, though doubting sore | |
| 2136 That those who loathe alike the Frank and Turk | |
| 2137 Might once again renew their ancient butcher-work. | |
| 2138 | |
| 2139 LXVIII. | |
| 2140 | |
| 2141 Vain fear! the Suliotes stretched the welcome hand, | |
| 2142 Led them o'er rocks and past the dangerous swamp, | |
| 2143 Kinder than polished slaves, though not so bland, | |
| 2144 And piled the hearth, and wrung their garments damp, | |
| 2145 And filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful lamp, | |
| 2146 And spread their fare: though homely, all they had: | |
| 2147 Such conduct bears Philanthropy's rare stamp-- | |
| 2148 To rest the weary and to soothe the sad, | |
| 2149 Doth lesson happier men, and shames at least the bad. | |
| 2150 | |
| 2151 LXIX. | |
| 2152 | |
| 2153 It came to pass, that when he did address | |
| 2154 Himself to quit at length this mountain land, | |
| 2155 Combined marauders half-way barred egress, | |
| 2156 And wasted far and near with glaive and brand; | |
| 2157 And therefore did he take a trusty band | |
| 2158 To traverse Acarnania forest wide, | |
| 2159 In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned, | |
| 2160 Till he did greet white Achelous' tide, | |
| 2161 And from his farther bank AEtolia's wolds espied. | |
| 2162 | |
| 2163 LXX. | |
| 2164 | |
| 2165 Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove, | |
| 2166 And weary waves retire to gleam at rest, | |
| 2167 How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove, | |
| 2168 Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast, | |
| 2169 As winds come whispering lightly from the west, | |
| 2170 Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene: | |
| 2171 Here Harold was received a welcome guest; | |
| 2172 Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene, | |
| 2173 For many a joy could he from night's soft presence glean. | |
| 2174 | |
| 2175 LXXI. | |
| 2176 | |
| 2177 On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed, | |
| 2178 The feast was done, the red wine circling fast, | |
| 2179 And he that unawares had there ygazed | |
| 2180 With gaping wonderment had stared aghast; | |
| 2181 For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past, | |
| 2182 The native revels of the troop began; | |
| 2183 Each palikar his sabre from him cast, | |
| 2184 And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man, | |
| 2185 Yelling their uncouth dirge, long danced the kirtled clan. | |
| 2186 | |
| 2187 LXXII. | |
| 2188 | |
| 2189 Childe Harold at a little distance stood, | |
| 2190 And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie, | |
| 2191 Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude: | |
| 2192 In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see | |
| 2193 Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee: | |
| 2194 And as the flames along their faces gleamed, | |
| 2195 Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, | |
| 2196 The long wild locks that to their girdles streamed, | |
| 2197 While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half screamed: | |
| 2198 | |
| 2199 | |
| 2200 Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy larum afar | |
| 2201 Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; | |
| 2202 All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, | |
| 2203 Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote! | |
| 2204 | |
| 2205 Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, | |
| 2206 To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? | |
| 2207 To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, | |
| 2208 And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. | |
| 2209 | |
| 2210 Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive | |
| 2211 The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? | |
| 2212 Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego? | |
| 2213 What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? | |
| 2214 | |
| 2215 Macedonia sends forth her invincible race; | |
| 2216 For a time they abandon the cave and the chase: | |
| 2217 But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before | |
| 2218 The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o'er. | |
| 2219 | |
| 2220 Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves, | |
| 2221 And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, | |
| 2222 Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar, | |
| 2223 And track to his covert the captive on shore. | |
| 2224 | |
| 2225 I ask not the pleasure that riches supply, | |
| 2226 My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy: | |
| 2227 Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair, | |
| 2228 And many a maid from her mother shall tear. | |
| 2229 | |
| 2230 I love the fair face of the maid in her youth; | |
| 2231 Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe: | |
| 2232 Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre, | |
| 2233 And sing us a song on the fall of her sire. | |
| 2234 | |
| 2235 Remember the moment when Previsa fell, | |
| 2236 The shrieks of the conquered, the conqueror's yell; | |
| 2237 The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared, | |
| 2238 The wealthy we slaughtered, the lovely we spared. | |
| 2239 | |
| 2240 I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear; | |
| 2241 He neither must know who would serve the Vizier; | |
| 2242 Since the days of our prophet, the crescent ne'er saw | |
| 2243 A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha. | |
| 2244 | |
| 2245 Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped, | |
| 2246 Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread; | |
| 2247 When his Delhis come dashing in blood o'er the banks, | |
| 2248 How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks! | |
| 2249 | |
| 2250 Selictar! unsheath then our chief's scimitar: | |
| 2251 Tambourgi! thy larum gives promise of war. | |
| 2252 Ye mountains that see us descend to the shore, | |
| 2253 Shall view us as victors, or view us no more! | |
| 2254 | |
| 2255 LXXIII. | |
| 2256 | |
| 2257 Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! | |
| 2258 Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! | |
| 2259 Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, | |
| 2260 And long accustomed bondage uncreate? | |
| 2261 Not such thy sons who whilome did await, | |
| 2262 The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, | |
| 2263 In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait-- | |
| 2264 Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, | |
| 2265 Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb? | |
| 2266 | |
| 2267 LXXIV. | |
| 2268 | |
| 2269 Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow | |
| 2270 Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, | |
| 2271 Couldst thou forbode the dismal hour which now | |
| 2272 Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain? | |
| 2273 Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, | |
| 2274 But every carle can lord it o'er thy land; | |
| 2275 Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, | |
| 2276 Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, | |
| 2277 From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned. | |
| 2278 | |
| 2279 LXXV. | |
| 2280 | |
| 2281 In all save form alone, how changed! and who | |
| 2282 That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, | |
| 2283 Who would but deem their bosom burned anew | |
| 2284 With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty! | |
| 2285 And many dream withal the hour is nigh | |
| 2286 That gives them back their fathers' heritage: | |
| 2287 For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, | |
| 2288 Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, | |
| 2289 Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page. | |
| 2290 | |
| 2291 LXXVI. | |
| 2292 | |
| 2293 Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not | |
| 2294 Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? | |
| 2295 By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? | |
| 2296 Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No! | |
| 2297 True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, | |
| 2298 But not for you will Freedom's altars flame. | |
| 2299 Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe: | |
| 2300 Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; | |
| 2301 Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame. | |
| 2302 | |
| 2303 LXXVII. | |
| 2304 | |
| 2305 The city won for Allah from the Giaour, | |
| 2306 The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest; | |
| 2307 And the Serai's impenetrable tower | |
| 2308 Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest; | |
| 2309 Or Wahab's rebel brood, who dared divest | |
| 2310 The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil, | |
| 2311 May wind their path of blood along the West; | |
| 2312 But ne'er will Freedom seek this fated soil, | |
| 2313 But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil. | |
| 2314 | |
| 2315 LXXVIII. | |
| 2316 | |
| 2317 Yet mark their mirth--ere lenten days begin, | |
| 2318 That penance which their holy rites prepare | |
| 2319 To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin, | |
| 2320 By daily abstinence and nightly prayer; | |
| 2321 But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, | |
| 2322 Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all, | |
| 2323 To take of pleasaunce each his secret share, | |
| 2324 In motley robe to dance at masking ball, | |
| 2325 And join the mimic train of merry Carnival. | |
| 2326 | |
| 2327 LXXIX. | |
| 2328 | |
| 2329 And whose more rife with merriment than thine, | |
| 2330 O Stamboul! once the empress of their reign? | |
| 2331 Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine | |
| 2332 And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: | |
| 2333 (Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!) | |
| 2334 Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, | |
| 2335 All felt the common joy they now must feign; | |
| 2336 Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song, | |
| 2337 As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along. | |
| 2338 | |
| 2339 LXXX. | |
| 2340 | |
| 2341 Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore; | |
| 2342 Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone, | |
| 2343 And timely echoed back the measured oar, | |
| 2344 And rippling waters made a pleasant moan: | |
| 2345 The Queen of tides on high consenting shone; | |
| 2346 And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave, | |
| 2347 'Twas as if, darting from her heavenly throne, | |
| 2348 A brighter glance her form reflected gave, | |
| 2349 Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave. | |
| 2350 | |
| 2351 LXXXI. | |
| 2352 | |
| 2353 Glanced many a light caique along the foam, | |
| 2354 Danced on the shore the daughters of the land, | |
| 2355 No thought had man or maid of rest or home, | |
| 2356 While many a languid eye and thrilling hand | |
| 2357 Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand, | |
| 2358 Or gently pressed, returned the pressure still: | |
| 2359 Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band, | |
| 2360 Let sage or cynic prattle as he will, | |
| 2361 These hours, and only these, redeemed Life's years of ill! | |
| 2362 | |
| 2363 LXXXII. | |
| 2364 | |
| 2365 But, midst the throng in merry masquerade, | |
| 2366 Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain, | |
| 2367 E'en through the closest searment half-betrayed? | |
| 2368 To such the gentle murmurs of the main | |
| 2369 Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain; | |
| 2370 To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd | |
| 2371 Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain: | |
| 2372 How do they loathe the laughter idly loud, | |
| 2373 And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud! | |
| 2374 | |
| 2375 LXXXIII. | |
| 2376 | |
| 2377 This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece, | |
| 2378 If Greece one true-born patriot can boast: | |
| 2379 Not such as prate of war but skulk in peace, | |
| 2380 The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost, | |
| 2381 Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost, | |
| 2382 And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword: | |
| 2383 Ah, Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most-- | |
| 2384 Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record | |
| 2385 Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde! | |
| 2386 | |
| 2387 LXXXIV. | |
| 2388 | |
| 2389 When riseth Lacedaemon's hardihood, | |
| 2390 When Thebes Epaminondas rears again, | |
| 2391 When Athens' children are with hearts endued, | |
| 2392 When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men, | |
| 2393 Then mayst thou be restored; but not till then. | |
| 2394 A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; | |
| 2395 An hour may lay it in the dust: and when | |
| 2396 Can man its shattered splendour renovate, | |
| 2397 Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate? | |
| 2398 | |
| 2399 LXXXV. | |
| 2400 | |
| 2401 And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, | |
| 2402 Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou! | |
| 2403 Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, | |
| 2404 Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now; | |
| 2405 Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, | |
| 2406 Commingling slowly with heroic earth, | |
| 2407 Broke by the share of every rustic plough: | |
| 2408 So perish monuments of mortal birth, | |
| 2409 So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth; | |
| 2410 | |
| 2411 LXXXVI. | |
| 2412 | |
| 2413 Save where some solitary column mourns | |
| 2414 Above its prostrate brethren of the cave; | |
| 2415 Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns | |
| 2416 Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave; | |
| 2417 Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, | |
| 2418 Where the grey stones and unmolested grass | |
| 2419 Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, | |
| 2420 While strangers only not regardless pass, | |
| 2421 Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh 'Alas!' | |
| 2422 | |
| 2423 LXXXVII. | |
| 2424 | |
| 2425 Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild: | |
| 2426 Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, | |
| 2427 Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, | |
| 2428 And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; | |
| 2429 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, | |
| 2430 The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; | |
| 2431 Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, | |
| 2432 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; | |
| 2433 Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. | |
| 2434 | |
| 2435 LXXXVIII. | |
| 2436 | |
| 2437 Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; | |
| 2438 No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, | |
| 2439 But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, | |
| 2440 And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, | |
| 2441 Till the sense aches with gazing to behold | |
| 2442 The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: | |
| 2443 Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, | |
| 2444 Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone: | |
| 2445 Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. | |
| 2446 | |
| 2447 LXXXIX. | |
| 2448 | |
| 2449 The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; | |
| 2450 Unchanged in all except its foreign lord-- | |
| 2451 Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame; | |
| 2452 The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde | |
| 2453 First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword, | |
| 2454 As on the morn to distant Glory dear, | |
| 2455 When Marathon became a magic word; | |
| 2456 Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear | |
| 2457 The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career. | |
| 2458 | |
| 2459 XC. | |
| 2460 | |
| 2461 The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; | |
| 2462 The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; | |
| 2463 Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below; | |
| 2464 Death in the front, Destruction in the rear! | |
| 2465 Such was the scene--what now remaineth here? | |
| 2466 What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground, | |
| 2467 Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear? | |
| 2468 The rifled urn, the violated mound, | |
| 2469 The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. | |
| 2470 | |
| 2471 XCI. | |
| 2472 | |
| 2473 Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past | |
| 2474 Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng: | |
| 2475 Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast, | |
| 2476 Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; | |
| 2477 Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue | |
| 2478 Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore: | |
| 2479 Boast of the aged! lesson of the young! | |
| 2480 Which sages venerate and bards adore, | |
| 2481 As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. | |
| 2482 | |
| 2483 XCII. | |
| 2484 | |
| 2485 The parted bosom clings to wonted home, | |
| 2486 If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; | |
| 2487 He that is lonely, hither let him roam, | |
| 2488 And gaze complacent on congenial earth. | |
| 2489 Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth; | |
| 2490 But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, | |
| 2491 And scarce regret the region of his birth, | |
| 2492 When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, | |
| 2493 Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died. | |
| 2494 | |
| 2495 XCIII. | |
| 2496 | |
| 2497 Let such approach this consecrated land, | |
| 2498 And pass in peace along the magic waste: | |
| 2499 But spare its relics--let no busy hand | |
| 2500 Deface the scenes, already how defaced! | |
| 2501 Not for such purpose were these altars placed. | |
| 2502 Revere the remnants nations once revered; | |
| 2503 So may our country's name be undisgraced, | |
| 2504 So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was reared, | |
| 2505 By every honest joy of love and life endeared! | |
| 2506 | |
| 2507 XCIV. | |
| 2508 | |
| 2509 For thee, who thus in too protracted song | |
| 2510 Hath soothed thine idlesse with inglorious lays, | |
| 2511 Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng | |
| 2512 Of louder minstrels in these later days: | |
| 2513 To such resign the strife for fading bays-- | |
| 2514 Ill may such contest now the spirit move | |
| 2515 Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise, | |
| 2516 Since cold each kinder heart that might approve, | |
| 2517 And none are left to please where none are left to love. | |
| 2518 | |
| 2519 XCV. | |
| 2520 | |
| 2521 Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! | |
| 2522 Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me; | |
| 2523 Who did for me what none beside have done, | |
| 2524 Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee. | |
| 2525 What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! | |
| 2526 Nor stayed to welcome here thy wanderer home, | |
| 2527 Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see-- | |
| 2528 Would they had never been, or were to come! | |
| 2529 Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam! | |
| 2530 | |
| 2531 XCVI. | |
| 2532 | |
| 2533 Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! | |
| 2534 How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, | |
| 2535 And clings to thoughts now better far removed! | |
| 2536 But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last. | |
| 2537 All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death, thou hast: | |
| 2538 The parent, friend, and now the more than friend; | |
| 2539 Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, | |
| 2540 And grief with grief continuing still to blend, | |
| 2541 Hath snatched the little joy that life had yet to lend. | |
| 2542 | |
| 2543 XCVII. | |
| 2544 | |
| 2545 Then must I plunge again into the crowd, | |
| 2546 And follow all that Peace disdains to seek? | |
| 2547 Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, | |
| 2548 False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek, | |
| 2549 To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak! | |
| 2550 Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, | |
| 2551 To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique; | |
| 2552 Smiles form the channel of a future tear, | |
| 2553 Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. | |
| 2554 | |
| 2555 XCVIII. | |
| 2556 | |
| 2557 What is the worst of woes that wait on age? | |
| 2558 What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? | |
| 2559 To view each loved one blotted from life's page, | |
| 2560 And be alone on earth, as I am now. | |
| 2561 Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, | |
| 2562 O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroyed: | |
| 2563 Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, | |
| 2564 Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed, | |
| 2565 And with the ills of eld mine earlier years alloyed. | |
| 2566 | |
| 2567 | |
| 2568 | |
| 2569 | |
| 2570 CANTO THE THIRD. | |
| 2571 | |
| 2572 | |
| 2573 | |
| 2574 I. | |
| 2575 | |
| 2576 Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! | |
| 2577 Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? | |
| 2578 When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled, | |
| 2579 And then we parted,--not as now we part, | |
| 2580 But with a hope.-- | |
| 2581 Awaking with a start, | |
| 2582 The waters heave around me; and on high | |
| 2583 The winds lift up their voices: I depart, | |
| 2584 Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by, | |
| 2585 When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. | |
| 2586 | |
| 2587 II. | |
| 2588 | |
| 2589 Once more upon the waters! yet once more! | |
| 2590 And the waves bound beneath me as a steed | |
| 2591 That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar! | |
| 2592 Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! | |
| 2593 Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed, | |
| 2594 And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, | |
| 2595 Still must I on; for I am as a weed, | |
| 2596 Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail | |
| 2597 Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. | |
| 2598 | |
| 2599 III. | |
| 2600 | |
| 2601 In my youth's summer I did sing of One, | |
| 2602 The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; | |
| 2603 Again I seize the theme, then but begun, | |
| 2604 And bear it with me, as the rushing wind | |
| 2605 Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find | |
| 2606 The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, | |
| 2607 Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, | |
| 2608 O'er which all heavily the journeying years | |
| 2609 Plod the last sands of life--where not a flower appears. | |
| 2610 | |
| 2611 IV. | |
| 2612 | |
| 2613 Since my young days of passion--joy, or pain, | |
| 2614 Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string, | |
| 2615 And both may jar: it may be, that in vain | |
| 2616 I would essay as I have sung to sing. | |
| 2617 Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling, | |
| 2618 So that it wean me from the weary dream | |
| 2619 Of selfish grief or gladness--so it fling | |
| 2620 Forgetfulness around me--it shall seem | |
| 2621 To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. | |
| 2622 | |
| 2623 V. | |
| 2624 | |
| 2625 He who, grown aged in this world of woe, | |
| 2626 In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, | |
| 2627 So that no wonder waits him; nor below | |
| 2628 Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, | |
| 2629 Cut to his heart again with the keen knife | |
| 2630 Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell | |
| 2631 Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife | |
| 2632 With airy images, and shapes which dwell | |
| 2633 Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell. | |
| 2634 | |
| 2635 VI. | |
| 2636 | |
| 2637 'Tis to create, and in creating live | |
| 2638 A being more intense, that we endow | |
| 2639 With form our fancy, gaining as we give | |
| 2640 The life we image, even as I do now. | |
| 2641 What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou, | |
| 2642 Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth, | |
| 2643 Invisible but gazing, as I glow | |
| 2644 Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, | |
| 2645 And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth. | |
| 2646 | |
| 2647 VII. | |
| 2648 | |
| 2649 Yet must I think less wildly: I HAVE thought | |
| 2650 Too long and darkly, till my brain became, | |
| 2651 In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, | |
| 2652 A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame: | |
| 2653 And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, | |
| 2654 My springs of life were poisoned. 'Tis too late! | |
| 2655 Yet am I changed; though still enough the same | |
| 2656 In strength to bear what time cannot abate, | |
| 2657 And feed on bitter fruits without accusing fate. | |
| 2658 | |
| 2659 VIII. | |
| 2660 | |
| 2661 Something too much of this: but now 'tis past, | |
| 2662 And the spell closes with its silent seal. | |
| 2663 Long-absent Harold reappears at last; | |
| 2664 He of the breast which fain no more would feel, | |
| 2665 Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal; | |
| 2666 Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him | |
| 2667 In soul and aspect as in age: years steal | |
| 2668 Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; | |
| 2669 And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim. | |
| 2670 | |
| 2671 IX. | |
| 2672 | |
| 2673 His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found | |
| 2674 The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again, | |
| 2675 And from a purer fount, on holier ground, | |
| 2676 And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain! | |
| 2677 Still round him clung invisibly a chain | |
| 2678 Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen, | |
| 2679 And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain, | |
| 2680 Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, | |
| 2681 Entering with every step he took through many a scene. | |
| 2682 | |
| 2683 X. | |
| 2684 | |
| 2685 Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed | |
| 2686 Again in fancied safety with his kind, | |
| 2687 And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed | |
| 2688 And sheathed with an invulnerable mind, | |
| 2689 That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind; | |
| 2690 And he, as one, might midst the many stand | |
| 2691 Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find | |
| 2692 Fit speculation; such as in strange land | |
| 2693 He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand. | |
| 2694 | |
| 2695 XI. | |
| 2696 | |
| 2697 But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek | |
| 2698 To wear it? who can curiously behold | |
| 2699 The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, | |
| 2700 Nor feel the heart can never all grow old? | |
| 2701 Who can contemplate fame through clouds unfold | |
| 2702 The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb? | |
| 2703 Harold, once more within the vortex rolled | |
| 2704 On with the giddy circle, chasing Time, | |
| 2705 Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime. | |
| 2706 | |
| 2707 XII. | |
| 2708 | |
| 2709 But soon he knew himself the most unfit | |
| 2710 Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held | |
| 2711 Little in common; untaught to submit | |
| 2712 His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled, | |
| 2713 In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled, | |
| 2714 He would not yield dominion of his mind | |
| 2715 To spirits against whom his own rebelled; | |
| 2716 Proud though in desolation; which could find | |
| 2717 A life within itself, to breathe without mankind. | |
| 2718 | |
| 2719 XIII. | |
| 2720 | |
| 2721 Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; | |
| 2722 Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; | |
| 2723 Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, | |
| 2724 He had the passion and the power to roam; | |
| 2725 The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, | |
| 2726 Were unto him companionship; they spake | |
| 2727 A mutual language, clearer than the tome | |
| 2728 Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake | |
| 2729 For nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake. | |
| 2730 | |
| 2731 XIV. | |
| 2732 | |
| 2733 Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, | |
| 2734 Till he had peopled them with beings bright | |
| 2735 As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, | |
| 2736 And human frailties, were forgotten quite: | |
| 2737 Could he have kept his spirit to that flight, | |
| 2738 He had been happy; but this clay will sink | |
| 2739 Its spark immortal, envying it the light | |
| 2740 To which it mounts, as if to break the link | |
| 2741 That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. | |
| 2742 | |
| 2743 XV. | |
| 2744 | |
| 2745 But in Man's dwellings he became a thing | |
| 2746 Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, | |
| 2747 Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, | |
| 2748 To whom the boundless air alone were home: | |
| 2749 Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome, | |
| 2750 As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat | |
| 2751 His breast and beak against his wiry dome | |
| 2752 Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat | |
| 2753 Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat. | |
| 2754 | |
| 2755 XVI. | |
| 2756 | |
| 2757 Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again, | |
| 2758 With naught of hope left, but with less of gloom; | |
| 2759 The very knowledge that he lived in vain, | |
| 2760 That all was over on this side the tomb, | |
| 2761 Had made Despair a smilingness assume, | |
| 2762 Which, though 'twere wild--as on the plundered wreck | |
| 2763 When mariners would madly meet their doom | |
| 2764 With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck-- | |
| 2765 Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check. | |
| 2766 | |
| 2767 XVII. | |
| 2768 | |
| 2769 Stop! for thy tread is on an empire's dust! | |
| 2770 An earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below! | |
| 2771 Is the spot marked with no colossal bust? | |
| 2772 Nor column trophied for triumphal show? | |
| 2773 None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so, | |
| 2774 As the ground was before, thus let it be;-- | |
| 2775 How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! | |
| 2776 And is this all the world has gained by thee, | |
| 2777 Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory? | |
| 2778 | |
| 2779 XVIII. | |
| 2780 | |
| 2781 And Harold stands upon this place of skulls, | |
| 2782 The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo! | |
| 2783 How in an hour the power which gave annuls | |
| 2784 Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too! | |
| 2785 In 'pride of place' here last the eagle flew, | |
| 2786 Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain, | |
| 2787 Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through: | |
| 2788 Ambition's life and labours all were vain; | |
| 2789 He wears the shattered links of the world's broken chain. | |
| 2790 | |
| 2791 XIX. | |
| 2792 | |
| 2793 Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit, | |
| 2794 And foam in fetters, but is Earth more free? | |
| 2795 Did nations combat to make ONE submit; | |
| 2796 Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty? | |
| 2797 What! shall reviving thraldom again be | |
| 2798 The patched-up idol of enlightened days? | |
| 2799 Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we | |
| 2800 Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze | |
| 2801 And servile knees to thrones? No; PROVE before ye praise! | |
| 2802 | |
| 2803 XX. | |
| 2804 | |
| 2805 If not, o'er one fall'n despot boast no more! | |
| 2806 In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears | |
| 2807 For Europe's flowers long rooted up before | |
| 2808 The trampler of her vineyards; in vain years | |
| 2809 Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears, | |
| 2810 Have all been borne, and broken by the accord | |
| 2811 Of roused-up millions: all that most endears | |
| 2812 Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword | |
| 2813 Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant lord. | |
| 2814 | |
| 2815 XXI. | |
| 2816 | |
| 2817 There was a sound of revelry by night, | |
| 2818 And Belgium's capital had gathered then | |
| 2819 Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright | |
| 2820 The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; | |
| 2821 A thousand hearts beat happily; and when | |
| 2822 Music arose with its voluptuous swell, | |
| 2823 Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, | |
| 2824 And all went merry as a marriage bell; | |
| 2825 But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! | |
| 2826 | |
| 2827 XXII. | |
| 2828 | |
| 2829 Did ye not hear it?--No; 'twas but the wind, | |
| 2830 Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; | |
| 2831 On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; | |
| 2832 No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet | |
| 2833 To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet. | |
| 2834 But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more, | |
| 2835 As if the clouds its echo would repeat; | |
| 2836 And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! | |
| 2837 Arm! arm! it is--it is--the cannon's opening roar! | |
| 2838 | |
| 2839 XXIII. | |
| 2840 | |
| 2841 Within a windowed niche of that high hall | |
| 2842 Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear | |
| 2843 That sound, the first amidst the festival, | |
| 2844 And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; | |
| 2845 And when they smiled because he deemed it near, | |
| 2846 His heart more truly knew that peal too well | |
| 2847 Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, | |
| 2848 And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell: | |
| 2849 He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. | |
| 2850 | |
| 2851 XXIV. | |
| 2852 | |
| 2853 Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, | |
| 2854 And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, | |
| 2855 And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago | |
| 2856 Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; | |
| 2857 And there were sudden partings, such as press | |
| 2858 The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs | |
| 2859 Which ne'er might be repeated: who would guess | |
| 2860 If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, | |
| 2861 Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! | |
| 2862 | |
| 2863 XXV. | |
| 2864 | |
| 2865 And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, | |
| 2866 The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, | |
| 2867 Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, | |
| 2868 And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; | |
| 2869 And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; | |
| 2870 And near, the beat of the alarming drum | |
| 2871 Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; | |
| 2872 While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, | |
| 2873 Or whispering, with white lips--'The foe! They come! they come!' | |
| 2874 | |
| 2875 XXVI. | |
| 2876 | |
| 2877 And wild and high the 'Cameron's gathering' rose, | |
| 2878 The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills | |
| 2879 Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: | |
| 2880 How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills | |
| 2881 Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills | |
| 2882 Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers | |
| 2883 With the fierce native daring which instils | |
| 2884 The stirring memory of a thousand years, | |
| 2885 And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears. | |
| 2886 | |
| 2887 XXVII. | |
| 2888 | |
| 2889 And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, | |
| 2890 Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass, | |
| 2891 Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, | |
| 2892 Over the unreturniug brave,--alas! | |
| 2893 Ere evening to be trodden like the grass | |
| 2894 Which now beneath them, but above shall grow | |
| 2895 In its next verdure, when this fiery mass | |
| 2896 Of living valour, rolling on the foe, | |
| 2897 And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low. | |
| 2898 | |
| 2899 XXVIII. | |
| 2900 | |
| 2901 Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, | |
| 2902 Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, | |
| 2903 The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, | |
| 2904 The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day | |
| 2905 Battle's magnificently stern array! | |
| 2906 The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent | |
| 2907 The earth is covered thick with other clay, | |
| 2908 Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, | |
| 2909 Rider and horse,--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent! | |
| 2910 | |
| 2911 XXIX. | |
| 2912 | |
| 2913 Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine; | |
| 2914 Yet one I would select from that proud throng, | |
| 2915 Partly because they blend me with his line, | |
| 2916 And partly that I did his sire some wrong, | |
| 2917 And partly that bright names will hallow song; | |
| 2918 And his was of the bravest, and when showered | |
| 2919 The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along, | |
| 2920 Even where the thickest of war's tempest lowered, | |
| 2921 They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard! | |
| 2922 | |
| 2923 XXX. | |
| 2924 | |
| 2925 There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee, | |
| 2926 And mine were nothing, had I such to give; | |
| 2927 But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree, | |
| 2928 Which living waves where thou didst cease to live, | |
| 2929 And saw around me the wild field revive | |
| 2930 With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring | |
| 2931 Come forth her work of gladness to contrive, | |
| 2932 With all her reckless birds upon the wing, | |
| 2933 I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring. | |
| 2934 | |
| 2935 XXXI. | |
| 2936 | |
| 2937 I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each | |
| 2938 And one as all a ghastly gap did make | |
| 2939 In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach | |
| 2940 Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake; | |
| 2941 The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake | |
| 2942 Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame | |
| 2943 May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake | |
| 2944 The fever of vain longing, and the name | |
| 2945 So honoured, but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim. | |
| 2946 | |
| 2947 XXXII. | |
| 2948 | |
| 2949 They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn: | |
| 2950 The tree will wither long before it fall: | |
| 2951 The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn; | |
| 2952 The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall | |
| 2953 In massy hoariness; the ruined wall | |
| 2954 Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone; | |
| 2955 The bars survive the captive they enthral; | |
| 2956 The day drags through though storms keep out the sun; | |
| 2957 And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on: | |
| 2958 | |
| 2959 XXXIII. | |
| 2960 | |
| 2961 E'en as a broken mirror, which the glass | |
| 2962 In every fragment multiplies; and makes | |
| 2963 A thousand images of one that was, | |
| 2964 The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; | |
| 2965 And thus the heart will do which not forsakes, | |
| 2966 Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold, | |
| 2967 And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches, | |
| 2968 Yet withers on till all without is old, | |
| 2969 Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. | |
| 2970 | |
| 2971 XXXIV. | |
| 2972 | |
| 2973 There is a very life in our despair, | |
| 2974 Vitality of poison,--a quick root | |
| 2975 Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were | |
| 2976 As nothing did we die; but life will suit | |
| 2977 Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit, | |
| 2978 Like to the apples on the Dead Sea shore, | |
| 2979 All ashes to the taste: Did man compute | |
| 2980 Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er | |
| 2981 Such hours 'gainst years of life,--say, would he name threescore? | |
| 2982 | |
| 2983 XXXV. | |
| 2984 | |
| 2985 The Psalmist numbered out the years of man: | |
| 2986 They are enough: and if thy tale be TRUE, | |
| 2987 Thou, who didst grudge him e'en that fleeting span, | |
| 2988 More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo! | |
| 2989 Millions of tongues record thee, and anew | |
| 2990 Their children's lips shall echo them, and say, | |
| 2991 'Here, where the sword united nations drew, | |
| 2992 Our countrymen were warring on that day!' | |
| 2993 And this is much, and all which will not pass away. | |
| 2994 | |
| 2995 XXXVI. | |
| 2996 | |
| 2997 There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men, | |
| 2998 Whose spirit anithetically mixed | |
| 2999 One moment of the mightiest, and again | |
| 3000 On little objects with like firmness fixed; | |
| 3001 Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt, | |
| 3002 Thy throne had still been thine, or never been; | |
| 3003 For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st | |
| 3004 Even now to reassume the imperial mien, | |
| 3005 And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene! | |
| 3006 | |
| 3007 XXXVII. | |
| 3008 | |
| 3009 Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou! | |
| 3010 She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name | |
| 3011 Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now | |
| 3012 That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame, | |
| 3013 Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became | |
| 3014 The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert | |
| 3015 A god unto thyself; nor less the same | |
| 3016 To the astounded kingdoms all inert, | |
| 3017 Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert. | |
| 3018 | |
| 3019 XXXVIII. | |
| 3020 | |
| 3021 Oh, more or less than man--in high or low, | |
| 3022 Battling with nations, flying from the field; | |
| 3023 Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now | |
| 3024 More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield: | |
| 3025 An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild, | |
| 3026 But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor, | |
| 3027 However deeply in men's spirits skilled, | |
| 3028 Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war, | |
| 3029 Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star. | |
| 3030 | |
| 3031 XXXIX. | |
| 3032 | |
| 3033 Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide | |
| 3034 With that untaught innate philosophy, | |
| 3035 Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride, | |
| 3036 Is gall and wormwood to an enemy. | |
| 3037 When the whole host of hatred stood hard by, | |
| 3038 To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled | |
| 3039 With a sedate and all-enduring eye; | |
| 3040 When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child, | |
| 3041 He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled. | |
| 3042 | |
| 3043 XL. | |
| 3044 | |
| 3045 Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them | |
| 3046 Ambition steeled thee on to far too show | |
| 3047 That just habitual scorn, which could contemn | |
| 3048 Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so | |
| 3049 To wear it ever on thy lip and brow, | |
| 3050 And spurn the instruments thou wert to use | |
| 3051 Till they were turned unto thine overthrow: | |
| 3052 'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose; | |
| 3053 So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose. | |
| 3054 | |
| 3055 XLI. | |
| 3056 | |
| 3057 If, like a tower upon a headland rock, | |
| 3058 Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone, | |
| 3059 Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock; | |
| 3060 But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, | |
| 3061 THEIR admiration thy best weapon shone; | |
| 3062 The part of Philip's son was thine, not then | |
| 3063 (Unless aside thy purple had been thrown) | |
| 3064 Like stern Diogenes to mock at men; | |
| 3065 For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den. | |
| 3066 | |
| 3067 XLII. | |
| 3068 | |
| 3069 But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, | |
| 3070 And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire | |
| 3071 And motion of the soul, which will not dwell | |
| 3072 In its own narrow being, but aspire | |
| 3073 Beyond the fitting medium of desire; | |
| 3074 And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, | |
| 3075 Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire | |
| 3076 Of aught but rest; a fever at the core, | |
| 3077 Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore. | |
| 3078 | |
| 3079 XLIII. | |
| 3080 | |
| 3081 This makes the madmen who have made men mad | |
| 3082 By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings, | |
| 3083 Founders of sects and systems, to whom add | |
| 3084 Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things | |
| 3085 Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, | |
| 3086 And are themselves the fools to those they fool; | |
| 3087 Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings | |
| 3088 Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school | |
| 3089 Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule: | |
| 3090 | |
| 3091 XLIV. | |
| 3092 | |
| 3093 Their breath is agitation, and their life | |
| 3094 A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last, | |
| 3095 And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, | |
| 3096 That should their days, surviving perils past, | |
| 3097 Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast | |
| 3098 With sorrow and supineness, and so die; | |
| 3099 Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste | |
| 3100 With its own flickering, or a sword laid by, | |
| 3101 Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously. | |
| 3102 | |
| 3103 XLV. | |
| 3104 | |
| 3105 He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find | |
| 3106 The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; | |
| 3107 He who surpasses or subdues mankind, | |
| 3108 Must look down on the hate of those below. | |
| 3109 Though high ABOVE the sun of glory glow, | |
| 3110 And far BENEATH the earth and ocean spread, | |
| 3111 ROUND him are icy rocks, and loudly blow | |
| 3112 Contending tempests on his naked head, | |
| 3113 And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. | |
| 3114 | |
| 3115 XLVI. | |
| 3116 | |
| 3117 Away with these; true Wisdom's world will be | |
| 3118 Within its own creation, or in thine, | |
| 3119 Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee, | |
| 3120 Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine? | |
| 3121 There Harold gazes on a work divine, | |
| 3122 A blending of all beauties; streams and dells, | |
| 3123 Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine, | |
| 3124 And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells | |
| 3125 From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells. | |
| 3126 | |
| 3127 XLVII. | |
| 3128 | |
| 3129 And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind, | |
| 3130 Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, | |
| 3131 All tenantless, save to the crannying wind, | |
| 3132 Or holding dark communion with the cloud. | |
| 3133 There was a day when they were young and proud, | |
| 3134 Banners on high, and battles passed below; | |
| 3135 But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, | |
| 3136 And those which waved are shredless dust ere now, | |
| 3137 And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow. | |
| 3138 | |
| 3139 XLVIII. | |
| 3140 | |
| 3141 Beneath these battlements, within those walls, | |
| 3142 Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state | |
| 3143 Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, | |
| 3144 Doing his evil will, nor less elate | |
| 3145 Than mightier heroes of a longer date. | |
| 3146 What want these outlaws conquerors should have | |
| 3147 But History's purchased page to call them great? | |
| 3148 A wider space, an ornamented grave? | |
| 3149 Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave. | |
| 3150 | |
| 3151 XLIX. | |
| 3152 | |
| 3153 In their baronial feuds and single fields, | |
| 3154 What deeds of prowess unrecorded died! | |
| 3155 And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields, | |
| 3156 With emblems well devised by amorous pride, | |
| 3157 Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide; | |
| 3158 But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on | |
| 3159 Keen contest and destruction near allied, | |
| 3160 And many a tower for some fair mischief won, | |
| 3161 Saw the discoloured Rhine beneath its ruin run. | |
| 3162 | |
| 3163 L. | |
| 3164 | |
| 3165 But thou, exulting and abounding river! | |
| 3166 Making thy waves a blessing as they flow | |
| 3167 Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever, | |
| 3168 Could man but leave thy bright creation so, | |
| 3169 Nor its fair promise from the surface mow | |
| 3170 With the sharp scythe of conflict,--then to see | |
| 3171 Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know | |
| 3172 Earth paved like Heaven; and to seem such to me | |
| 3173 Even now what wants thy stream?--that it should Lethe be. | |
| 3174 | |
| 3175 LI. | |
| 3176 | |
| 3177 A thousand battles have assailed thy banks, | |
| 3178 But these and half their fame have passed away, | |
| 3179 And Slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks: | |
| 3180 Their very graves are gone, and what are they? | |
| 3181 Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday, | |
| 3182 And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream | |
| 3183 Glassed with its dancing light the sunny ray; | |
| 3184 But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream | |
| 3185 Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem. | |
| 3186 | |
| 3187 LII. | |
| 3188 | |
| 3189 Thus Harold inly said, and passed along, | |
| 3190 Yet not insensible to all which here | |
| 3191 Awoke the jocund birds to early song | |
| 3192 In glens which might have made e'en exile dear: | |
| 3193 Though on his brow were graven lines austere, | |
| 3194 And tranquil sternness which had ta'en the place | |
| 3195 Of feelings fierier far but less severe, | |
| 3196 Joy was not always absent from his face, | |
| 3197 But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace. | |
| 3198 | |
| 3199 LIII. | |
| 3200 | |
| 3201 Nor was all love shut from him, though his days | |
| 3202 Of passion had consumed themselves to dust. | |
| 3203 It is in vain that we would coldly gaze | |
| 3204 On such as smile upon us; the heart must | |
| 3205 Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust | |
| 3206 Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt, | |
| 3207 For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust | |
| 3208 In one fond breast, to which his own would melt, | |
| 3209 And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt. | |
| 3210 | |
| 3211 LIV. | |
| 3212 | |
| 3213 And he had learned to love,--I know not why, | |
| 3214 For this in such as him seems strange of mood,-- | |
| 3215 The helpless looks of blooming infancy, | |
| 3216 Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued, | |
| 3217 To change like this, a mind so far imbued | |
| 3218 With scorn of man, it little boots to know; | |
| 3219 But thus it was; and though in solitude | |
| 3220 Small power the nipped affections have to grow, | |
| 3221 In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow. | |
| 3222 | |
| 3223 LV. | |
| 3224 | |
| 3225 And there was one soft breast, as hath been said, | |
| 3226 Which unto his was bound by stronger ties | |
| 3227 Than the church links withal; and, though unwed, | |
| 3228 THAT love was pure, and, far above disguise, | |
| 3229 Had stood the test of mortal enmities | |
| 3230 Still undivided, and cemented more | |
| 3231 By peril, dreaded most in female eyes; | |
| 3232 But this was firm, and from a foreign shore | |
| 3233 Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour! | |
| 3234 | |
| 3235 The castled crag of Drachenfels | |
| 3236 Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine. | |
| 3237 Whose breast of waters broadly swells | |
| 3238 Between the banks which bear the vine, | |
| 3239 And hills all rich with blossomed trees, | |
| 3240 And fields which promise corn and wine, | |
| 3241 And scattered cities crowning these, | |
| 3242 Whose far white walls along them shine, | |
| 3243 Have strewed a scene, which I should see | |
| 3244 With double joy wert THOU with me! | |
| 3245 | |
| 3246 And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes, | |
| 3247 And hands which offer early flowers, | |
| 3248 Walk smiling o'er this paradise; | |
| 3249 Above, the frequent feudal towers | |
| 3250 Through green leaves lift their walls of grey, | |
| 3251 And many a rock which steeply lours, | |
| 3252 And noble arch in proud decay, | |
| 3253 Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers: | |
| 3254 But one thing want these banks of Rhine,-- | |
| 3255 Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine! | |
| 3256 | |
| 3257 I send the lilies given to me; | |
| 3258 Though long before thy hand they touch, | |
| 3259 I know that they must withered be, | |
| 3260 But yet reject them not as such; | |
| 3261 For I have cherished them as dear, | |
| 3262 Because they yet may meet thine eye, | |
| 3263 And guide thy soul to mine e'en here, | |
| 3264 When thou behold'st them drooping nigh, | |
| 3265 And know'st them gathered by the Rhine, | |
| 3266 And offered from my heart to thine! | |
| 3267 | |
| 3268 The river nobly foams and flows, | |
| 3269 The charm of this enchanted ground, | |
| 3270 And all its thousand turns disclose | |
| 3271 Some fresher beauty varying round; | |
| 3272 The haughtiest breast its wish might bound | |
| 3273 Through life to dwell delighted here; | |
| 3274 Nor could on earth a spot be found | |
| 3275 To Nature and to me so dear, | |
| 3276 Could thy dear eyes in following mine | |
| 3277 Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine! | |
| 3278 | |
| 3279 LVI. | |
| 3280 | |
| 3281 By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, | |
| 3282 There is a small and simple pyramid, | |
| 3283 Crowning the summit of the verdant mound; | |
| 3284 Beneath its base are heroes' ashes hid, | |
| 3285 Our enemy's,--but let not that forbid | |
| 3286 Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb | |
| 3287 Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid, | |
| 3288 Lamenting and yet envying such a doom, | |
| 3289 Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume. | |
| 3290 | |
| 3291 LVI. | |
| 3292 | |
| 3293 Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,-- | |
| 3294 His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes; | |
| 3295 And fitly may the stranger lingering here | |
| 3296 Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose; | |
| 3297 For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, | |
| 3298 The few in number, who had not o'erstept | |
| 3299 The charter to chastise which she bestows | |
| 3300 On such as wield her weapons; he had kept | |
| 3301 The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept. | |
| 3302 | |
| 3303 LVIII. | |
| 3304 | |
| 3305 Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered wall | |
| 3306 Black with the miner's blast, upon her height | |
| 3307 Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball | |
| 3308 Rebounding idly on her strength did light; | |
| 3309 A tower of victory! from whence the flight | |
| 3310 Of baffled foes was watched along the plain; | |
| 3311 But Peace destroyed what War could never blight, | |
| 3312 And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain-- | |
| 3313 On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain. | |
| 3314 | |
| 3315 LIX. | |
| 3316 | |
| 3317 Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long, delighted, | |
| 3318 The stranger fain would linger on his way; | |
| 3319 Thine is a scene alike where souls united | |
| 3320 Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray; | |
| 3321 And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey | |
| 3322 On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, | |
| 3323 Where Nature, not too sombre nor too gay, | |
| 3324 Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, | |
| 3325 Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year. | |
| 3326 | |
| 3327 LX. | |
| 3328 | |
| 3329 Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu! | |
| 3330 There can be no farewell to scene like thine; | |
| 3331 The mind is coloured by thy every hue; | |
| 3332 And if reluctantly the eyes resign | |
| 3333 Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! | |
| 3334 'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise; | |
| 3335 More mighty spots may rise--more glaring shine, | |
| 3336 But none unite in one attaching maze | |
| 3337 The brilliant, fair, and soft;--the glories of old days. | |
| 3338 | |
| 3339 LXI. | |
| 3340 | |
| 3341 The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom | |
| 3342 Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, | |
| 3343 The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, | |
| 3344 The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between, | |
| 3345 The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been | |
| 3346 In mockery of man's art; and these withal | |
| 3347 A race of faces happy as the scene, | |
| 3348 Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, | |
| 3349 Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall. | |
| 3350 | |
| 3351 LXII. | |
| 3352 | |
| 3353 But these recede. Above me are the Alps, | |
| 3354 The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls | |
| 3355 Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, | |
| 3356 And throned Eternity in icy halls | |
| 3357 Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls | |
| 3358 The avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow! | |
| 3359 All that expands the spirit, yet appals, | |
| 3360 Gathers around these summits, as to show | |
| 3361 How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. | |
| 3362 | |
| 3363 LXIII. | |
| 3364 | |
| 3365 But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, | |
| 3366 There is a spot should not be passed in vain,-- | |
| 3367 Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man | |
| 3368 May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain, | |
| 3369 Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain; | |
| 3370 Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host, | |
| 3371 A bony heap, through ages to remain, | |
| 3372 Themselves their monument;--the Stygian coast | |
| 3373 Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost. | |
| 3374 | |
| 3375 LXIV. | |
| 3376 | |
| 3377 While Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies, | |
| 3378 Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; | |
| 3379 They were true Glory's stainless victories, | |
| 3380 Won by the unambitious heart and hand | |
| 3381 Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, | |
| 3382 All unbought champions in no princely cause | |
| 3383 Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land | |
| 3384 Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws | |
| 3385 Making king's rights divine, by some Draconic clause. | |
| 3386 | |
| 3387 LXV. | |
| 3388 | |
| 3389 By a lone wall a lonelier column rears | |
| 3390 A grey and grief-worn aspect of old days | |
| 3391 'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, | |
| 3392 And looks as with the wild bewildered gaze | |
| 3393 Of one to stone converted by amaze, | |
| 3394 Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands, | |
| 3395 Making a marvel that it not decays, | |
| 3396 When the coeval pride of human hands, | |
| 3397 Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands. | |
| 3398 | |
| 3399 LXVI. | |
| 3400 | |
| 3401 And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!-- | |
| 3402 Julia--the daughter, the devoted--gave | |
| 3403 Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim | |
| 3404 Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. | |
| 3405 Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave | |
| 3406 The life she lived in; but the judge was just, | |
| 3407 And then she died on him she could not save. | |
| 3408 Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, | |
| 3409 And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. | |
| 3410 | |
| 3411 LXVII. | |
| 3412 | |
| 3413 But these are deeds which should not pass away, | |
| 3414 And names that must not wither, though the earth | |
| 3415 Forgets her empires with a just decay, | |
| 3416 The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth; | |
| 3417 The high, the mountain-majesty of worth, | |
| 3418 Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, | |
| 3419 And from its immortality look forth | |
| 3420 In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, | |
| 3421 Imperishably pure beyond all things below. | |
| 3422 | |
| 3423 LXVIII. | |
| 3424 | |
| 3425 Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, | |
| 3426 The mirror where the stars and mountains view | |
| 3427 The stillness of their aspect in each trace | |
| 3428 Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue: | |
| 3429 There is too much of man here, to look through | |
| 3430 With a fit mind the might which I behold; | |
| 3431 But soon in me shall Loneliness renew | |
| 3432 Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, | |
| 3433 Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold. | |
| 3434 | |
| 3435 LXIX. | |
| 3436 | |
| 3437 To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind; | |
| 3438 All are not fit with them to stir and toil, | |
| 3439 Nor is it discontent to keep the mind | |
| 3440 Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil | |
| 3441 In one hot throng, where we become the spoil | |
| 3442 Of our infection, till too late and long | |
| 3443 We may deplore and struggle with the coil, | |
| 3444 In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong | |
| 3445 Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong. | |
| 3446 | |
| 3447 LXX. | |
| 3448 | |
| 3449 There, in a moment, we may plunge our years | |
| 3450 In fatal penitence, and in the blight | |
| 3451 Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, | |
| 3452 And colour things to come with hues of Night; | |
| 3453 The race of life becomes a hopeless flight | |
| 3454 To those that walk in darkness: on the sea, | |
| 3455 The boldest steer but where their ports invite, | |
| 3456 But there are wanderers o'er Eternity | |
| 3457 Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be. | |
| 3458 | |
| 3459 LXXI. | |
| 3460 | |
| 3461 Is it not better, then, to be alone, | |
| 3462 And love Earth only for its earthly sake? | |
| 3463 By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, | |
| 3464 Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, | |
| 3465 Which feeds it as a mother who doth make | |
| 3466 A fair but froward infant her own care, | |
| 3467 Kissing its cries away as these awake;-- | |
| 3468 Is it not better thus our lives to wear, | |
| 3469 Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear? | |
| 3470 | |
| 3471 LXXII. | |
| 3472 | |
| 3473 I live not in myself, but I become | |
| 3474 Portion of that around me; and to me, | |
| 3475 High mountains are a feeling, but the hum | |
| 3476 Of human cities torture: I can see | |
| 3477 Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be | |
| 3478 A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, | |
| 3479 Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, | |
| 3480 And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain | |
| 3481 Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. | |
| 3482 | |
| 3483 LXXIII. | |
| 3484 | |
| 3485 And thus I am absorbed, and this is life: | |
| 3486 I look upon the peopled desert Past, | |
| 3487 As on a place of agony and strife, | |
| 3488 Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast, | |
| 3489 To act and suffer, but remount at last | |
| 3490 With a fresh pinion; which I felt to spring, | |
| 3491 Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast | |
| 3492 Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, | |
| 3493 Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling. | |
| 3494 | |
| 3495 LXXIV. | |
| 3496 | |
| 3497 And when, at length, the mind shall be all free | |
| 3498 From what it hates in this degraded form, | |
| 3499 Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be | |
| 3500 Existent happier in the fly and worm,-- | |
| 3501 When elements to elements conform, | |
| 3502 And dust is as it should be, shall I not | |
| 3503 Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm? | |
| 3504 The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot? | |
| 3505 Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot? | |
| 3506 | |
| 3507 LXXV. | |
| 3508 | |
| 3509 Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part | |
| 3510 Of me and of my soul, as I of them? | |
| 3511 Is not the love of these deep in my heart | |
| 3512 With a pure passion? should I not contemn | |
| 3513 All objects, if compared with these? and stem | |
| 3514 A tide of suffering, rather than forego | |
| 3515 Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm | |
| 3516 Of those whose eyes are only turned below, | |
| 3517 Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow? | |
| 3518 | |
| 3519 LXXVI. | |
| 3520 | |
| 3521 But this is not my theme; and I return | |
| 3522 To that which is immediate, and require | |
| 3523 Those who find contemplation in the urn, | |
| 3524 To look on One whose dust was once all fire, | |
| 3525 A native of the land where I respire | |
| 3526 The clear air for awhile--a passing guest, | |
| 3527 Where he became a being,--whose desire | |
| 3528 Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest, | |
| 3529 The which to gain and keep he sacrificed all rest. | |
| 3530 | |
| 3531 LXXVII. | |
| 3532 | |
| 3533 Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, | |
| 3534 The apostle of affliction, he who threw | |
| 3535 Enchantment over passion, and from woe | |
| 3536 Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew | |
| 3537 The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew | |
| 3538 How to make madness beautiful, and cast | |
| 3539 O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue | |
| 3540 Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past | |
| 3541 The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. | |
| 3542 | |
| 3543 LXXVIII. | |
| 3544 | |
| 3545 His love was passion's essence--as a tree | |
| 3546 On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame | |
| 3547 Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be | |
| 3548 Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same. | |
| 3549 But his was not the love of living dame, | |
| 3550 Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, | |
| 3551 But of Ideal beauty, which became | |
| 3552 In him existence, and o'erflowing teems | |
| 3553 Along his burning page, distempered though it seems. | |
| 3554 | |
| 3555 LXXIX. | |
| 3556 | |
| 3557 THIS breathed itself to life in Julie, THIS | |
| 3558 Invested her with all that's wild and sweet; | |
| 3559 This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss | |
| 3560 Which every morn his fevered lip would greet, | |
| 3561 From hers, who but with friendship his would meet: | |
| 3562 But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast | |
| 3563 Flashed the thrilled spirit's love-devouring heat; | |
| 3564 In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest, | |
| 3565 Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. | |
| 3566 | |
| 3567 LXXX. | |
| 3568 | |
| 3569 His life was one long war with self-sought foes, | |
| 3570 Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind | |
| 3571 Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose | |
| 3572 For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind, | |
| 3573 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. | |
| 3574 But he was frenzied,--wherefore, who may know? | |
| 3575 Since cause might be which skill could never find; | |
| 3576 But he was frenzied by disease or woe | |
| 3577 To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show. | |
| 3578 | |
| 3579 LXXXI. | |
| 3580 | |
| 3581 For then he was inspired, and from him came, | |
| 3582 As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore, | |
| 3583 Those oracles which set the world in flame, | |
| 3584 Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more: | |
| 3585 Did he not this for France, which lay before | |
| 3586 Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years? | |
| 3587 Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore, | |
| 3588 Till by the voice of him and his compeers | |
| 3589 Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o'ergrown fears? | |
| 3590 | |
| 3591 LXXXII. | |
| 3592 | |
| 3593 They made themselves a fearful monument! | |
| 3594 The wreck of old opinions--things which grew, | |
| 3595 Breathed from the birth of time: the veil they rent, | |
| 3596 And what behind it lay, all earth shall view. | |
| 3597 But good with ill they also overthrew, | |
| 3598 Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild | |
| 3599 Upon the same foundation, and renew | |
| 3600 Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled, | |
| 3601 As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed. | |
| 3602 | |
| 3603 LXXXIII. | |
| 3604 | |
| 3605 But this will not endure, nor be endured! | |
| 3606 Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt. | |
| 3607 They might have used it better, but, allured | |
| 3608 By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt | |
| 3609 On one another; Pity ceased to melt | |
| 3610 With her once natural charities. But they, | |
| 3611 Who in Oppression's darkness caved had dwelt, | |
| 3612 They were not eagles, nourished with the day; | |
| 3613 What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey? | |
| 3614 | |
| 3615 LXXXIV. | |
| 3616 | |
| 3617 What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? | |
| 3618 The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear | |
| 3619 That which disfigures it; and they who war | |
| 3620 With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear | |
| 3621 Silence, but not submission: in his lair | |
| 3622 Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour | |
| 3623 Which shall atone for years; none need despair: | |
| 3624 It came, it cometh, and will come,--the power | |
| 3625 To punish or forgive--in ONE we shall be slower. | |
| 3626 | |
| 3627 LXXXV. | |
| 3628 | |
| 3629 Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, | |
| 3630 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing | |
| 3631 Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake | |
| 3632 Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. | |
| 3633 This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing | |
| 3634 To waft me from distraction; once I loved | |
| 3635 Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring | |
| 3636 Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, | |
| 3637 That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. | |
| 3638 | |
| 3639 LXXXVI. | |
| 3640 | |
| 3641 It is the hush of night, and all between | |
| 3642 Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, | |
| 3643 Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen. | |
| 3644 Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear | |
| 3645 Precipitously steep; and drawing near, | |
| 3646 There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, | |
| 3647 Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear | |
| 3648 Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, | |
| 3649 Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more; | |
| 3650 | |
| 3651 LXXXVII. | |
| 3652 | |
| 3653 He is an evening reveller, who makes | |
| 3654 His life an infancy, and sings his fill; | |
| 3655 At intervals, some bird from out the brakes | |
| 3656 Starts into voice a moment, then is still. | |
| 3657 There seems a floating whisper on the hill, | |
| 3658 But that is fancy, for the starlight dews | |
| 3659 All silently their tears of love instil, | |
| 3660 Weeping themselves away, till they infuse | |
| 3661 Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues. | |
| 3662 | |
| 3663 LXXXVIII. | |
| 3664 | |
| 3665 Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven, | |
| 3666 If in your bright leaves we would read the fate | |
| 3667 Of men and empires,--'tis to be forgiven, | |
| 3668 That in our aspirations to be great, | |
| 3669 Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, | |
| 3670 And claim a kindred with you; for ye are | |
| 3671 A beauty and a mystery, and create | |
| 3672 In us such love and reverence from afar, | |
| 3673 That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. | |
| 3674 | |
| 3675 LXXXIX. | |
| 3676 | |
| 3677 All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep, | |
| 3678 But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; | |
| 3679 And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep: -- | |
| 3680 All heaven and earth are still: from the high host | |
| 3681 Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast, | |
| 3682 All is concentered in a life intense, | |
| 3683 Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, | |
| 3684 But hath a part of being, and a sense | |
| 3685 Of that which is of all Creator and defence. | |
| 3686 | |
| 3687 XC. | |
| 3688 | |
| 3689 Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt | |
| 3690 In solitude, where we are LEAST alone; | |
| 3691 A truth, which through our being then doth melt, | |
| 3692 And purifies from self: it is a tone, | |
| 3693 The soul and source of music, which makes known | |
| 3694 Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, | |
| 3695 Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, | |
| 3696 Binding all things with beauty;--'twould disarm | |
| 3697 The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm. | |
| 3698 | |
| 3699 XCI. | |
| 3700 | |
| 3701 Nor vainly did the early Persian make | |
| 3702 His altar the high places and the peak | |
| 3703 Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take | |
| 3704 A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek | |
| 3705 The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak, | |
| 3706 Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare | |
| 3707 Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek, | |
| 3708 With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air, | |
| 3709 Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer! | |
| 3710 | |
| 3711 XCII. | |
| 3712 | |
| 3713 The sky is changed!--and such a change! O night, | |
| 3714 And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, | |
| 3715 Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light | |
| 3716 Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, | |
| 3717 From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, | |
| 3718 Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, | |
| 3719 But every mountain now hath found a tongue; | |
| 3720 And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, | |
| 3721 Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! | |
| 3722 | |
| 3723 XCIII. | |
| 3724 | |
| 3725 And this is in the night:--Most glorious night! | |
| 3726 Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be | |
| 3727 A sharer in thy fierce and far delight-- | |
| 3728 A portion of the tempest and of thee! | |
| 3729 How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, | |
| 3730 And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! | |
| 3731 And now again 'tis black,--and now, the glee | |
| 3732 Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, | |
| 3733 As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. | |
| 3734 | |
| 3735 XCIV. | |
| 3736 | |
| 3737 Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between | |
| 3738 Heights which appear as lovers who have parted | |
| 3739 In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, | |
| 3740 That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted; | |
| 3741 Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, | |
| 3742 Love was the very root of the fond rage | |
| 3743 Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed: | |
| 3744 Itself expired, but leaving them an age | |
| 3745 Of years all winters--war within themselves to wage. | |
| 3746 | |
| 3747 XCV. | |
| 3748 | |
| 3749 Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, | |
| 3750 The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand; | |
| 3751 For here, not one, but many, make their play, | |
| 3752 And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand, | |
| 3753 Flashing and cast around: of all the band, | |
| 3754 The brightest through these parted hills hath forked | |
| 3755 His lightnings, as if he did understand | |
| 3756 That in such gaps as desolation worked, | |
| 3757 There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked. | |
| 3758 | |
| 3759 XCVI. | |
| 3760 | |
| 3761 Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye, | |
| 3762 With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul | |
| 3763 To make these felt and feeling, well may be | |
| 3764 Things that have made me watchful; the far roll | |
| 3765 Of your departing voices, is the knoll | |
| 3766 Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest. | |
| 3767 But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? | |
| 3768 Are ye like those within the human breast? | |
| 3769 Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest? | |
| 3770 | |
| 3771 XCVII. | |
| 3772 | |
| 3773 Could I embody and unbosom now | |
| 3774 That which is most within me,--could I wreak | |
| 3775 My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw | |
| 3776 Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak, | |
| 3777 All that I would have sought, and all I seek, | |
| 3778 Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe--into one word, | |
| 3779 And that one word were lightning, I would speak; | |
| 3780 But as it is, I live and die unheard, | |
| 3781 With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. | |
| 3782 | |
| 3783 XCVIII. | |
| 3784 | |
| 3785 The morn is up again, the dewy morn, | |
| 3786 With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, | |
| 3787 Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, | |
| 3788 And living as if earth contained no tomb,-- | |
| 3789 And glowing into day: we may resume | |
| 3790 The march of our existence: and thus I, | |
| 3791 Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room | |
| 3792 And food for meditation, nor pass by | |
| 3793 Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly. | |
| 3794 | |
| 3795 XCIX. | |
| 3796 | |
| 3797 Clarens! sweet Clarens! birthplace of deep Love! | |
| 3798 Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought; | |
| 3799 Thy trees take root in love; the snows above | |
| 3800 The very glaciers have his colours caught, | |
| 3801 And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought | |
| 3802 By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks, | |
| 3803 The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought | |
| 3804 In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, | |
| 3805 Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks. | |
| 3806 | |
| 3807 C. | |
| 3808 | |
| 3809 Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,-- | |
| 3810 Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne | |
| 3811 To which the steps are mountains; where the god | |
| 3812 Is a pervading life and light,--so shown | |
| 3813 Not on those summits solely, nor alone | |
| 3814 In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower | |
| 3815 His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown, | |
| 3816 His soft and summer breath, whose tender power | |
| 3817 Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour. | |
| 3818 | |
| 3819 CI. | |
| 3820 | |
| 3821 All things are here of HIM; from the black pines, | |
| 3822 Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar | |
| 3823 Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines | |
| 3824 Which slope his green path downward to the shore, | |
| 3825 Where the bowed waters meet him, and adore, | |
| 3826 Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood, | |
| 3827 The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, | |
| 3828 But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, | |
| 3829 Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude. | |
| 3830 | |
| 3831 CII. | |
| 3832 | |
| 3833 A populous solitude of bees and birds, | |
| 3834 And fairy-formed and many coloured things, | |
| 3835 Who worship him with notes more sweet than words, | |
| 3836 And innocently open their glad wings, | |
| 3837 Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs, | |
| 3838 And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend | |
| 3839 Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings | |
| 3840 The swiftest thought of beauty, here extend, | |
| 3841 Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end. | |
| 3842 | |
| 3843 CIII. | |
| 3844 | |
| 3845 He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore, | |
| 3846 And make his heart a spirit: he who knows | |
| 3847 That tender mystery, will love the more, | |
| 3848 For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes, | |
| 3849 And the world's waste, have driven him far from those, | |
| 3850 For 'tis his nature to advance or die; | |
| 3851 He stands not still, but or decays, or grows | |
| 3852 Into a boundless blessing, which may vie | |
| 3853 With the immortal lights, in its eternity! | |
| 3854 | |
| 3855 CIV. | |
| 3856 | |
| 3857 'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, | |
| 3858 Peopling it with affections; but he found | |
| 3859 It was the scene which passion must allot | |
| 3860 To the mind's purified beings; 'twas the ground | |
| 3861 Where early Love his Psyche's zone unbound, | |
| 3862 And hallowed it with loveliness: 'tis lone, | |
| 3863 And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound, | |
| 3864 And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone | |
| 3865 Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne. | |
| 3866 | |
| 3867 CV. | |
| 3868 | |
| 3869 Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes | |
| 3870 Of names which unto you bequeathed a name; | |
| 3871 Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads, | |
| 3872 A path to perpetuity of fame: | |
| 3873 They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim | |
| 3874 Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile | |
| 3875 Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame | |
| 3876 Of Heaven, again assailed, if Heaven the while | |
| 3877 On man and man's research could deign do more than smile. | |
| 3878 | |
| 3879 CVI. | |
| 3880 | |
| 3881 The one was fire and fickleness, a child | |
| 3882 Most mutable in wishes, but in mind | |
| 3883 A wit as various,--gay, grave, sage, or wild,-- | |
| 3884 Historian, bard, philosopher combined: | |
| 3885 He multiplied himself among mankind, | |
| 3886 The Proteus of their talents: But his own | |
| 3887 Breathed most in ridicule,--which, as the wind, | |
| 3888 Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,-- | |
| 3889 Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne. | |
| 3890 | |
| 3891 CVII. | |
| 3892 | |
| 3893 The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought, | |
| 3894 And hiving wisdom with each studious year, | |
| 3895 In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, | |
| 3896 And shaped his weapon with an edge severe, | |
| 3897 Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; | |
| 3898 The lord of irony,--that master spell, | |
| 3899 Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, | |
| 3900 And doomed him to the zealot's ready hell, | |
| 3901 Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. | |
| 3902 | |
| 3903 CVIII. | |
| 3904 | |
| 3905 Yet, peace be with their ashes,--for by them, | |
| 3906 If merited, the penalty is paid; | |
| 3907 It is not ours to judge, far less condemn; | |
| 3908 The hour must come when such things shall be made | |
| 3909 Known unto all,--or hope and dread allayed | |
| 3910 By slumber on one pillow, in the dust, | |
| 3911 Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decayed; | |
| 3912 And when it shall revive, as is our trust, | |
| 3913 'Twill be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just. | |
| 3914 | |
| 3915 CIX. | |
| 3916 | |
| 3917 But let me quit man's works, again to read | |
| 3918 His Maker's spread around me, and suspend | |
| 3919 This page, which from my reveries I feed, | |
| 3920 Until it seems prolonging without end. | |
| 3921 The clouds above me to the white Alps tend, | |
| 3922 And I must pierce them, and survey whate'er | |
| 3923 May be permitted, as my steps I bend | |
| 3924 To their most great and growing region, where | |
| 3925 The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air. | |
| 3926 | |
| 3927 CX. | |
| 3928 | |
| 3929 Italia! too, Italia! looking on thee | |
| 3930 Full flashes on the soul the light of ages, | |
| 3931 Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee, | |
| 3932 To the last halo of the chiefs and sages | |
| 3933 Who glorify thy consecrated pages; | |
| 3934 Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still, | |
| 3935 The fount at which the panting mind assuages | |
| 3936 Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill, | |
| 3937 Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill. | |
| 3938 | |
| 3939 CXI. | |
| 3940 | |
| 3941 Thus far have I proceeded in a theme | |
| 3942 Renewed with no kind auspices:--to feel | |
| 3943 We are not what we have been, and to deem | |
| 3944 We are not what we should be, and to steel | |
| 3945 The heart against itself; and to conceal, | |
| 3946 With a proud caution, love or hate, or aught,-- | |
| 3947 Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,-- | |
| 3948 Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought, | |
| 3949 Is a stern task of soul:--No matter,--it is taught. | |
| 3950 | |
| 3951 CXII. | |
| 3952 | |
| 3953 And for these words, thus woven into song, | |
| 3954 It may be that they are a harmless wile,-- | |
| 3955 The colouring of the scenes which fleet along, | |
| 3956 Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile | |
| 3957 My breast, or that of others, for a while. | |
| 3958 Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not | |
| 3959 So young as to regard men's frown or smile | |
| 3960 As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot; | |
| 3961 I stood and stand alone,--remembered or forgot. | |
| 3962 | |
| 3963 CXIII. | |
| 3964 | |
| 3965 I have not loved the world, nor the world me; | |
| 3966 I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed | |
| 3967 To its idolatries a patient knee,-- | |
| 3968 Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud | |
| 3969 In worship of an echo; in the crowd | |
| 3970 They could not deem me one of such; I stood | |
| 3971 Among them, but not of them; in a shroud | |
| 3972 Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, | |
| 3973 Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued. | |
| 3974 | |
| 3975 CXIV. | |
| 3976 | |
| 3977 I have not loved the world, nor the world me,-- | |
| 3978 But let us part fair foes; I do believe, | |
| 3979 Though I have found them not, that there may be | |
| 3980 Words which are things,--hopes which will not deceive, | |
| 3981 And virtues which are merciful, nor weave | |
| 3982 Snares for the falling: I would also deem | |
| 3983 O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; | |
| 3984 That two, or one, are almost what they seem,-- | |
| 3985 That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. | |
| 3986 | |
| 3987 CXV. | |
| 3988 | |
| 3989 My daughter! with thy name this song begun-- | |
| 3990 My daughter! with thy name this much shall end-- | |
| 3991 I see thee not, I hear thee not,--but none | |
| 3992 Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend | |
| 3993 To whom the shadows of far years extend: | |
| 3994 Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold, | |
| 3995 My voice shall with thy future visions blend, | |
| 3996 And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,-- | |
| 3997 A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould. | |
| 3998 | |
| 3999 CXVI. | |
| 4000 | |
| 4001 To aid thy mind's development,--to watch | |
| 4002 Thy dawn of little joys,--to sit and see | |
| 4003 Almost thy very growth,--to view thee catch | |
| 4004 Knowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee! | |
| 4005 To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, | |
| 4006 And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,-- | |
| 4007 This, it should seem, was not reserved for me | |
| 4008 Yet this was in my nature:--As it is, | |
| 4009 I know not what is there, yet something like to this. | |
| 4010 | |
| 4011 CXVII. | |
| 4012 | |
| 4013 Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, | |
| 4014 I know that thou wilt love me; though my name | |
| 4015 Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught | |
| 4016 With desolation, and a broken claim: | |
| 4017 Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same, | |
| 4018 I know that thou wilt love me: though to drain | |
| 4019 MY blood from out thy being were an aim, | |
| 4020 And an attainment,--all would be in vain,-- | |
| 4021 Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain. | |
| 4022 | |
| 4023 CXVIII. | |
| 4024 | |
| 4025 The child of love,--though born in bitterness, | |
| 4026 And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire | |
| 4027 These were the elements, and thine no less. | |
| 4028 As yet such are around thee; but thy fire | |
| 4029 Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher. | |
| 4030 Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, | |
| 4031 And from the mountains where I now respire, | |
| 4032 Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, | |
| 4033 As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me! | |
| 4034 | |
| 4035 | |
| 4036 | |
| 4037 | |
| 4038 CANTO THE FOURTH. | |
| 4039 | |
| 4040 | |
| 4041 | |
| 4042 I. | |
| 4043 | |
| 4044 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; | |
| 4045 A palace and a prison on each hand: | |
| 4046 I saw from out the wave her structures rise | |
| 4047 As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: | |
| 4048 A thousand years their cloudy wings expand | |
| 4049 Around me, and a dying glory smiles | |
| 4050 O'er the far times when many a subject land | |
| 4051 Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, | |
| 4052 Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! | |
| 4053 | |
| 4054 II. | |
| 4055 | |
| 4056 She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, | |
| 4057 Rising with her tiara of proud towers | |
| 4058 At airy distance, with majestic motion, | |
| 4059 A ruler of the waters and their powers: | |
| 4060 And such she was; her daughters had their dowers | |
| 4061 From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East | |
| 4062 Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. | |
| 4063 In purple was she robed, and of her feast | |
| 4064 Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. | |
| 4065 | |
| 4066 III. | |
| 4067 | |
| 4068 In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more, | |
| 4069 And silent rows the songless gondolier; | |
| 4070 Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, | |
| 4071 And music meets not always now the ear: | |
| 4072 Those days are gone--but beauty still is here. | |
| 4073 States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die, | |
| 4074 Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, | |
| 4075 The pleasant place of all festivity, | |
| 4076 The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! | |
| 4077 | |
| 4078 IV. | |
| 4079 | |
| 4080 But unto us she hath a spell beyond | |
| 4081 Her name in story, and her long array | |
| 4082 Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond | |
| 4083 Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; | |
| 4084 Ours is a trophy which will not decay | |
| 4085 With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, | |
| 4086 And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away-- | |
| 4087 The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, | |
| 4088 For us repeopled were the solitary shore. | |
| 4089 | |
| 4090 V. | |
| 4091 | |
| 4092 The beings of the mind are not of clay; | |
| 4093 Essentially immortal, they create | |
| 4094 And multiply in us a brighter ray | |
| 4095 And more beloved existence: that which Fate | |
| 4096 Prohibits to dull life, in this our state | |
| 4097 Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, | |
| 4098 First exiles, then replaces what we hate; | |
| 4099 Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, | |
| 4100 And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. | |
| 4101 | |
| 4102 VI. | |
| 4103 | |
| 4104 Such is the refuge of our youth and age, | |
| 4105 The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy; | |
| 4106 And this worn feeling peoples many a page, | |
| 4107 And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye: | |
| 4108 Yet there are things whose strong reality | |
| 4109 Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues | |
| 4110 More beautiful than our fantastic sky, | |
| 4111 And the strange constellations which the Muse | |
| 4112 O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: | |
| 4113 | |
| 4114 VII. | |
| 4115 | |
| 4116 I saw or dreamed of such,--but let them go-- | |
| 4117 They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams; | |
| 4118 And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so; | |
| 4119 I could replace them if I would: still teems | |
| 4120 My mind with many a form which aptly seems | |
| 4121 Such as I sought for, and at moments found; | |
| 4122 Let these too go--for waking reason deems | |
| 4123 Such overweening phantasies unsound, | |
| 4124 And other voices speak, and other sights surround. | |
| 4125 | |
| 4126 VIII. | |
| 4127 | |
| 4128 I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes | |
| 4129 Have made me not a stranger; to the mind | |
| 4130 Which is itself, no changes bring surprise; | |
| 4131 Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find | |
| 4132 A country with--ay, or without mankind; | |
| 4133 Yet was I born where men are proud to be, | |
| 4134 Not without cause; and should I leave behind | |
| 4135 The inviolate island of the sage and free, | |
| 4136 And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, | |
| 4137 | |
| 4138 IX. | |
| 4139 | |
| 4140 Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay | |
| 4141 My ashes in a soil which is not mine, | |
| 4142 My spirit shall resume it--if we may | |
| 4143 Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine | |
| 4144 My hopes of being remembered in my line | |
| 4145 With my land's language: if too fond and far | |
| 4146 These aspirations in their scope incline,-- | |
| 4147 If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, | |
| 4148 Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar. | |
| 4149 | |
| 4150 X. | |
| 4151 | |
| 4152 My name from out the temple where the dead | |
| 4153 Are honoured by the nations--let it be-- | |
| 4154 And light the laurels on a loftier head! | |
| 4155 And be the Spartan's epitaph on me-- | |
| 4156 'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' | |
| 4157 Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; | |
| 4158 The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree | |
| 4159 I planted,--they have torn me, and I bleed: | |
| 4160 I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. | |
| 4161 | |
| 4162 XI. | |
| 4163 | |
| 4164 The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; | |
| 4165 And, annual marriage now no more renewed, | |
| 4166 The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, | |
| 4167 Neglected garment of her widowhood! | |
| 4168 St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood | |
| 4169 Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, | |
| 4170 Over the proud place where an Emperor sued, | |
| 4171 And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour | |
| 4172 When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. | |
| 4173 | |
| 4174 XII. | |
| 4175 | |
| 4176 The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns-- | |
| 4177 An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt; | |
| 4178 Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains | |
| 4179 Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt | |
| 4180 From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt | |
| 4181 The sunshine for a while, and downward go | |
| 4182 Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: | |
| 4183 Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! | |
| 4184 The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. | |
| 4185 | |
| 4186 XIII. | |
| 4187 | |
| 4188 Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, | |
| 4189 Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; | |
| 4190 But is not Doria's menace come to pass? | |
| 4191 Are they not BRIDLED?--Venice, lost and won, | |
| 4192 Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, | |
| 4193 Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose! | |
| 4194 Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, | |
| 4195 Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes, | |
| 4196 From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. | |
| 4197 | |
| 4198 XIV. | |
| 4199 | |
| 4200 In youth she was all glory,--a new Tyre,-- | |
| 4201 Her very byword sprung from victory, | |
| 4202 The 'Planter of the Lion,' which through fire | |
| 4203 And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; | |
| 4204 Though making many slaves, herself still free | |
| 4205 And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite: | |
| 4206 Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye | |
| 4207 Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight! | |
| 4208 For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. | |
| 4209 | |
| 4210 XV. | |
| 4211 | |
| 4212 Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file | |
| 4213 Of her dead doges are declined to dust; | |
| 4214 But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile | |
| 4215 Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; | |
| 4216 Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, | |
| 4217 Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls, | |
| 4218 Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must | |
| 4219 Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, | |
| 4220 Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. | |
| 4221 | |
| 4222 XVI. | |
| 4223 | |
| 4224 When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, | |
| 4225 And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, | |
| 4226 Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, | |
| 4227 Her voice their only ransom from afar: | |
| 4228 See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car | |
| 4229 Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins | |
| 4230 Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar | |
| 4231 Starts from its belt--he rends his captive's chains, | |
| 4232 And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. | |
| 4233 | |
| 4234 XVII. | |
| 4235 | |
| 4236 Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, | |
| 4237 Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, | |
| 4238 Thy choral memory of the bard divine, | |
| 4239 Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot | |
| 4240 Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot | |
| 4241 Is shameful to the nations,--most of all, | |
| 4242 Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not | |
| 4243 Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall | |
| 4244 Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. | |
| 4245 | |
| 4246 XVIII. | |
| 4247 | |
| 4248 I loved her from my boyhood: she to me | |
| 4249 Was as a fairy city of the heart, | |
| 4250 Rising like water-columns from the sea, | |
| 4251 Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart | |
| 4252 And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, | |
| 4253 Had stamped her image in me, and e'en so, | |
| 4254 Although I found her thus, we did not part, | |
| 4255 Perchance e'en dearer in her day of woe, | |
| 4256 Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. | |
| 4257 | |
| 4258 XIX. | |
| 4259 | |
| 4260 I can repeople with the past--and of | |
| 4261 The present there is still for eye and thought, | |
| 4262 And meditation chastened down, enough; | |
| 4263 And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; | |
| 4264 And of the happiest moments which were wrought | |
| 4265 Within the web of my existence, some | |
| 4266 From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: | |
| 4267 There are some feelings Time cannot benumb, | |
| 4268 Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb. | |
| 4269 | |
| 4270 XX. | |
| 4271 | |
| 4272 But from their nature will the tannen grow | |
| 4273 Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks, | |
| 4274 Rooted in barrenness, where nought below | |
| 4275 Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks | |
| 4276 Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks | |
| 4277 The howling tempest, till its height and frame | |
| 4278 Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks | |
| 4279 Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came, | |
| 4280 And grew a giant tree;--the mind may grow the same. | |
| 4281 | |
| 4282 XXI. | |
| 4283 | |
| 4284 Existence may be borne, and the deep root | |
| 4285 Of life and sufferance make its firm abode | |
| 4286 In bare and desolate bosoms: mute | |
| 4287 The camel labours with the heaviest load, | |
| 4288 And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed | |
| 4289 In vain should such examples be; if they, | |
| 4290 Things of ignoble or of savage mood, | |
| 4291 Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay | |
| 4292 May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day. | |
| 4293 | |
| 4294 XXII. | |
| 4295 | |
| 4296 All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, | |
| 4297 Even by the sufferer; and, in each event, | |
| 4298 Ends:--Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, | |
| 4299 Return to whence they came--with like intent, | |
| 4300 And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent, | |
| 4301 Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time, | |
| 4302 And perish with the reed on which they leant; | |
| 4303 Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime, | |
| 4304 According as their souls were formed to sink or climb. | |
| 4305 | |
| 4306 XXIII. | |
| 4307 | |
| 4308 But ever and anon of griefs subdued | |
| 4309 There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, | |
| 4310 Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued; | |
| 4311 And slight withal may be the things which bring | |
| 4312 Back on the heart the weight which it would fling | |
| 4313 Aside for ever: it may be a sound-- | |
| 4314 A tone of music--summer's eve--or spring-- | |
| 4315 A flower--the wind--the ocean--which shall wound, | |
| 4316 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound. | |
| 4317 | |
| 4318 XXIV. | |
| 4319 | |
| 4320 And how and why we know not, nor can trace | |
| 4321 Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, | |
| 4322 But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface | |
| 4323 The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, | |
| 4324 Which out of things familiar, undesigned, | |
| 4325 When least we deem of such, calls up to view | |
| 4326 The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,-- | |
| 4327 The cold--the changed--perchance the dead--anew, | |
| 4328 The mourned, the loved, the lost--too many!--yet how few! | |
| 4329 | |
| 4330 XXV. | |
| 4331 | |
| 4332 But my soul wanders; I demand it back | |
| 4333 To meditate amongst decay, and stand | |
| 4334 A ruin amidst ruins; there to track | |
| 4335 Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land | |
| 4336 Which WAS the mightiest in its old command, | |
| 4337 And IS the loveliest, and must ever be | |
| 4338 The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand, | |
| 4339 Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, | |
| 4340 The beautiful, the brave--the lords of earth and sea. | |
| 4341 | |
| 4342 XXVI. | |
| 4343 | |
| 4344 The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! | |
| 4345 And even since, and now, fair Italy! | |
| 4346 Thou art the garden of the world, the home | |
| 4347 Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; | |
| 4348 Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? | |
| 4349 Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste | |
| 4350 More rich than other climes' fertility; | |
| 4351 Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced | |
| 4352 With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. | |
| 4353 | |
| 4354 XXVII. | |
| 4355 | |
| 4356 The moon is up, and yet it is not night-- | |
| 4357 Sunset divides the sky with her--a sea | |
| 4358 Of glory streams along the Alpine height | |
| 4359 Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free | |
| 4360 From clouds, but of all colours seems to be-- | |
| 4361 Melted to one vast Iris of the West, | |
| 4362 Where the day joins the past eternity; | |
| 4363 While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest | |
| 4364 Floats through the azure air--an island of the blest! | |
| 4365 | |
| 4366 XXVIII. | |
| 4367 | |
| 4368 A single star is at her side, and reigns | |
| 4369 With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still | |
| 4370 Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains | |
| 4371 Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill, | |
| 4372 As Day and Night contending were, until | |
| 4373 Nature reclaimed her order:--gently flows | |
| 4374 The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil | |
| 4375 The odorous purple of a new-born rose, | |
| 4376 Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows, | |
| 4377 | |
| 4378 XXIX. | |
| 4379 | |
| 4380 Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, | |
| 4381 Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, | |
| 4382 From the rich sunset to the rising star, | |
| 4383 Their magical variety diffuse: | |
| 4384 And now they change; a paler shadow strews | |
| 4385 Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day | |
| 4386 Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues | |
| 4387 With a new colour as it gasps away, | |
| 4388 The last still loveliest, till--'tis gone--and all is grey. | |
| 4389 | |
| 4390 XXX. | |
| 4391 | |
| 4392 There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air, | |
| 4393 Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose | |
| 4394 The bones of Laura's lover: here repair | |
| 4395 Many familiar with his well-sung woes, | |
| 4396 The pilgrims of his genius. He arose | |
| 4397 To raise a language, and his land reclaim | |
| 4398 From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: | |
| 4399 Watering the tree which bears his lady's name | |
| 4400 With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. | |
| 4401 | |
| 4402 XXXI. | |
| 4403 | |
| 4404 They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; | |
| 4405 The mountain-village where his latter days | |
| 4406 Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride-- | |
| 4407 An honest pride--and let it be their praise, | |
| 4408 To offer to the passing stranger's gaze | |
| 4409 His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain | |
| 4410 And venerably simple, such as raise | |
| 4411 A feeling more accordant with his strain, | |
| 4412 Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane. | |
| 4413 | |
| 4414 XXXII. | |
| 4415 | |
| 4416 And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt | |
| 4417 Is one of that complexion which seems made | |
| 4418 For those who their mortality have felt, | |
| 4419 And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed | |
| 4420 In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, | |
| 4421 Which shows a distant prospect far away | |
| 4422 Of busy cities, now in vain displayed, | |
| 4423 For they can lure no further; and the ray | |
| 4424 Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday. | |
| 4425 | |
| 4426 XXXIII. | |
| 4427 | |
| 4428 Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers | |
| 4429 And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, | |
| 4430 Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours | |
| 4431 With a calm languor, which, though to the eye | |
| 4432 Idlesse it seem, hath its morality, | |
| 4433 If from society we learn to live, | |
| 4434 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; | |
| 4435 It hath no flatterers; vanity can give | |
| 4436 No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive: | |
| 4437 | |
| 4438 XXXIV. | |
| 4439 | |
| 4440 Or, it may be, with demons, who impair | |
| 4441 The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey | |
| 4442 In melancholy bosoms, such as were | |
| 4443 Of moody texture from their earliest day, | |
| 4444 And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, | |
| 4445 Deeming themselves predestined to a doom | |
| 4446 Which is not of the pangs that pass away; | |
| 4447 Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, | |
| 4448 The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. | |
| 4449 | |
| 4450 XXXV. | |
| 4451 | |
| 4452 Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, | |
| 4453 Whose symmetry was not for solitude, | |
| 4454 There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seat's | |
| 4455 Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood | |
| 4456 Of Este, which for many an age made good | |
| 4457 Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore | |
| 4458 Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood | |
| 4459 Of petty power impelled, of those who wore | |
| 4460 The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. | |
| 4461 | |
| 4462 XXXVI. | |
| 4463 | |
| 4464 And Tasso is their glory and their shame. | |
| 4465 Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! | |
| 4466 And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame, | |
| 4467 And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell. | |
| 4468 The miserable despot could not quell | |
| 4469 The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend | |
| 4470 With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell | |
| 4471 Where he had plunged it. Glory without end | |
| 4472 Scattered the clouds away--and on that name attend | |
| 4473 | |
| 4474 XXXVII. | |
| 4475 | |
| 4476 The tears and praises of all time, while thine | |
| 4477 Would rot in its oblivion--in the sink | |
| 4478 Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line | |
| 4479 Is shaken into nothing; but the link | |
| 4480 Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think | |
| 4481 Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn-- | |
| 4482 Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink | |
| 4483 From thee! if in another station born, | |
| 4484 Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn: | |
| 4485 | |
| 4486 XXXVIII. | |
| 4487 | |
| 4488 THOU! formed to eat, and be despised, and die, | |
| 4489 Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou | |
| 4490 Hadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty: | |
| 4491 HE! with a glory round his furrowed brow, | |
| 4492 Which emanated then, and dazzles now | |
| 4493 In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, | |
| 4494 And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow | |
| 4495 No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, | |
| 4496 That whetstone of the teeth--monotony in wire! | |
| 4497 | |
| 4498 XXXIX. | |
| 4499 | |
| 4500 Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his | |
| 4501 In life and death to be the mark where Wrong | |
| 4502 Aimed with their poisoned arrows--but to miss. | |
| 4503 Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song! | |
| 4504 Each year brings forth its millions; but how long | |
| 4505 The tide of generations shall roll on, | |
| 4506 And not the whole combined and countless throng | |
| 4507 Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one | |
| 4508 Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun. | |
| 4509 | |
| 4510 XL. | |
| 4511 | |
| 4512 Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those | |
| 4513 Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, | |
| 4514 The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose | |
| 4515 The Tuscan father's comedy divine; | |
| 4516 Then, not unequal to the Florentine, | |
| 4517 The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth | |
| 4518 A new creation with his magic line, | |
| 4519 And, like the Ariosto of the North, | |
| 4520 Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth. | |
| 4521 | |
| 4522 XLI. | |
| 4523 | |
| 4524 The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust | |
| 4525 The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves; | |
| 4526 Nor was the ominous element unjust, | |
| 4527 For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves | |
| 4528 Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, | |
| 4529 And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; | |
| 4530 Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, | |
| 4531 Know that the lightning sanctifies below | |
| 4532 Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now. | |
| 4533 | |
| 4534 XLII. | |
| 4535 | |
| 4536 Italia! O Italia! thou who hast | |
| 4537 The fatal gift of beauty, which became | |
| 4538 A funeral dower of present woes and past, | |
| 4539 On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, | |
| 4540 And annals graved in characters of flame. | |
| 4541 Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness | |
| 4542 Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim | |
| 4543 Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press | |
| 4544 To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; | |
| 4545 | |
| 4546 XLIII. | |
| 4547 | |
| 4548 Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired, | |
| 4549 Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored | |
| 4550 For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, | |
| 4551 Would not be seen the armed torrents poured | |
| 4552 Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde | |
| 4553 Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po | |
| 4554 Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword | |
| 4555 Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, | |
| 4556 Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe. | |
| 4557 | |
| 4558 XLIV. | |
| 4559 | |
| 4560 Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, | |
| 4561 The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind, | |
| 4562 The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim | |
| 4563 The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, | |
| 4564 Came Megara before me, and behind | |
| 4565 AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right, | |
| 4566 And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined | |
| 4567 Along the prow, and saw all these unite | |
| 4568 In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; | |
| 4569 | |
| 4570 XLV. | |
| 4571 | |
| 4572 For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared | |
| 4573 Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, | |
| 4574 Which only make more mourned and more endeared | |
| 4575 The few last rays of their far-scattered light, | |
| 4576 And the crushed relics of their vanished might. | |
| 4577 The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, | |
| 4578 These sepulchres of cities, which excite | |
| 4579 Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page | |
| 4580 The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. | |
| 4581 | |
| 4582 XLVI. | |
| 4583 | |
| 4584 That page is now before me, and on mine | |
| 4585 HIS country's ruin added to the mass | |
| 4586 Of perished states he mourned in their decline, | |
| 4587 And I in desolation: all that WAS | |
| 4588 Of then destruction IS; and now, alas! | |
| 4589 Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, | |
| 4590 In the same dust and blackness, and we pass | |
| 4591 The skeleton of her Titanic form, | |
| 4592 Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. | |
| 4593 | |
| 4594 XLVII. | |
| 4595 | |
| 4596 Yet, Italy! through every other land | |
| 4597 Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side; | |
| 4598 Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand | |
| 4599 Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide; | |
| 4600 Parent of our religion! whom the wide | |
| 4601 Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! | |
| 4602 Europe, repentant of her parricide, | |
| 4603 Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, | |
| 4604 Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. | |
| 4605 | |
| 4606 XLVIII. | |
| 4607 | |
| 4608 But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, | |
| 4609 Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps | |
| 4610 A softer feeling for her fairy halls. | |
| 4611 Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps | |
| 4612 Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps | |
| 4613 To laughing life, with her redundant horn. | |
| 4614 Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps, | |
| 4615 Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, | |
| 4616 And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. | |
| 4617 | |
| 4618 XLIX. | |
| 4619 | |
| 4620 There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills | |
| 4621 The air around with beauty; we inhale | |
| 4622 The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils | |
| 4623 Part of its immortality; the veil | |
| 4624 Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale | |
| 4625 We stand, and in that form and face behold | |
| 4626 What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail; | |
| 4627 And to the fond idolaters of old | |
| 4628 Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: | |
| 4629 | |
| 4630 L. | |
| 4631 | |
| 4632 We gaze and turn away, and know not where, | |
| 4633 Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart | |
| 4634 Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there-- | |
| 4635 Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, | |
| 4636 We stand as captives, and would not depart. | |
| 4637 Away!--there need no words, nor terms precise, | |
| 4638 The paltry jargon of the marble mart, | |
| 4639 Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes: | |
| 4640 Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize. | |
| 4641 | |
| 4642 LI. | |
| 4643 | |
| 4644 Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? | |
| 4645 Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, | |
| 4646 In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies | |
| 4647 Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War? | |
| 4648 And gazing in thy face as toward a star, | |
| 4649 Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, | |
| 4650 Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are | |
| 4651 With lava kisses melting while they burn, | |
| 4652 Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! | |
| 4653 | |
| 4654 LII. | |
| 4655 | |
| 4656 Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, | |
| 4657 Their full divinity inadequate | |
| 4658 That feeling to express, or to improve, | |
| 4659 The gods become as mortals, and man's fate | |
| 4660 Has moments like their brightest! but the weight | |
| 4661 Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go! | |
| 4662 We can recall such visions, and create | |
| 4663 From what has been, or might be, things which grow, | |
| 4664 Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. | |
| 4665 | |
| 4666 LIII. | |
| 4667 | |
| 4668 I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, | |
| 4669 The artist and his ape, to teach and tell | |
| 4670 How well his connoisseurship understands | |
| 4671 The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: | |
| 4672 Let these describe the undescribable: | |
| 4673 I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream | |
| 4674 Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; | |
| 4675 The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream | |
| 4676 That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. | |
| 4677 | |
| 4678 LIV. | |
| 4679 | |
| 4680 In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie | |
| 4681 Ashes which make it holier, dust which is | |
| 4682 E'en in itself an immortality, | |
| 4683 Though there were nothing save the past, and this | |
| 4684 The particle of those sublimities | |
| 4685 Which have relapsed to chaos:--here repose | |
| 4686 Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, | |
| 4687 The starry Galileo, with his woes; | |
| 4688 Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. | |
| 4689 | |
| 4690 LV. | |
| 4691 | |
| 4692 These are four minds, which, like the elements, | |
| 4693 Might furnish forth creation:--Italy! | |
| 4694 Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents | |
| 4695 Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, | |
| 4696 And hath denied, to every other sky, | |
| 4697 Spirits which soar from ruin:--thy decay | |
| 4698 Is still impregnate with divinity, | |
| 4699 Which gilds it with revivifying ray; | |
| 4700 Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. | |
| 4701 | |
| 4702 LVI. | |
| 4703 | |
| 4704 But where repose the all Etruscan three-- | |
| 4705 Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, | |
| 4706 The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he | |
| 4707 Of the Hundred Tales of love--where did they lay | |
| 4708 Their bones, distinguished from our common clay | |
| 4709 In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, | |
| 4710 And have their country's marbles nought to say? | |
| 4711 Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? | |
| 4712 Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust? | |
| 4713 | |
| 4714 LVII. | |
| 4715 | |
| 4716 Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, | |
| 4717 Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; | |
| 4718 Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, | |
| 4719 Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore | |
| 4720 Their children's children would in vain adore | |
| 4721 With the remorse of ages; and the crown | |
| 4722 Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, | |
| 4723 Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, | |
| 4724 His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled--not thine own. | |
| 4725 | |
| 4726 LVIII. | |
| 4727 | |
| 4728 Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed | |
| 4729 His dust,--and lies it not her great among, | |
| 4730 With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed | |
| 4731 O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? | |
| 4732 That music in itself, whose sounds are song, | |
| 4733 The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb | |
| 4734 Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigots' wrong, | |
| 4735 No more amidst the meaner dead find room, | |
| 4736 Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for WHOM? | |
| 4737 | |
| 4738 LIX. | |
| 4739 | |
| 4740 And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; | |
| 4741 Yet for this want more noted, as of yore | |
| 4742 The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, | |
| 4743 Did but of Rome's best son remind her more: | |
| 4744 Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, | |
| 4745 Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps | |
| 4746 The immortal exile;--Arqua, too, her store | |
| 4747 Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, | |
| 4748 While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps. | |
| 4749 | |
| 4750 LX. | |
| 4751 | |
| 4752 What is her pyramid of precious stones? | |
| 4753 Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues | |
| 4754 Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones | |
| 4755 Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews | |
| 4756 Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse | |
| 4757 Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, | |
| 4758 Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, | |
| 4759 Are gently prest with far more reverent tread | |
| 4760 Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head. | |
| 4761 | |
| 4762 LXI. | |
| 4763 | |
| 4764 There be more things to greet the heart and eyes | |
| 4765 In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, | |
| 4766 Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; | |
| 4767 There be more marvels yet--but not for mine; | |
| 4768 For I have been accustomed to entwine | |
| 4769 My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields | |
| 4770 Than Art in galleries: though a work divine | |
| 4771 Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields | |
| 4772 Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields | |
| 4773 | |
| 4774 LXII. | |
| 4775 | |
| 4776 Is of another temper, and I roam | |
| 4777 By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles | |
| 4778 Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; | |
| 4779 For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles | |
| 4780 Come back before me, as his skill beguiles | |
| 4781 The host between the mountains and the shore, | |
| 4782 Where Courage falls in her despairing files, | |
| 4783 And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, | |
| 4784 Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er, | |
| 4785 | |
| 4786 LXIII. | |
| 4787 | |
| 4788 Like to a forest felled by mountain winds; | |
| 4789 And such the storm of battle on this day, | |
| 4790 And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds | |
| 4791 To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, | |
| 4792 An earthquake reeled unheededly away! | |
| 4793 None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, | |
| 4794 And yawning forth a grave for those who lay | |
| 4795 Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet; | |
| 4796 Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet. | |
| 4797 | |
| 4798 LXIV. | |
| 4799 | |
| 4800 The Earth to them was as a rolling bark | |
| 4801 Which bore them to Eternity; they saw | |
| 4802 The Ocean round, but had no time to mark | |
| 4803 The motions of their vessel: Nature's law, | |
| 4804 In them suspended, recked not of the awe | |
| 4805 Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds | |
| 4806 Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw | |
| 4807 From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds | |
| 4808 Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words. | |
| 4809 | |
| 4810 LXV. | |
| 4811 | |
| 4812 Far other scene is Thrasimene now; | |
| 4813 Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain | |
| 4814 Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough; | |
| 4815 Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain | |
| 4816 Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en-- | |
| 4817 A little rill of scanty stream and bed-- | |
| 4818 A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain; | |
| 4819 And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead | |
| 4820 Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red. | |
| 4821 | |
| 4822 LXVI. | |
| 4823 | |
| 4824 But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave | |
| 4825 Of the most living crystal that was e'er | |
| 4826 The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave | |
| 4827 Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear | |
| 4828 Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer | |
| 4829 Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters! | |
| 4830 And most serene of aspect, and most clear: | |
| 4831 Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, | |
| 4832 A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters! | |
| 4833 | |
| 4834 LXVII. | |
| 4835 | |
| 4836 And on thy happy shore a temple still, | |
| 4837 Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, | |
| 4838 Upon a mild declivity of hill, | |
| 4839 Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps | |
| 4840 Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps | |
| 4841 The finny darter with the glittering scales, | |
| 4842 Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; | |
| 4843 While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails | |
| 4844 Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. | |
| 4845 | |
| 4846 LXVIII. | |
| 4847 | |
| 4848 Pass not unblest the genius of the place! | |
| 4849 If through the air a zephyr more serene | |
| 4850 Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace | |
| 4851 Along his margin a more eloquent green, | |
| 4852 If on the heart the freshness of the scene | |
| 4853 Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust | |
| 4854 Of weary life a moment lave it clean | |
| 4855 With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must | |
| 4856 Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. | |
| 4857 | |
| 4858 LXIX. | |
| 4859 | |
| 4860 The roar of waters!--from the headlong height | |
| 4861 Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; | |
| 4862 The fall of waters! rapid as the light | |
| 4863 The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; | |
| 4864 The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, | |
| 4865 And boil in endless torture; while the sweat | |
| 4866 Of their great agony, wrung out from this | |
| 4867 Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet | |
| 4868 That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, | |
| 4869 | |
| 4870 LXX. | |
| 4871 | |
| 4872 And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again | |
| 4873 Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, | |
| 4874 With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, | |
| 4875 Is an eternal April to the ground, | |
| 4876 Making it all one emerald. How profound | |
| 4877 The gulf! and how the giant element | |
| 4878 From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, | |
| 4879 Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent | |
| 4880 With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent | |
| 4881 | |
| 4882 LXXI. | |
| 4883 | |
| 4884 To the broad column which rolls on, and shows | |
| 4885 More like the fountain of an infant sea | |
| 4886 Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes | |
| 4887 Of a new world, than only thus to be | |
| 4888 Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, | |
| 4889 With many windings through the vale:--Look back! | |
| 4890 Lo! where it comes like an eternity, | |
| 4891 As if to sweep down all things in its track, | |
| 4892 Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract, | |
| 4893 | |
| 4894 LXXII. | |
| 4895 | |
| 4896 Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, | |
| 4897 From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, | |
| 4898 An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, | |
| 4899 Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn | |
| 4900 Its steady dyes, while all around is torn | |
| 4901 By the distracted waters, bears serene | |
| 4902 Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: | |
| 4903 Resembling, mid the torture of the scene, | |
| 4904 Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. | |
| 4905 | |
| 4906 LXXIII. | |
| 4907 | |
| 4908 Once more upon the woody Apennine, | |
| 4909 The infant Alps, which--had I not before | |
| 4910 Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine | |
| 4911 Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar | |
| 4912 The thundering lauwine--might be worshipped more; | |
| 4913 But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear | |
| 4914 Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar | |
| 4915 Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, | |
| 4916 And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, | |
| 4917 | |
| 4918 LXXIV. | |
| 4919 | |
| 4920 The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; | |
| 4921 And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly | |
| 4922 Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, | |
| 4923 For still they soared unutterably high: | |
| 4924 I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; | |
| 4925 Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made | |
| 4926 These hills seem things of lesser dignity, | |
| 4927 All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed, | |
| 4928 Not NOW in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid | |
| 4929 | |
| 4930 LXXV. | |
| 4931 | |
| 4932 For our remembrance, and from out the plain | |
| 4933 Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, | |
| 4934 And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain | |
| 4935 May he who will his recollections rake, | |
| 4936 And quote in classic raptures, and awake | |
| 4937 The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred | |
| 4938 Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, | |
| 4939 The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word | |
| 4940 In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record | |
| 4941 | |
| 4942 LXXVI. | |
| 4943 | |
| 4944 Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned | |
| 4945 My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught | |
| 4946 My mind to meditate what then it learned, | |
| 4947 Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought | |
| 4948 By the impatience of my early thought, | |
| 4949 That, with the freshness wearing out before | |
| 4950 My mind could relish what it might have sought, | |
| 4951 If free to choose, I cannot now restore | |
| 4952 Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor. | |
| 4953 | |
| 4954 LXXVII. | |
| 4955 | |
| 4956 Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, | |
| 4957 Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse | |
| 4958 To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow, | |
| 4959 To comprehend, but never love thy verse, | |
| 4960 Although no deeper moralist rehearse | |
| 4961 Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, | |
| 4962 Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce, | |
| 4963 Awakening without wounding the touched heart, | |
| 4964 Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part. | |
| 4965 | |
| 4966 LXXVIII. | |
| 4967 | |
| 4968 O Rome! my country! city of the soul! | |
| 4969 The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, | |
| 4970 Lone mother of dead empires! and control | |
| 4971 In their shut breasts their petty misery. | |
| 4972 What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see | |
| 4973 The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way | |
| 4974 O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! | |
| 4975 Whose agonies are evils of a day-- | |
| 4976 A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. | |
| 4977 | |
| 4978 LXXIX. | |
| 4979 | |
| 4980 The Niobe of nations! there she stands, | |
| 4981 Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; | |
| 4982 An empty urn within her withered hands, | |
| 4983 Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; | |
| 4984 The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; | |
| 4985 The very sepulchres lie tenantless | |
| 4986 Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, | |
| 4987 Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? | |
| 4988 Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress! | |
| 4989 | |
| 4990 LXXX. | |
| 4991 | |
| 4992 The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, | |
| 4993 Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: | |
| 4994 She saw her glories star by star expire, | |
| 4995 And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, | |
| 4996 Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide | |
| 4997 Temple and tower went down, nor left a site;-- | |
| 4998 Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, | |
| 4999 O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, | |
| 5000 And say, 'Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night? | |
| 5001 | |
| 5002 LXXXI. | |
| 5003 | |
| 5004 The double night of ages, and of her, | |
| 5005 Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap | |
| 5006 All round us; we but feel our way to err: | |
| 5007 The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map; | |
| 5008 And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; | |
| 5009 But Rome is as the desert, where we steer | |
| 5010 Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap | |
| 5011 Our hands, and cry, 'Eureka!' it is clear-- | |
| 5012 When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. | |
| 5013 | |
| 5014 LXXXII. | |
| 5015 | |
| 5016 Alas, the lofty city! and alas | |
| 5017 The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day | |
| 5018 When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass | |
| 5019 The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! | |
| 5020 Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, | |
| 5021 And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be | |
| 5022 Her resurrection; all beside--decay. | |
| 5023 Alas for Earth, for never shall we see | |
| 5024 That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! | |
| 5025 | |
| 5026 LXXXIII. | |
| 5027 | |
| 5028 O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, | |
| 5029 Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue | |
| 5030 Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel | |
| 5031 The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due | |
| 5032 Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew | |
| 5033 O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown | |
| 5034 Annihilated senates--Roman, too, | |
| 5035 With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down | |
| 5036 With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown-- | |
| 5037 | |
| 5038 LXXXIV. | |
| 5039 | |
| 5040 The dictatorial wreath,--couldst thou divine | |
| 5041 To what would one day dwindle that which made | |
| 5042 Thee more than mortal? and that so supine | |
| 5043 By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? | |
| 5044 She who was named eternal, and arrayed | |
| 5045 Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled | |
| 5046 Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed | |
| 5047 Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, | |
| 5048 Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was almighty hailed! | |
| 5049 | |
| 5050 LXXXV. | |
| 5051 | |
| 5052 Sylla was first of victors; but our own, | |
| 5053 The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he | |
| 5054 Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne | |
| 5055 Down to a block--immortal rebel! See | |
| 5056 What crimes it costs to be a moment free | |
| 5057 And famous through all ages! But beneath | |
| 5058 His fate the moral lurks of destiny; | |
| 5059 His day of double victory and death | |
| 5060 Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. | |
| 5061 | |
| 5062 LXXXVI. | |
| 5063 | |
| 5064 The third of the same moon whose former course | |
| 5065 Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day | |
| 5066 Deposed him gently from his throne of force, | |
| 5067 And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. | |
| 5068 And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, | |
| 5069 And all we deem delightful, and consume | |
| 5070 Our souls to compass through each arduous way, | |
| 5071 Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? | |
| 5072 Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom! | |
| 5073 | |
| 5074 LXXXVII. | |
| 5075 | |
| 5076 And thou, dread statue! yet existent in | |
| 5077 The austerest form of naked majesty, | |
| 5078 Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din, | |
| 5079 At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie, | |
| 5080 Folding his robe in dying dignity, | |
| 5081 An offering to thine altar from the queen | |
| 5082 Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, | |
| 5083 And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been | |
| 5084 Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene? | |
| 5085 | |
| 5086 LXXXVIII. | |
| 5087 | |
| 5088 And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! | |
| 5089 She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart | |
| 5090 The milk of conquest yet within the dome | |
| 5091 Where, as a monument of antique art, | |
| 5092 Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart, | |
| 5093 Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat, | |
| 5094 Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, | |
| 5095 And thy limbs blacked with lightning--dost thou yet | |
| 5096 Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget? | |
| 5097 | |
| 5098 LXXXIX. | |
| 5099 | |
| 5100 Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead-- | |
| 5101 The men of iron; and the world hath reared | |
| 5102 Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled | |
| 5103 In imitation of the things they feared, | |
| 5104 And fought and conquered, and the same course steered, | |
| 5105 At apish distance; but as yet none have, | |
| 5106 Nor could, the same supremacy have neared, | |
| 5107 Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, | |
| 5108 But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave, | |
| 5109 | |
| 5110 XC. | |
| 5111 | |
| 5112 The fool of false dominion--and a kind | |
| 5113 Of bastard Caesar, following him of old | |
| 5114 With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind | |
| 5115 Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, | |
| 5116 With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, | |
| 5117 And an immortal instinct which redeemed | |
| 5118 The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold. | |
| 5119 Alcides with the distaff now he seemed | |
| 5120 At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed. | |
| 5121 | |
| 5122 XCI. | |
| 5123 | |
| 5124 And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man | |
| 5125 Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, | |
| 5126 Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van, | |
| 5127 Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, | |
| 5128 With a deaf heart which never seemed to be | |
| 5129 A listener to itself, was strangely framed; | |
| 5130 With but one weakest weakness--vanity: | |
| 5131 Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed | |
| 5132 At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed? | |
| 5133 | |
| 5134 XCII. | |
| 5135 | |
| 5136 And would be all or nothing--nor could wait | |
| 5137 For the sure grave to level him; few years | |
| 5138 Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, | |
| 5139 On whom we tread: For THIS the conqueror rears | |
| 5140 The arch of triumph! and for this the tears | |
| 5141 And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, | |
| 5142 An universal deluge, which appears | |
| 5143 Without an ark for wretched man's abode, | |
| 5144 And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, God! | |
| 5145 | |
| 5146 XCIII. | |
| 5147 | |
| 5148 What from this barren being do we reap? | |
| 5149 Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, | |
| 5150 Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, | |
| 5151 And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; | |
| 5152 Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil | |
| 5153 Mantles the earth with darkness, until right | |
| 5154 And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale | |
| 5155 Lest their own judgments should become too bright, | |
| 5156 And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. | |
| 5157 | |
| 5158 XCIV. | |
| 5159 | |
| 5160 And thus they plod in sluggish misery, | |
| 5161 Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, | |
| 5162 Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, | |
| 5163 Bequeathing their hereditary rage | |
| 5164 To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage | |
| 5165 War for their chains, and rather than be free, | |
| 5166 Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage | |
| 5167 Within the same arena where they see | |
| 5168 Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. | |
| 5169 | |
| 5170 XCV. | |
| 5171 | |
| 5172 I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between | |
| 5173 Man and his Maker--but of things allowed, | |
| 5174 Averred, and known,--and daily, hourly seen-- | |
| 5175 The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, | |
| 5176 And the intent of tyranny avowed, | |
| 5177 The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown | |
| 5178 The apes of him who humbled once the proud, | |
| 5179 And shook them from their slumbers on the throne; | |
| 5180 Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. | |
| 5181 | |
| 5182 XCVI. | |
| 5183 | |
| 5184 Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, | |
| 5185 And Freedom find no champion and no child | |
| 5186 Such as Columbia saw arise when she | |
| 5187 Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? | |
| 5188 Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, | |
| 5189 Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar | |
| 5190 Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled | |
| 5191 On infant Washington? Has Earth no more | |
| 5192 Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? | |
| 5193 | |
| 5194 XCVII. | |
| 5195 | |
| 5196 But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime, | |
| 5197 And fatal have her Saturnalia been | |
| 5198 To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; | |
| 5199 Because the deadly days which we have seen, | |
| 5200 And vile Ambition, that built up between | |
| 5201 Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, | |
| 5202 And the base pageant last upon the scene, | |
| 5203 Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall | |
| 5204 Which nips Life's tree, and dooms man's worst--his second fall. | |
| 5205 | |
| 5206 XCVIII. | |
| 5207 | |
| 5208 Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, | |
| 5209 Streams like the thunder-storm AGAINST the wind; | |
| 5210 Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying, | |
| 5211 The loudest still the tempest leaves behind; | |
| 5212 Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, | |
| 5213 Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, | |
| 5214 But the sap lasts,--and still the seed we find | |
| 5215 Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North; | |
| 5216 So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. | |
| 5217 | |
| 5218 XCIX. | |
| 5219 | |
| 5220 There is a stern round tower of other days, | |
| 5221 Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, | |
| 5222 Such as an army's baffled strength delays, | |
| 5223 Standing with half its battlements alone, | |
| 5224 And with two thousand years of ivy grown, | |
| 5225 The garland of eternity, where wave | |
| 5226 The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown: | |
| 5227 What was this tower of strength? within its cave | |
| 5228 What treasure lay so locked, so hid?--A woman's grave. | |
| 5229 | |
| 5230 C. | |
| 5231 | |
| 5232 But who was she, the lady of the dead, | |
| 5233 Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair? | |
| 5234 Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed? | |
| 5235 What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear? | |
| 5236 What daughter of her beauties was the heir? | |
| 5237 How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not | |
| 5238 So honoured--and conspicuously there, | |
| 5239 Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, | |
| 5240 Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot? | |
| 5241 | |
| 5242 CI. | |
| 5243 | |
| 5244 Was she as those who love their lords, or they | |
| 5245 Who love the lords of others? such have been | |
| 5246 Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. | |
| 5247 Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien, | |
| 5248 Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, | |
| 5249 Profuse of joy; or 'gainst it did she war, | |
| 5250 Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean | |
| 5251 To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar | |
| 5252 Love from amongst her griefs?--for such the affections are. | |
| 5253 | |
| 5254 CII. | |
| 5255 | |
| 5256 Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed | |
| 5257 With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb | |
| 5258 That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud | |
| 5259 Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom | |
| 5260 In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom | |
| 5261 Heaven gives its favourites--early death; yet shed | |
| 5262 A sunset charm around her, and illume | |
| 5263 With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead, | |
| 5264 Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red. | |
| 5265 | |
| 5266 CIII. | |
| 5267 | |
| 5268 Perchance she died in age--surviving all, | |
| 5269 Charms, kindred, children--with the silver grey | |
| 5270 On her long tresses, which might yet recall, | |
| 5271 It may be, still a something of the day | |
| 5272 When they were braided, and her proud array | |
| 5273 And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed | |
| 5274 By Rome--But whither would Conjecture stray? | |
| 5275 Thus much alone we know--Metella died, | |
| 5276 The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride! | |
| 5277 | |
| 5278 CIV. | |
| 5279 | |
| 5280 I know not why--but standing thus by thee | |
| 5281 It seems as if I had thine inmate known, | |
| 5282 Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me | |
| 5283 With recollected music, though the tone | |
| 5284 Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan | |
| 5285 Of dying thunder on the distant wind; | |
| 5286 Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone | |
| 5287 Till I had bodied forth the heated mind, | |
| 5288 Forms from the floating wreck which ruin leaves behind; | |
| 5289 | |
| 5290 CV. | |
| 5291 | |
| 5292 And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks, | |
| 5293 Built me a little bark of hope, once more | |
| 5294 To battle with the ocean and the shocks | |
| 5295 Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar | |
| 5296 Which rushes on the solitary shore | |
| 5297 Where all lies foundered that was ever dear: | |
| 5298 But could I gather from the wave-worn store | |
| 5299 Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer? | |
| 5300 There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. | |
| 5301 | |
| 5302 CVI. | |
| 5303 | |
| 5304 Then let the winds howl on! their harmony | |
| 5305 Shall henceforth be my music, and the night | |
| 5306 The sound shall temper with the owlet's cry, | |
| 5307 As I now hear them, in the fading light | |
| 5308 Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, | |
| 5309 Answer each other on the Palatine, | |
| 5310 With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright, | |
| 5311 And sailing pinions.--Upon such a shrine | |
| 5312 What are our petty griefs?--let me not number mine. | |
| 5313 | |
| 5314 CVII. | |
| 5315 | |
| 5316 Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown | |
| 5317 Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped | |
| 5318 On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown | |
| 5319 In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped | |
| 5320 In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, | |
| 5321 Deeming it midnight:--Temples, baths, or halls? | |
| 5322 Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped | |
| 5323 From her research hath been, that these are walls-- | |
| 5324 Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls. | |
| 5325 | |
| 5326 CVIII. | |
| 5327 | |
| 5328 There is the moral of all human tales: | |
| 5329 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, | |
| 5330 First Freedom, and then Glory--when that fails, | |
| 5331 Wealth, vice, corruption--barbarism at last. | |
| 5332 And History, with all her volumes vast, | |
| 5333 Hath but ONE page,--'tis better written here, | |
| 5334 Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed | |
| 5335 All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, | |
| 5336 Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask--Away with words! draw near, | |
| 5337 | |
| 5338 CIX. | |
| 5339 | |
| 5340 Admire, exult--despise--laugh, weep--for here | |
| 5341 There is such matter for all feeling:--Man! | |
| 5342 Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear, | |
| 5343 Ages and realms are crowded in this span, | |
| 5344 This mountain, whose obliterated plan | |
| 5345 The pyramid of empires pinnacled, | |
| 5346 Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van | |
| 5347 Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled! | |
| 5348 Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build? | |
| 5349 | |
| 5350 CX. | |
| 5351 | |
| 5352 Tully was not so eloquent as thou, | |
| 5353 Thou nameless column with the buried base! | |
| 5354 What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow? | |
| 5355 Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place. | |
| 5356 Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, | |
| 5357 Titus or Trajan's? No; 'tis that of Time: | |
| 5358 Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace, | |
| 5359 Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb | |
| 5360 To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, | |
| 5361 | |
| 5362 CXI. | |
| 5363 | |
| 5364 Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome, | |
| 5365 And looking to the stars; they had contained | |
| 5366 A spirit which with these would find a home, | |
| 5367 The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, | |
| 5368 The Roman globe, for after none sustained | |
| 5369 But yielded back his conquests:--he was more | |
| 5370 Than a mere Alexander, and unstained | |
| 5371 With household blood and wine, serenely wore | |
| 5372 His sovereign virtues--still we Trajan's name adore. | |
| 5373 | |
| 5374 CXII. | |
| 5375 | |
| 5376 Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place | |
| 5377 Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep | |
| 5378 Tarpeian--fittest goal of Treason's race, | |
| 5379 The promontory whence the traitor's leap | |
| 5380 Cured all ambition? Did the Conquerors heap | |
| 5381 Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below, | |
| 5382 A thousand years of silenced factions sleep-- | |
| 5383 The Forum, where the immortal accents glow, | |
| 5384 And still the eloquent air breathes--burns with Cicero! | |
| 5385 | |
| 5386 CXIII. | |
| 5387 | |
| 5388 The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood: | |
| 5389 Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, | |
| 5390 From the first hour of empire in the bud | |
| 5391 To that when further worlds to conquer failed; | |
| 5392 But long before had Freedom's face been veiled, | |
| 5393 And Anarchy assumed her attributes: | |
| 5394 Till every lawless soldier who assailed | |
| 5395 Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes, | |
| 5396 Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. | |
| 5397 | |
| 5398 CXIV. | |
| 5399 | |
| 5400 Then turn we to our latest tribune's name, | |
| 5401 From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, | |
| 5402 Redeemer of dark centuries of shame-- | |
| 5403 The friend of Petrarch--hope of Italy-- | |
| 5404 Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree | |
| 5405 Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, | |
| 5406 Even for thy tomb a garland let it be-- | |
| 5407 The forum's champion, and the people's chief-- | |
| 5408 Her new-born Numa thou, with reign, alas! too brief. | |
| 5409 | |
| 5410 CXV. | |
| 5411 | |
| 5412 Egeria! sweet creation of some heart | |
| 5413 Which found no mortal resting-place so fair | |
| 5414 As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art | |
| 5415 Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air, | |
| 5416 The nympholepsy of some fond despair; | |
| 5417 Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, | |
| 5418 Who found a more than common votary there | |
| 5419 Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth, | |
| 5420 Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. | |
| 5421 | |
| 5422 CXVI. | |
| 5423 | |
| 5424 The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled | |
| 5425 With thine Elysian water-drops; the face | |
| 5426 Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, | |
| 5427 Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, | |
| 5428 Whose green wild margin now no more erase | |
| 5429 Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep, | |
| 5430 Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base | |
| 5431 Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap | |
| 5432 The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep, | |
| 5433 | |
| 5434 CXVII. | |
| 5435 | |
| 5436 Fantastically tangled; the green hills | |
| 5437 Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass | |
| 5438 The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills | |
| 5439 Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass; | |
| 5440 Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, | |
| 5441 Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes | |
| 5442 Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; | |
| 5443 The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, | |
| 5444 Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies. | |
| 5445 | |
| 5446 CXVIII. | |
| 5447 | |
| 5448 Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, | |
| 5449 Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating | |
| 5450 For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; | |
| 5451 The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting | |
| 5452 With her most starry canopy, and seating | |
| 5453 Thyself by thine adorer, what befell? | |
| 5454 This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting | |
| 5455 Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell | |
| 5456 Haunted by holy Love--the earliest oracle! | |
| 5457 | |
| 5458 CXIX. | |
| 5459 | |
| 5460 And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, | |
| 5461 Blend a celestial with a human heart; | |
| 5462 And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, | |
| 5463 Share with immortal transports? could thine art | |
| 5464 Make them indeed immortal, and impart | |
| 5465 The purity of heaven to earthly joys, | |
| 5466 Expel the venom and not blunt the dart-- | |
| 5467 The dull satiety which all destroys-- | |
| 5468 And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? | |
| 5469 | |
| 5470 CXX. | |
| 5471 | |
| 5472 Alas! our young affections run to waste, | |
| 5473 Or water but the desert: whence arise | |
| 5474 But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, | |
| 5475 Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, | |
| 5476 Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, | |
| 5477 And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants | |
| 5478 Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies | |
| 5479 O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants | |
| 5480 For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. | |
| 5481 | |
| 5482 CXXI. | |
| 5483 | |
| 5484 O Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- | |
| 5485 An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,-- | |
| 5486 A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, | |
| 5487 But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see, | |
| 5488 The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; | |
| 5489 The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, | |
| 5490 Even with its own desiring phantasy, | |
| 5491 And to a thought such shape and image given, | |
| 5492 As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven. | |
| 5493 | |
| 5494 CXXII. | |
| 5495 | |
| 5496 Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, | |
| 5497 And fevers into false creation;--where, | |
| 5498 Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? | |
| 5499 In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? | |
| 5500 Where are the charms and virtues which we dare | |
| 5501 Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, | |
| 5502 The unreached Paradise of our despair, | |
| 5503 Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, | |
| 5504 And overpowers the page where it would bloom again. | |
| 5505 | |
| 5506 CXXIII. | |
| 5507 | |
| 5508 Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure | |
| 5509 Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds | |
| 5510 Which robed our idols, and we see too sure | |
| 5511 Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's | |
| 5512 Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds | |
| 5513 The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, | |
| 5514 Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; | |
| 5515 The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, | |
| 5516 Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone. | |
| 5517 | |
| 5518 CXXIV. | |
| 5519 | |
| 5520 We wither from our youth, we gasp away-- | |
| 5521 Sick--sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst, | |
| 5522 Though to the last, in verge of our decay, | |
| 5523 Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-- | |
| 5524 But all too late,--so are we doubly curst. | |
| 5525 Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same-- | |
| 5526 Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst-- | |
| 5527 For all are meteors with a different name, | |
| 5528 And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. | |
| 5529 | |
| 5530 CXXV. | |
| 5531 | |
| 5532 Few--none--find what they love or could have loved: | |
| 5533 Though accident, blind contact, and the strong | |
| 5534 Necessity of loving, have removed | |
| 5535 Antipathies--but to recur, ere long, | |
| 5536 Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; | |
| 5537 And Circumstance, that unspiritual god | |
| 5538 And miscreator, makes and helps along | |
| 5539 Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, | |
| 5540 Whose touch turns hope to dust--the dust we all have trod. | |
| 5541 | |
| 5542 CXXVI. | |
| 5543 | |
| 5544 Our life is a false nature--'tis not in | |
| 5545 The harmony of things,--this hard decree, | |
| 5546 This uneradicable taint of sin, | |
| 5547 This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, | |
| 5548 Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be | |
| 5549 The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew-- | |
| 5550 Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see-- | |
| 5551 And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through | |
| 5552 The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. | |
| 5553 | |
| 5554 CXXVII. | |
| 5555 | |
| 5556 Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base | |
| 5557 Abandonment of reason to resign | |
| 5558 Our right of thought--our last and only place | |
| 5559 Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine: | |
| 5560 Though from our birth the faculty divine | |
| 5561 Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined, | |
| 5562 And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine | |
| 5563 Too brightly on the unprepared mind, | |
| 5564 The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. | |
| 5565 | |
| 5566 CXXVIII. | |
| 5567 | |
| 5568 Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, | |
| 5569 Collecting the chief trophies of her line, | |
| 5570 Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, | |
| 5571 Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine | |
| 5572 As 'twere its natural torches, for divine | |
| 5573 Should be the light which streams here, to illume | |
| 5574 This long explored but still exhaustless mine | |
| 5575 Of contemplation; and the azure gloom | |
| 5576 Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume | |
| 5577 | |
| 5578 CXXIX. | |
| 5579 | |
| 5580 Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, | |
| 5581 Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, | |
| 5582 And shadows forth its glory. There is given | |
| 5583 Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, | |
| 5584 A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant | |
| 5585 His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power | |
| 5586 And magic in the ruined battlement, | |
| 5587 For which the palace of the present hour | |
| 5588 Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. | |
| 5589 | |
| 5590 CXXX. | |
| 5591 | |
| 5592 O Time! the beautifier of the dead, | |
| 5593 Adorner of the ruin, comforter | |
| 5594 And only healer when the heart hath bled-- | |
| 5595 Time! the corrector where our judgments err, | |
| 5596 The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher, | |
| 5597 For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, | |
| 5598 Which never loses though it doth defer-- | |
| 5599 Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift | |
| 5600 My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: | |
| 5601 | |
| 5602 CXXXI. | |
| 5603 | |
| 5604 Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine | |
| 5605 And temple more divinely desolate, | |
| 5606 Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, | |
| 5607 Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate: | |
| 5608 If thou hast ever seen me too elate, | |
| 5609 Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne | |
| 5610 Good, and reserved my pride against the hate | |
| 5611 Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn | |
| 5612 This iron in my soul in vain--shall THEY not mourn? | |
| 5613 | |
| 5614 CXXXII. | |
| 5615 | |
| 5616 And thou, who never yet of human wrong | |
| 5617 Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! | |
| 5618 Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long-- | |
| 5619 Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, | |
| 5620 And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss | |
| 5621 For that unnatural retribution--just, | |
| 5622 Had it but been from hands less near--in this | |
| 5623 Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust! | |
| 5624 Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must. | |
| 5625 | |
| 5626 CXXXIII. | |
| 5627 | |
| 5628 It is not that I may not have incurred | |
| 5629 For my ancestral faults or mine the wound | |
| 5630 I bleed withal, and had it been conferred | |
| 5631 With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound. | |
| 5632 But now my blood shall not sink in the ground; | |
| 5633 To thee I do devote it--THOU shalt take | |
| 5634 The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, | |
| 5635 Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake-- | |
| 5636 But let that pass--I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. | |
| 5637 | |
| 5638 CXXXIV. | |
| 5639 | |
| 5640 And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now | |
| 5641 I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak | |
| 5642 Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, | |
| 5643 Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; | |
| 5644 But in this page a record will I seek. | |
| 5645 Not in the air shall these my words disperse, | |
| 5646 Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak | |
| 5647 The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, | |
| 5648 And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse! | |
| 5649 | |
| 5650 CXXXV. | |
| 5651 | |
| 5652 That curse shall be forgiveness.--Have I not-- | |
| 5653 Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!-- | |
| 5654 Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? | |
| 5655 Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? | |
| 5656 Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, | |
| 5657 Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away? | |
| 5658 And only not to desperation driven, | |
| 5659 Because not altogether of such clay | |
| 5660 As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. | |
| 5661 | |
| 5662 CXXXVI. | |
| 5663 | |
| 5664 From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy | |
| 5665 Have I not seen what human things could do? | |
| 5666 From the loud roar of foaming calumny | |
| 5667 To the small whisper of the as paltry few | |
| 5668 And subtler venom of the reptile crew, | |
| 5669 The Janus glance of whose significant eye, | |
| 5670 Learning to lie with silence, would SEEM true, | |
| 5671 And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, | |
| 5672 Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. | |
| 5673 | |
| 5674 CXXXVII. | |
| 5675 | |
| 5676 But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: | |
| 5677 My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, | |
| 5678 And my frame perish even in conquering pain, | |
| 5679 But there is that within me which shall tire | |
| 5680 Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire: | |
| 5681 Something unearthly, which they deem not of, | |
| 5682 Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, | |
| 5683 Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move | |
| 5684 In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. | |
| 5685 | |
| 5686 CXXXVIII. | |
| 5687 | |
| 5688 The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power | |
| 5689 Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here | |
| 5690 Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour | |
| 5691 With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear: | |
| 5692 Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear | |
| 5693 Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene | |
| 5694 Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear | |
| 5695 That we become a part of what has been, | |
| 5696 And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen. | |
| 5697 | |
| 5698 CXXXIX. | |
| 5699 | |
| 5700 And here the buzz of eager nations ran, | |
| 5701 In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, | |
| 5702 As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. | |
| 5703 And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because | |
| 5704 Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, | |
| 5705 And the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not? | |
| 5706 What matters where we fall to fill the maws | |
| 5707 Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot? | |
| 5708 Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. | |
| 5709 | |
| 5710 CXL. | |
| 5711 | |
| 5712 I see before me the Gladiator lie: | |
| 5713 He leans upon his hand--his manly brow | |
| 5714 Consents to death, but conquers agony, | |
| 5715 And his drooped head sinks gradually low-- | |
| 5716 And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow | |
| 5717 From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, | |
| 5718 Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now | |
| 5719 The arena swims around him: he is gone, | |
| 5720 Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. | |
| 5721 | |
| 5722 CXLI. | |
| 5723 | |
| 5724 He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes | |
| 5725 Were with his heart, and that was far away; | |
| 5726 He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, | |
| 5727 But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, | |
| 5728 THERE were his young barbarians all at play, | |
| 5729 THERE was their Dacian mother--he, their sire, | |
| 5730 Butchered to make a Roman holiday-- | |
| 5731 All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire, | |
| 5732 And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! | |
| 5733 | |
| 5734 CXLII. | |
| 5735 | |
| 5736 But here, where murder breathed her bloody steam; | |
| 5737 And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, | |
| 5738 And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream | |
| 5739 Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; | |
| 5740 Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise | |
| 5741 Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, | |
| 5742 My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays | |
| 5743 On the arena void--seats crushed, walls bowed, | |
| 5744 And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. | |
| 5745 | |
| 5746 CXLIII. | |
| 5747 | |
| 5748 A ruin--yet what ruin! from its mass | |
| 5749 Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared; | |
| 5750 Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, | |
| 5751 And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. | |
| 5752 Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? | |
| 5753 Alas! developed, opens the decay, | |
| 5754 When the colossal fabric's form is neared: | |
| 5755 It will not bear the brightness of the day, | |
| 5756 Which streams too much on all, years, man, have reft away. | |
| 5757 | |
| 5758 CXLIV. | |
| 5759 | |
| 5760 But when the rising moon begins to climb | |
| 5761 Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; | |
| 5762 When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, | |
| 5763 And the low night-breeze waves along the air, | |
| 5764 The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear, | |
| 5765 Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head; | |
| 5766 When the light shines serene, but doth not glare, | |
| 5767 Then in this magic circle raise the dead: | |
| 5768 Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread. | |
| 5769 | |
| 5770 CXLV. | |
| 5771 | |
| 5772 'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; | |
| 5773 When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; | |
| 5774 And when Rome falls--the World.' From our own land | |
| 5775 Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall | |
| 5776 In Saxon times, which we are wont to call | |
| 5777 Ancient; and these three mortal things are still | |
| 5778 On their foundations, and unaltered all; | |
| 5779 Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, | |
| 5780 The World, the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will. | |
| 5781 | |
| 5782 CXLVI. | |
| 5783 | |
| 5784 Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime-- | |
| 5785 Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, | |
| 5786 From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by time; | |
| 5787 Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods | |
| 5788 Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods | |
| 5789 His way through thorns to ashes--glorious dome! | |
| 5790 Shalt thou not last?--Time's scythe and tyrants' rods | |
| 5791 Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home | |
| 5792 Of art and piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome! | |
| 5793 | |
| 5794 CXLVII. | |
| 5795 | |
| 5796 Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! | |
| 5797 Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads | |
| 5798 A holiness appealing to all hearts-- | |
| 5799 To art a model; and to him who treads | |
| 5800 Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds | |
| 5801 Her light through thy sole aperture; to those | |
| 5802 Who worship, here are altars for their beads; | |
| 5803 And they who feel for genius may repose | |
| 5804 Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close. | |
| 5805 | |
| 5806 CXLVIII. | |
| 5807 | |
| 5808 There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light | |
| 5809 What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again! | |
| 5810 Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight-- | |
| 5811 Two insulated phantoms of the brain: | |
| 5812 It is not so: I see them full and plain-- | |
| 5813 An old man, and a female young and fair, | |
| 5814 Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein | |
| 5815 The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there, | |
| 5816 With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare? | |
| 5817 | |
| 5818 CXLIX. | |
| 5819 | |
| 5820 Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, | |
| 5821 Where ON the heart and FROM the heart we took | |
| 5822 Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, | |
| 5823 Blest into mother, in the innocent look, | |
| 5824 Or even the piping cry of lips that brook | |
| 5825 No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives | |
| 5826 Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook | |
| 5827 She sees her little bud put forth its leaves-- | |
| 5828 What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's. | |
| 5829 | |
| 5830 CL. | |
| 5831 | |
| 5832 But here youth offers to old age the food, | |
| 5833 The milk of his own gift:--it is her sire | |
| 5834 To whom she renders back the debt of blood | |
| 5835 Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire | |
| 5836 While in those warm and lovely veins the fire | |
| 5837 Of health and holy feeling can provide | |
| 5838 Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher | |
| 5839 Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side | |
| 5840 Drink, drink and live, old man! heaven's realm holds no such tide. | |
| 5841 | |
| 5842 CLI. | |
| 5843 | |
| 5844 The starry fable of the milky way | |
| 5845 Has not thy story's purity; it is | |
| 5846 A constellation of a sweeter ray, | |
| 5847 And sacred Nature triumphs more in this | |
| 5848 Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss | |
| 5849 Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest nurse! | |
| 5850 No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss | |
| 5851 To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source | |
| 5852 With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. | |
| 5853 | |
| 5854 CLII. | |
| 5855 | |
| 5856 Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high, | |
| 5857 Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, | |
| 5858 Colossal copyist of deformity, | |
| 5859 Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's | |
| 5860 Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils | |
| 5861 To build for giants, and for his vain earth, | |
| 5862 His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles | |
| 5863 The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth, | |
| 5864 To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth! | |
| 5865 | |
| 5866 CLIII. | |
| 5867 | |
| 5868 But lo! the dome--the vast and wondrous dome, | |
| 5869 To which Diana's marvel was a cell-- | |
| 5870 Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! | |
| 5871 I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle-- | |
| 5872 Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell | |
| 5873 The hyaena and the jackal in their shade; | |
| 5874 I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell | |
| 5875 Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed | |
| 5876 Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed; | |
| 5877 | |
| 5878 CLIV. | |
| 5879 | |
| 5880 But thou, of temples old, or altars new, | |
| 5881 Standest alone--with nothing like to thee-- | |
| 5882 Worthiest of God, the holy and the true, | |
| 5883 Since Zion's desolation, when that he | |
| 5884 Forsook his former city, what could be, | |
| 5885 Of earthly structures, in his honour piled, | |
| 5886 Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, | |
| 5887 Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled | |
| 5888 In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. | |
| 5889 | |
| 5890 CLV. | |
| 5891 | |
| 5892 Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; | |
| 5893 And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind, | |
| 5894 Expanded by the genius of the spot, | |
| 5895 Has grown colossal, and can only find | |
| 5896 A fit abode wherein appear enshrined | |
| 5897 Thy hopes of immortality; and thou | |
| 5898 Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, | |
| 5899 See thy God face to face, as thou dost now | |
| 5900 His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. | |
| 5901 | |
| 5902 CLVI. | |
| 5903 | |
| 5904 Thou movest--but increasing with th' advance, | |
| 5905 Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, | |
| 5906 Deceived by its gigantic elegance; | |
| 5907 Vastness which grows--but grows to harmonise-- | |
| 5908 All musical in its immensities; | |
| 5909 Rich marbles--richer painting--shrines where flame | |
| 5910 The lamps of gold--and haughty dome which vies | |
| 5911 In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame | |
| 5912 Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim. | |
| 5913 | |
| 5914 CLVII. | |
| 5915 | |
| 5916 Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break | |
| 5917 To separate contemplation, the great whole; | |
| 5918 And as the ocean many bays will make, | |
| 5919 That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul | |
| 5920 To more immediate objects, and control | |
| 5921 Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart | |
| 5922 Its eloquent proportions, and unroll | |
| 5923 In mighty graduations, part by part, | |
| 5924 The glory which at once upon thee did not dart. | |
| 5925 | |
| 5926 CLVIII. | |
| 5927 | |
| 5928 Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense | |
| 5929 Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is | |
| 5930 That what we have of feeling most intense | |
| 5931 Outstrips our faint expression; e'en so this | |
| 5932 Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice | |
| 5933 Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great | |
| 5934 Defies at first our nature's littleness, | |
| 5935 Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate | |
| 5936 Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. | |
| 5937 | |
| 5938 CLIX. | |
| 5939 | |
| 5940 Then pause and be enlightened; there is more | |
| 5941 In such a survey than the sating gaze | |
| 5942 Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore | |
| 5943 The worship of the place, or the mere praise | |
| 5944 Of art and its great masters, who could raise | |
| 5945 What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan; | |
| 5946 The fountain of sublimity displays | |
| 5947 Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man | |
| 5948 Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. | |
| 5949 | |
| 5950 CLX. | |
| 5951 | |
| 5952 Or, turning to the Vatican, go see | |
| 5953 Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-- | |
| 5954 A father's love and mortal's agony | |
| 5955 With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain | |
| 5956 The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain | |
| 5957 And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, | |
| 5958 The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain | |
| 5959 Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp | |
| 5960 Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. | |
| 5961 | |
| 5962 CLXI. | |
| 5963 | |
| 5964 Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, | |
| 5965 The God of life, and poesy, and light-- | |
| 5966 The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow | |
| 5967 All radiant from his triumph in the fight; | |
| 5968 The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright | |
| 5969 With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye | |
| 5970 And nostril beautiful disdain, and might | |
| 5971 And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, | |
| 5972 Developing in that one glance the Deity. | |
| 5973 | |
| 5974 CLXII. | |
| 5975 | |
| 5976 But in his delicate form--a dream of Love, | |
| 5977 Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast | |
| 5978 Longed for a deathless lover from above, | |
| 5979 And maddened in that vision--are expressed | |
| 5980 All that ideal beauty ever blessed | |
| 5981 The mind within its most unearthly mood, | |
| 5982 When each conception was a heavenly guest-- | |
| 5983 A ray of immortality--and stood | |
| 5984 Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god? | |
| 5985 | |
| 5986 CLXIII. | |
| 5987 | |
| 5988 And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven | |
| 5989 The fire which we endure, it was repaid | |
| 5990 By him to whom the energy was given | |
| 5991 Which this poetic marble hath arrayed | |
| 5992 With an eternal glory--which, if made | |
| 5993 By human hands, is not of human thought | |
| 5994 And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid | |
| 5995 One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught | |
| 5996 A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought. | |
| 5997 | |
| 5998 CLXIV. | |
| 5999 | |
| 6000 But where is he, the pilgrim of my song, | |
| 6001 The being who upheld it through the past? | |
| 6002 Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. | |
| 6003 He is no more--these breathings are his last; | |
| 6004 His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, | |
| 6005 And he himself as nothing:--if he was | |
| 6006 Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed | |
| 6007 With forms which live and suffer--let that pass-- | |
| 6008 His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, | |
| 6009 | |
| 6010 CLXV. | |
| 6011 | |
| 6012 Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all | |
| 6013 That we inherit in its mortal shroud, | |
| 6014 And spreads the dim and universal pall | |
| 6015 Thro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud | |
| 6016 Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, | |
| 6017 Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays | |
| 6018 A melancholy halo scarce allowed | |
| 6019 To hover on the verge of darkness; rays | |
| 6020 Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, | |
| 6021 | |
| 6022 CLXVI. | |
| 6023 | |
| 6024 And send us prying into the abyss, | |
| 6025 To gather what we shall be when the frame | |
| 6026 Shall be resolved to something less than this | |
| 6027 Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame, | |
| 6028 And wipe the dust from off the idle name | |
| 6029 We never more shall hear,--but never more, | |
| 6030 Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same: | |
| 6031 It is enough, in sooth, that ONCE we bore | |
| 6032 These fardels of the heart--the heart whose sweat was gore. | |
| 6033 | |
| 6034 CLXVII. | |
| 6035 | |
| 6036 Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, | |
| 6037 A long, low distant murmur of dread sound, | |
| 6038 Such as arises when a nation bleeds | |
| 6039 With some deep and immedicable wound; | |
| 6040 Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground. | |
| 6041 The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief | |
| 6042 Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned, | |
| 6043 And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief | |
| 6044 She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. | |
| 6045 | |
| 6046 CLXVIII. | |
| 6047 | |
| 6048 Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? | |
| 6049 Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? | |
| 6050 Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low | |
| 6051 Some less majestic, less beloved head? | |
| 6052 In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, | |
| 6053 The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy, | |
| 6054 Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled | |
| 6055 The present happiness and promised joy | |
| 6056 Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy. | |
| 6057 | |
| 6058 CLXIX. | |
| 6059 | |
| 6060 Peasants bring forth in safety.--Can it be, | |
| 6061 O thou that wert so happy, so adored! | |
| 6062 Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, | |
| 6063 And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard | |
| 6064 Her many griefs for One; for she had poured | |
| 6065 Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head | |
| 6066 Beheld her Iris.--Thou, too, lonely lord, | |
| 6067 And desolate consort--vainly wert thou wed! | |
| 6068 The husband of a year! the father of the dead! | |
| 6069 | |
| 6070 CLXX. | |
| 6071 | |
| 6072 Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made: | |
| 6073 Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust | |
| 6074 The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid, | |
| 6075 The love of millions! How we did entrust | |
| 6076 Futurity to her! and, though it must | |
| 6077 Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed | |
| 6078 Our children should obey her child, and blessed | |
| 6079 Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed | |
| 6080 Like star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beamed. | |
| 6081 | |
| 6082 CLXXI. | |
| 6083 | |
| 6084 Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well: | |
| 6085 The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue | |
| 6086 Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, | |
| 6087 Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung | |
| 6088 Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung | |
| 6089 Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate | |
| 6090 Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung | |
| 6091 Against their blind omnipotence a weight | |
| 6092 Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,-- | |
| 6093 | |
| 6094 CLXXII. | |
| 6095 | |
| 6096 These might have been her destiny; but no, | |
| 6097 Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, | |
| 6098 Good without effort, great without a foe; | |
| 6099 But now a bride and mother--and now THERE! | |
| 6100 How many ties did that stern moment tear! | |
| 6101 From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast | |
| 6102 Is linked the electric chain of that despair, | |
| 6103 Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed | |
| 6104 The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best. | |
| 6105 | |
| 6106 CLXXIII. | |
| 6107 | |
| 6108 Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills | |
| 6109 So far, that the uprooting wind which tears | |
| 6110 The oak from his foundation, and which spills | |
| 6111 The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears | |
| 6112 Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares | |
| 6113 The oval mirror of thy glassy lake; | |
| 6114 And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears | |
| 6115 A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, | |
| 6116 All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. | |
| 6117 | |
| 6118 CLXXIV. | |
| 6119 | |
| 6120 And near Albano's scarce divided waves | |
| 6121 Shine from a sister valley;--and afar | |
| 6122 The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves | |
| 6123 The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, | |
| 6124 'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star | |
| 6125 Rose o'er an empire,--but beneath thy right | |
| 6126 Tully reposed from Rome;--and where yon bar | |
| 6127 Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight, | |
| 6128 The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight. | |
| 6129 | |
| 6130 CLXXV. | |
| 6131 | |
| 6132 But I forget.--My pilgrim's shrine is won, | |
| 6133 And he and I must part,--so let it be,-- | |
| 6134 His task and mine alike are nearly done; | |
| 6135 Yet once more let us look upon the sea: | |
| 6136 The midland ocean breaks on him and me, | |
| 6137 And from the Alban mount we now behold | |
| 6138 Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we | |
| 6139 Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold | |
| 6140 Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled | |
| 6141 | |
| 6142 CLXXVI. | |
| 6143 | |
| 6144 Upon the blue Symplegades: long years-- | |
| 6145 Long, though not very many--since have done | |
| 6146 Their work on both; some suffering and some tears | |
| 6147 Have left us nearly where we had begun: | |
| 6148 Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run, | |
| 6149 We have had our reward--and it is here; | |
| 6150 That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun, | |
| 6151 And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear | |
| 6152 As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. | |
| 6153 | |
| 6154 CLXXVII. | |
| 6155 | |
| 6156 Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, | |
| 6157 With one fair Spirit for my minister, | |
| 6158 That I might all forget the human race, | |
| 6159 And, hating no one, love but only her! | |
| 6160 Ye Elements!--in whose ennobling stir | |
| 6161 I feel myself exalted--can ye not | |
| 6162 Accord me such a being? Do I err | |
| 6163 In deeming such inhabit many a spot? | |
| 6164 Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. | |
| 6165 | |
| 6166 CLXXVIII. | |
| 6167 | |
| 6168 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, | |
| 6169 There is a rapture on the lonely shore, | |
| 6170 There is society where none intrudes, | |
| 6171 By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: | |
| 6172 I love not Man the less, but Nature more, | |
| 6173 From these our interviews, in which I steal | |
| 6174 From all I may be, or have been before, | |
| 6175 To mingle with the Universe, and feel | |
| 6176 What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. | |
| 6177 | |
| 6178 CLXXIX. | |
| 6179 | |
| 6180 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll! | |
| 6181 Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; | |
| 6182 Man marks the earth with ruin--his control | |
| 6183 Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain | |
| 6184 The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain | |
| 6185 A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, | |
| 6186 When for a moment, like a drop of rain, | |
| 6187 He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, | |
| 6188 Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. | |
| 6189 | |
| 6190 CLXXX. | |
| 6191 | |
| 6192 His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields | |
| 6193 Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise | |
| 6194 And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields | |
| 6195 For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, | |
| 6196 Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, | |
| 6197 And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray | |
| 6198 And howling, to his gods, where haply lies | |
| 6199 His petty hope in some near port or bay, | |
| 6200 And dashest him again to earth:--there let him lay. | |
| 6201 | |
| 6202 CLXXXI. | |
| 6203 | |
| 6204 The armaments which thunderstrike the walls | |
| 6205 Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, | |
| 6206 And monarchs tremble in their capitals. | |
| 6207 The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make | |
| 6208 Their clay creator the vain title take | |
| 6209 Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; | |
| 6210 These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, | |
| 6211 They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar | |
| 6212 Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. | |
| 6213 | |
| 6214 CLXXXII. | |
| 6215 | |
| 6216 Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-- | |
| 6217 Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? | |
| 6218 Thy waters washed them power while they were free | |
| 6219 And many a tyrant since: their shores obey | |
| 6220 The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay | |
| 6221 Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou, | |
| 6222 Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-- | |
| 6223 Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-- | |
| 6224 Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. | |
| 6225 | |
| 6226 CLXXXIII. | |
| 6227 | |
| 6228 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form | |
| 6229 Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, | |
| 6230 Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm, | |
| 6231 Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime | |
| 6232 Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime-- | |
| 6233 The image of Eternity--the throne | |
| 6234 Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime | |
| 6235 The monsters of the deep are made; each zone | |
| 6236 Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. | |
| 6237 | |
| 6238 CLXXXIV. | |
| 6239 | |
| 6240 And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy | |
| 6241 Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be | |
| 6242 Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy | |
| 6243 I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me | |
| 6244 Were a delight; and if the freshening sea | |
| 6245 Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear, | |
| 6246 For I was as it were a child of thee, | |
| 6247 And trusted to thy billows far and near, | |
| 6248 And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here. | |
| 6249 | |
| 6250 CLXXXV. | |
| 6251 | |
| 6252 My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme | |
| 6253 Has died into an echo; it is fit | |
| 6254 The spell should break of this protracted dream. | |
| 6255 The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit | |
| 6256 My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ-- | |
| 6257 Would it were worthier! but I am not now | |
| 6258 That which I have been--and my visions flit | |
| 6259 Less palpably before me--and the glow | |
| 6260 Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. | |
| 6261 | |
| 6262 CLXXXVI. | |
| 6263 | |
| 6264 Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-- | |
| 6265 A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell! | |
| 6266 Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene | |
| 6267 Which is his last, if in your memories dwell | |
| 6268 A thought which once was his, if on ye swell | |
| 6269 A single recollection, not in vain | |
| 6270 He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell; | |
| 6271 Farewell! with HIM alone may rest the pain, | |
| 6272 If such there were--with YOU, the moral of his strain. | |
| 6273 | |
| 6274 | |
| 6275 | |
| 6276 Footnotes: | |
| 6277 {1} Lady Charlotte Harley, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. | |
| 5 List of Contents | |
| 6 | |
| 7 To Ianthe | |
| 8 Canto the First | |
| 9 Canto the Second | |
| 10 Canto the Third | |
| 11 Canto the Fourth | |
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