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+\documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{book}
+\usepackage[pagestyles,outermarks]{titlesec}[2005/01/22 v2.6]
+\usepackage{titletoc}[2005/01/22 v1.5]
+\usepackage[repeat]{poetry}
+\usepackage{example}
+
+\TextHeight {\textheight}
+\TextWidth {6in}
+
+\oddsidemargin .5in
+
+\RelSize[.9]{0}
+
+\columnsep 2em
+\pagestyle{empty}
+\flushbottom
+
+\newpagestyle{maintext}{
+
+ \sethead [\textsc{childe harold's pilgrimage}]
+ []
+ [\toptitlemarks \RelSize{-1}%
+ \textsc {[\,canto \romannumeral\chaptertitle}]
+ {\toptitlemarks \RelSize{-1}%
+ \textsc {canto \romannumeral\chaptertitle\,]}}
+ {}
+ {\textsc{childe harold's pilgrimage}}
+
+ \setfoot [][\arabic{page}][]
+ {}{\arabic{page}}{}
+
+ \Capita {chapter}{section}
+}
+
+\Locus \excessus {\leftmargin + 1.75em}
+
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+\Locus {\rightmargin + 1em}
+\Progressio {5\\F}
+\SpatiumAnte {.22em}
+
+\Forma \strophae {1{\penalty 1000}1*7{\penalty 10000}0}
+
+\Novus \numerus \Ncanto
+\Facies {\def\languagename{english}\ordinal {#1}\theordinal}
+\Caput {\chapter}
+
+\Novus \titulus \canto
+\Facies {\RelSize{+1}\textsc{canto the \Ncanto*{=+1}}%
+ \Nstanza{0}%
+ }
+\SpatiumSupra {1.5\leading}
+
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+\SpatiumInfra {.25\leading plus .125\leading minus .125\leading
+ \penalty 10000}
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+
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+\SpatiumSupra \stropham {1\leading plus .5\leading minus .25\leading
+ \penalty 100}
+
+\begin{document}
+
+\onecolumn
+
+\ExampleTitle {Byron}{Childe Harold's Pilgrimage}
+ {Poetical Works\\
+ Oxford Standard Authors\\
+ Oxford University Press, 1970}
+
+
+\spatium {5\leading}
+\titulus {\RelSize{1}CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE}
+\cleardoublepage
+\twocolumn
+
+\Versus
+\pagestyle {maintext}
+
+\titulus{To Ianthe}
+
+{
+ \numerus{1}
+
+ Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
+ Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
+ Not in those visions to the heart displaying
+ Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
+ Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed:
+ Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
+ To paint those charms which varied as they beamed\textemdash
+ To such as see thee not my words were weak;
+To those who gaze on thee, what language could they speak?
+
+ Ah! mayst thou ever be what now thou art,
+ Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,
+ As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
+ Love's image upon earth without his wing,
+ And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
+ And surely she who now so fondly rears
+ Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
+ Beholds the rainbow of her future years,
+Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.
+
+ Young Peri of the West!---'tis well for me
+ My years already doubly number thine;
+ My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,
+ And safely view thy ripening beauties shine:
+ Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;
+ Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed
+ Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
+ To those whose admiration shall succeed,
+But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.
+
+ Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the gazelle's,
+ Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
+ Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,
+ Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny
+ That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh,
+ Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
+ This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why
+ To one so young my strain I would commend,
+But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend.
+
+ Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;
+ And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast
+ On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined
+ Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:
+ My days once numbered, should this homage past
+ Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre
+ Of him who hailed thee, loveliest as thou wast,
+ Such is the most my memory may desire;
+Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?
+}
+\numerus{}
+
+\Facies \strophae {\stanza}
+
+\canto
+
+ Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,
+ Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will!
+ Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,
+ Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:
+ Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;
+ Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine
+ Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
+ Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
+To grace so plain a tale---this lowly lay of mine.
+
+
+ Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,
+ Who ne in virtue's ways did take delight;
+ But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
+ And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
+ Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
+ Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;
+ Few earthly things found favour in his sight
+ Save concubines and carnal companie,
+And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.
+
+ Childe Harold was he hight: ---but whence his name
+ And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
+ Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
+ And had been glorious in another day:
+ But one sad losel soils a name for aye,
+ However mighty in the olden time;
+ Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
+ Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lines of rhyme,
+Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.
+
+
+ Childe Harold basked him in the noontide sun,
+ Disporting there like any other fly,
+ Nor deemed before his little day was done
+ One blast might chill him into misery.
+ But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
+ Worse than adversity the Childe befell;
+ He felt the fulness of satiety:
+ Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
+Which seemed to him more lone than eremite's sad cell,
+
+ For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,
+ Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
+ Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,
+ And that loved one, alas, could ne'er be his.
+ Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
+ Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
+ Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
+ And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
+Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
+
+
+ And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
+ And from his fellow bacchanals would flee;
+ 'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
+ But pride congealed the drop within his e'e:
+ Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
+ And from his native land resolved to go,
+ And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
+ With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
+And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
+
+
+ The Childe departed from his father's hall;
+ It was a vast and venerable pile;
+ So old, it seemed only not to fall,
+ Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle.
+ Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile!
+ Where superstition once had made her den,
+ Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile;
+ And monks might deem their time was come agen,
+If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.
+
+
+ Yet ofttimes in his maddest mirthful mood,
+ Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,
+ As if the memory of some deadly feud
+ Or disappointed passion lurked below:
+ But this none knew, nor haply cared to know;
+ For his was not that open, artless soul
+ That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow;
+ Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,
+Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control.
+
+ And none did love him: though to hall and bower
+ He gathered revellers from far and near,
+ He knew them flatterers of the festal hour;
+ The heartless parasites of present cheer.
+ Yea, none did love him---not his lemans dear---
+ But pomp and power alone are woman's care,
+ And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
+ Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
+And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
+
+ Childe Harold had a mother---not forgot,
+ Though parting from that mother he did shun;
+ A sister whom he loved, but saw her not
+ Before his weary pilgrimage begun:
+ If friends he had, he bade adieu to none.
+ Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel;
+ Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon
+ A few dear objects, will in sadness feel
+Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to hear.
+
+ His house, his home, his heritage, his lands,
+ The laughing dames in whom he did delight,
+ Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
+ Might shake the saintship of an anchorite,
+ And long had fed his youthful appetite;
+ His goblets brimmed with every costly wine,
+ And all that mote to luxury invite,
+ Without a sigh he left to cross the brine,
+And traverse Paynim shores, and pass earth's central line.
+
+
+ The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew
+ As glad to waft him from his native home;
+ And fast the white rocks faded from his view,
+ And soon were lost in circumambient foam;
+ And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
+ Repented he, but in his bosom slept
+ The silent thought, nor from his lips did come
+ One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept,
+And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept.
+
+
+ But when the sun was sinking in the sea,
+ He seized his harp, which he at times could string,
+ And strike, albeit with untaught melody,
+ When deemed he no strange ear was listening:
+ And now his fingers o'er it he did fling,
+ And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight,
+ While flew the vessel on her snowy wing,
+ And fleeting shores receded from his sight,
+Thus to the elements he poured his last `Good Night.'
+
+\spatium {1\leading}
+
+\begin{versus}
+
+ \Forma \strophae {01010101}
+ \Facies {\strophe}
+ \Locus \textus {+2em}
+
+Adieu, adieu! my native shore
+ Fades o'er the waters blue;
+The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
+ And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
+Yon sun that sets upon the sea
+ We follow in his flight;
+Farewell awhile to him and thee,
+ My Native Land---Good Night!
+
+A few short hours, and he will rise
+ To give the morrow birth;
+And I shall hail the main and skies,
+ But not my mother earth.
+Deserted is my own good hall,
+ Its hearth is desolate;
+Wild weeds are gathering on the wall,
+ My dog howls at the gate.
+
+`Come hither, hither, my little page:
+ Why dost thou weep and wail?
+Or dost thou dread the billow's rage,
+ Or tremble at the gale?
+But dash the tear-drop from thine eye,
+ Our ship is swift and strong;
+Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly
+ More merrily along.'
+
+`Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high,
+ I fear not wave nor wind;
+Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I
+ Am sorrowful in mind;
+For I have from my father gone,
+ A mother whom I love,
+And have no friend, save these alone,
+ But thee---and One above.
+
+`My father blessed me fervently,
+ Yet did not much complain;
+But sorely will my mother sigh
+ Till I come back again.'\textemdash
+`Enough, enough, my little lad!
+ Such tears become thine eye;
+If I thy guileless bosom had,
+ Mine own would not be dry.
+
+`Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman,
+ Why dost thou look so pale?
+Or dost thou dread a French foeman,
+ Or shiver at the gale?'\textemdash
+`Deem'st thou I tremble for my life?
+ Sir Childe, I'm not so weak;
+But thinking on an absent wife
+ Will blanch a faithful cheek.
+
+`My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall,
+ Along the bordering lake;
+And when they on their father call,
+ What answer shall she make?'\textemdash
+`Enough, enough, my yeoman good,
+ Thy grief let none gainsay;
+But I, who am of lighter mood,
+ Will laugh to flee away.'
+
+For who would trust the seeming sighs
+ Of wife or paramour?
+Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes
+ We late saw streaming o'er.
+For pleasures past I do not grieve,
+ Nor perils gathering near;
+My greatest grief is that I leave
+ No thing that claims a tear.
+
+And now I'm in the world alone,
+ Upon the wide, wide sea;
+But why should I for others groan,
+ When none will sigh for me?
+Perchance my dog will whine in vain
+ Till fed by stranger hands;
+But long ere I come back again
+ He'd tear me where he stands.
+
+With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go
+ Athwart the foaming brine;
+Nor care what land thou bear'st me to,
+ So not again to mine.
+Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves!
+ And when you fail my sight,
+Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves!
+ My Native Land---Good Night!
+
+\end{versus}
+
+ On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone,
+ And winds are rude in Biscay's sleepless bay.
+ Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
+ New shores descried make every bosom gay;
+ And Cintra's mountain greets them on their way,
+ And Tagus dashing onward to the deep,
+ His fabled golden tribute bent to pay;
+ And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap,
+And steer 'twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap.
+
+
+ Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
+ What Heaven hath done for this delicious land!
+ What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
+ What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!
+ But man would mar them with an impious hand:
+ And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge
+ 'Gainst those who most transgress his high command,
+ With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge
+Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen purge.
+
+ What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!
+ Her image floating on that noble tide,
+ Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
+ But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
+ Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
+ And to the Lusians did her aid afford
+ A nation swoll'n with ignorance and pride,
+ Who lick, yet loathe, the hand that waves the sword.
+To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord.
+
+
+ But whoso entereth within this town,
+ That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
+ Disconsolate will wander up and down,
+ Mid many things unsightly to strange e'e;
+ For hut and palace show like filthily;
+ The dingy denizens are reared in dirt;
+ No personage of high or mean degree
+ Doth care for cleanness of surtout or shirt,
+Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt.
+
+
+ Poor, paltry slaves! yet born midst noblest scenes\textemdash
+ Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men?
+ Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
+ In variegated maze of mount and glen.
+ Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
+ To follow half on which the eye dilates
+ Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken
+ Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
+Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?
+
+
+ The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned,
+ The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
+ The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
+ The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
+ The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
+ The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
+ The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
+ The vine on high, the willow branch below,
+Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
+
+
+ Then slowly climb the many-winding way,
+ And frequent turn to linger as you go,
+ From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
+ And rest ye at `Our Lady's House of Woe;'
+ Where frugal monks their little relics show,
+ And sundry legends to the stranger tell:
+ Here impious men have punished been; and lo,
+ Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
+In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
+
+ And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
+ Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path;
+ Yet deem not these devotion's offering\textemdash
+ These are memorials frail of murderous wrath;
+ For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath
+ Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife,
+ Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
+ And grove and glen with thousand such are rife
+Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life!
+
+
+ On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath,
+ Are domes where whilom kings did make repair;
+ But now the wild flowers round them only breathe:
+ Yet ruined splendour still is lingering there.
+ And yonder towers the prince's palace fair:
+ There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,
+ Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware
+ When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,
+Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
+
+
+ Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan.
+ Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow;
+ But now, as if a thing unblest by man,
+ Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou!
+ Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
+ To halls deserted, portals gaping wide;
+ Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
+ Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;
+Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide.
+
+
+ Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!
+ Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
+ With diadem hight foolscap, lo! a fiend,
+ A little fiend that scoffs incessantly,
+ There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by
+ His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,
+ Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,
+ And sundry signatures adorn the roll,
+Whereat the urchin points, and laughs with all his soul.
+
+ Convention is the dwarfish demon styled
+ That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome:
+ Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
+ And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
+ Here Folly dashed to earth the victor's plume,
+ And Policy regained what Arms had lost:
+ For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom!
+ Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host,
+Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast.
+
+
+ And ever since that martial synod met,
+ Britannia sickens, Cintra, at thy name;
+ And folks in office at the mention fret,
+ And fain would blush, if blush they could, for shame.
+ How will posterity the deed proclaim!
+ Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer,
+ To view these champions cheated of their fame,
+ By foes in fight o'erthrown, yet victors here,
+Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year?
+
+
+ So deemed the Childe, as o'er the mountains he
+ Did take his way in solitary guise:
+ Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
+ More restless than the swallow in the skies:
+ Though here awhile he learned to moralise,
+ For Meditation fixed at times on him,
+ And conscious Reason whispered to despise
+ His early youth misspent in maddest whim;
+But as he gazed on Truth, his aching eyes grew dim.
+
+
+ To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits
+ A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul:
+ Again he rouses from his moping fits,
+ But seeks not now the harlot and the bow
+ Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet the goal
+ Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;
+ And o'er him many changing scenes must roll,
+ Ere toil his thirst for travel can assuage,
+Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage.
+
+
+ Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay,
+ Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen;
+ And church and court did mingle their array,
+ And mass and revel were alternate seen;
+ Lordlings and freres---ill-sorted fry, I ween!
+ But here the Babylonian whore had built
+ A dome, where flaunts she in such glorious sheen,
+ That men forget the blood which she hath spilt,
+And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to garnish guilt.
+
+
+ O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills,
+ (Oh that such hills upheld a free-born race!)
+ Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce fills,
+ Childe Harold wends through many a pleasant place.
+ Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,
+ And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
+ The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace.
+ Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air
+And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share.
+
+
+ More bleak to view the hills at length recede,
+ And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend:
+ Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed!
+ Far as the eye discerns, withouten end,
+ Spain's realms appear, whereon her shepherds tend
+ Flocks, whose rich fleece right well the trader knows\textemdash
+ Now must the pastor's arm his lambs defend:
+ For Spain is compassed by unyielding foes,
+And all must shield their all, or share Subjection's woes.
+
+
+ Where Lusitania and her Sister meet,
+ Deem ye what bounds the rival realms divide?
+ Or e'er the jealous queens of nations greet,
+ Doth Tayo interpose his mighty tide?
+ Or dark sierras rise in craggy pride?
+ Or fence of art, like China's vasty wall?\textemdash
+ Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide,
+ Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall
+Rise like the rocks that part Hispania's land from Gaul:
+
+
+ But these between a silver streamlet glides,
+ And scarce a name distinguisheth the brook,
+ Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides.
+ Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
+ And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
+ That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow:
+ For proud each peasant as the noblest duke:
+ Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
+'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.
+
+
+ But ere the mingling bounds have far been passed,
+ Dark Guadiana rolls his power along
+ In sullen billows, murmuring and vast,
+ So noted ancient roundelays among.
+ Whilome upon his banks did legions throng
+ Of Moor and Knight, in mailed splendour drest;
+ Here ceased the swift their race, here sunk the strong;
+ The Paynim turban and the Christian crest
+Mixed on the bleeding stream, by floating hosts oppressed.
+
+
+ Oh, lovely Spain! renowned, romantic land!
+ Where is that standard which Pelagio bore,
+ When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
+ That dyed thy mountain-streams with Gothic gore?
+ Where are those bloody banners which of yore
+ Waved o'er thy sons, victorious to the gale,
+ And drove at last the spoilers to their shore?
+ Red gleamed the cross, and waned the crescent pale,
+While Afric's echoes thrilled with Moorish matrons' wail,
+
+ Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?
+ Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate!
+ When granite moulders and when records fail,
+ A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.
+ Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate,
+ See how the mighty shrink into a song!
+ Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee great?
+ Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue,
+When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong?
+
+
+ Awake, ye sons of Spain! awake! advance
+ Lo! Chivalry, your ancient goddess, cries,
+ But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance,
+ Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies:
+ Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies,
+ And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar!
+ In every peal she calls---`Awake! arise!'
+ Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore,
+When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore?
+
+
+ Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note?
+ Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath?
+ Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote;
+ Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath
+ Tyrants and tyrants' slaves?---the fires of death,
+ The bale-fires flash on high: ---from rock to rock
+ Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe:
+ Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,
+Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock.
+
+
+ Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
+ His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun,
+ With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
+ And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
+ Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
+ Flashing afar,---and at his iron feet
+ Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done;
+ For on this morn three potent nations meet,
+To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
+
+
+ By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see
+ (For one who hath no friend, no brother there)
+ Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery,
+ Their various arms that glitter in the air!
+ What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair,
+ And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey!
+ All join the chase, but few the triumph share:
+ The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away,
+And Havoc scarce for joy can cumber their array.
+
+
+ Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;
+ Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;
+ Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies.
+ The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!
+ The foe, the victim, and the fond ally
+ That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,
+ Are met---as if at home they could not die\textemdash
+ To feed the crow on Talavera's plain,
+And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain.
+
+
+ There shall they rot---Ambition's honoured fools!
+ Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!
+ Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,
+ The broken tools, that tyrants cast away
+ By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
+ With human hearts---to what?---a dream alone.
+ Can despots compass aught that hails their sway?
+ Or call with truth one span of earth their own,
+Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone?
+
+
+ O Albuera, glorious field of grief!
+ As o'er thy plain the Pilgrim pricked his steed,
+ Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief,
+ A scene where mingling foes should boast and bleed.
+ Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed
+ And tears of triumph their reward prolong!
+ Till others fall where other chieftains lead,
+ Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng,
+And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song.
+
+
+ Enough of Battle's minions! let them play
+ Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame:
+ Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay,
+ Though thousands fall to deck some single name.
+ In sooth, 'twere sad to thwart their noble aim
+ Who strike, blest hirelings! for their country's good,
+ And die, that living might have proved her shame;
+ Perished, perchance, in some domestic feud,
+Or in a narrower sphere wild Rapine's path pursued.
+
+
+ Full swiftly Harold wends his lonely way
+ Where proud Sevilla triumphs unsubdued:
+ Yet is she free---the spoiler's wished-for prey!
+ Soon, soon shall Conquest's fiery foot intrude,
+ Blackening her lovely domes with traces rude.
+ Inevitable hour! 'Gainst fate to strive
+ Where Desolation plants her famished brood
+ Is vain, or Ilion, Tyre, might yet survive,
+And Virtue vanquish all, and Murder cease to thrive.
+
+
+ But all unconscious of the coming doom,
+ The feast, the song, the revel here abounds;
+ Strange modes of merriment the hours consume,
+ Nor bleed these patriots with their country's wounds;
+ Nor here War's clarion, but Love's rebeck sounds;
+ Here Folly still his votaries enthralls,
+ And young-eyed Lewdness walks her midnight rounds:
+ Girt with the silent crimes of capitals,
+Still to the last kind Vice clings to the tottering walls.
+
+
+ Not so the rustic: with his trembling mate
+ He lurks, nor casts his heavy eye afar,
+ Lest he should view his vineyard desolate,
+ Blasted below the dun hot breath of war.
+ No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star
+ Fandango twirls his jocund castanet:
+ Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar,
+ Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret;
+The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet.
+
+
+ How carols now the lusty muleteer?
+ Of love, romance, devotion is his lay,
+ As whilome he was wont the leagues to cheer,
+ His quick bells wildly jingling on the way?
+ No! as he speeds, he chants `Viva el Rey!'
+ And checks his song to execrate Godoy,
+ The royal wittol Charles, and curse the day
+ When first Spain's queen beheld the black-eyed boy,
+And gore-faced Treason sprung from her adulterate joy.
+
+
+ On yon long level plain, at distance crowned
+ With crags, whereon those Moorish turrets rest,
+ Wide scattered hoof-marks dint the wounded ground;
+ And, scathed by fire, the greensward's darkened vest
+ Tells that the foe was Andalusia's guest:
+ Here was the camp, the watch-flame, and the host,
+ Here the brave peasant stormed the dragon's nest;
+ Still does he mark it with triumphant boast,
+And points to yonder cliffs, which oft were won and lost.
+
+
+ And whomsoe'er along the path you meet
+ Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
+ Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet:
+ Woe to the man that walks in public view
+ Without of loyalty this token true:
+ Sharp is the knife, and sudden is the stroke;
+ And sorely would the Gallic foemen rue,
+ If subtle poniards, wrapt beneath the cloak,
+Could blunt the sabre's edge, or clear the cannon's smoke.
+
+
+ At every turn Morena's dusky height
+ Sustains aloft the battery's iron load;
+ And, far as mortal eye can compass sight,
+ The mountain-howitzer, the broken road,
+ The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed,
+ The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch,
+ The magazine in rocky durance stowed,
+ The holstered steed beneath the shed of thatch,
+The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match,
+
+
+ Portend the deeds to come: ---but he whose nod
+ Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway,
+ A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod;
+ A little moment deigneth to delay:
+ Soon will his legions sweep through these the way;
+ The West must own the Scourger of the world.
+ Ah, Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning day,
+ When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurled,
+And thou shalt view thy sons in crowds to Hades hurled.
+
+
+ And must they fall---the young, the proud, the brave\textemdash
+ To swell one bloated chief's unwholesome reign?
+ No step between submission and a grave?
+ The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain?
+ And doth the Power that man adores ordain
+ Their doom, nor heed the suppliant's appeal?
+ Is all that desperate Valour acts in vain?
+ And Counsel sage, and patriotic Zeal,
+The veteran's skill, youth's fire, and manhood's heart of steel?
+
+
+ Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused,
+ Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar,
+ And, all unsexed, the anlace hath espoused,
+ Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war?
+ And she, whom once the semblance of a scar
+ Appalled, an owlet's larum chilled with dread,
+ Now views the column-scattering bayonet jar,
+ The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead
+Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to tread.
+
+
+ Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,
+ Oh! had you known her in her softer hour,
+ Marked her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil,
+ Heard her light, lively tones in lady's bower,
+ Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power,
+ Her fairy form, with more than female grace,
+ Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower
+ Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face,
+Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase.
+
+
+ Her lover sinks---she sheds no ill-timed tear;
+ Her chief is slain---she fills his fatal post;
+ Her fellows flee---she checks their base career;
+ The foe retires---she heads the sallying host:
+ Who can appease like her a lover's ghost?
+ Who can avenge so well a leader's fall?
+ What maid retrieve when man's flushed hope is lost?
+ Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,
+Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall?
+
+
+ Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
+ But formed for all the witching arts of love:
+ Though thus in arms they emulate her sons,
+ And in the horrid phalanx dare to move,
+ 'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove,
+ Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate:
+ In softness as in firmness far above
+ Remoter females, famed for sickening prate;
+Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great.
+
+
+ The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed
+ Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch:
+ Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest,
+ Bid man be valiant ere he merit such:
+ Her glance, how wildly beautiful! how much
+ Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek
+ Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch!
+ Who round the North for paler dames would seek?
+How poor their forms appear? how languid, wan, and weak!
+
+
+ Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud;
+ Match me, ye harems! of the land where now
+ I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud
+ Beauties that even a cynic must avow!
+ Match me those houris, whom ye scarce allow
+ To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind,
+ With Spain's dark-glancing daughters\,---\,deign to know,
+ There your wise Prophet's paradise we find,
+His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind.
+
+
+ O thou, Parnassus! whom I now survey,
+ Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
+ Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
+ But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
+ In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!
+ What marvel if I thus essay to sing?
+ The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by
+ Would gladly woo thine echoes with his string,
+Though from thy heights no more one muse will wave her wing.
+
+
+ Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name
+ Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
+ And now I view thee, 'tis, alas, with shame
+ That I in feeblest accents must adore.
+ When I recount thy worshippers of yore
+ I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
+ Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
+ But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
+In silent joy to think at last I look on thee!
+
+
+ Happier in this than mightiest bards have been,
+ Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot,
+ Shall I unmoved behold the hallowed scene,
+ Which others rave of, though they know it not?
+ Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot,
+ And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave,
+ Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot,
+ Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,
+And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave.
+
+
+ Of thee hereafter.---Even amidst my strain
+ I turned aside to pay my homage here;
+ Forgot the land, the sons, the maids of Spain;
+ Her fate, to every free-born bosom dear;
+ And hailed thee, not perchance without a tear.
+ Now to my theme---but from thy holy haunt
+ Let me some remnant, some memorial bear;
+ Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant,
+Nor let thy votary's hope be deemed an idle vaunt.
+
+
+ But ne'er didst thou, fair mount, when Greece was young,
+ See round thy giant base a brighter choir;
+ Nor e'er did Delphi, when her priestess sung
+ The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire,
+ Behold a train more fitting to inspire
+ The song of love than Andalusia's maids,
+ Nurst in the glowing lap of soft desire:
+ Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades
+As Greece can still bestow, though Glory fly her glades.
+
+
+ Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast
+ Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days,
+ But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast,
+ Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise.
+ Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways!
+ While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape
+ The fascination of thy magic gaze?
+ A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape,
+And mould to every taste thy dear delusive shape.
+
+
+ When Paphos fell by Time---accursed Time!
+ The Queen who conquers all must yield to thee\textemdash
+ The Pleasures fled, but sought as warm a clime;
+ And Venus, constant to her native sea,
+ To nought else constant, hither deigned to flee,
+ And fixed her shrine within these walls of white;
+ Though not to one dome circumscribeth she
+ Her worship, but, devoted to her rite,
+A thousand altars rise, for ever blazing bright.
+
+
+ From morn till night, from night till startled morn
+ Peeps blushing on the revel's laughing crew,
+ The song is heard, the rosy garland worn;
+ Devices quaint, and frolics ever new,
+ Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu
+ He bids to sober joy that here sojourns:
+ Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu
+ Of true devotion monkish incense burns,
+And love and prayer unite, or rule the hour by turns.
+
+
+ The sabbath comes, a day of blessed rest;
+ What hallows it upon this Christian shore?
+ Lo! it is sacred to a solemn feast:
+ Hark! heard you not the forest monarch's roar?
+ Crashing the lance, he snuffs the spouting gore
+ Of man and steed, o'erthrown beneath his horn:
+ The thronged arena shakes with shouts for more;
+ Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn,
+Nor shrinks the female eye, nor e'en affects to mourn.
+
+
+ The seventh day this; the jubilee of man.
+ London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer:
+ Then thy spruce citizen, washed artizan,
+ And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:
+ Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,
+ And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl;
+ To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair;
+ Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
+Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
+
+ Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribboned fair,
+ Others along the safer turnpike fly;
+ Some Richmond Hill ascend, some scud to Ware,
+ And many to the steep of Highgate hie.
+ Ask ye, Boeotian shades, the reason why?
+ 'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn,
+ Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery,
+ In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
+And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.
+
+
+ All have their fooleries; not alike are thine,
+ Fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea!
+ Soon as the matin bell proclaimeth nine,
+ Thy saint adorers count the rosary:
+ Much is the Virgin teased to shrive them free
+ (Well do I ween the only virgin there)
+ From crimes as numerous as her beadsmen be;
+ Then to the crowded circus forth they fare:
+Young, old, high, low, at once the same diversion share.
+
+
+ The lists are oped, the spacious area cleared,
+ Thousands on thousands piled are seated round;
+ Long ere the first loud trumpet's note is heard,
+ No vacant space for lated wight is found:
+ Here dons, grandees, but chiefly dames abound,
+ Skilled in the ogle of a roguish eye,
+ Yet ever well inclined to heal the wound;
+ None through their cold disdain are doomed to die,
+As moon-struck bards complain, by Love's sad archery.
+
+
+ Hushed is the din of tongues---on gallant steeds,
+ With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-poised lance,
+ Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds,
+ And lowly bending to the lists advance;
+ Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance:
+ If in the dangerous game they shine to-day,
+ The crowd's loud shout, and ladies' lovely glance,
+ Best prize of better acts, they bear away,
+And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay.
+
+
+ In costly sheen and gaudy cloak arrayed,
+ But all afoot, the light-limbed matadore
+ Stands in the centre, eager to invade
+ The lord of lowing herds; but not before
+ The ground, with cautious tread, is traversed o'er,
+ Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed:
+ His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more
+ Can man achieve without the friendly steed\textemdash
+Alas! too oft condemned for him to bear and bleed.
+
+
+ Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
+ The den expands, and expectation mute
+ Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls.
+ Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,
+ And wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot,
+ The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe:
+ Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit
+ His first attack, wide waving to and fro
+His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.
+
+
+ Sudden he stops; his eye is fixed: away,
+ Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear;
+ Now is thy time to perish, or display
+ The skill that yet may check his mad career.
+ With well-timed croupe the nimble coursers veer;
+ On foams the bull, but not unscathed he goes;
+ Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear:
+ He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes:
+Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes.
+
+
+ Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail,
+ Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse;
+ Though man and man's avenging arms assail,
+ Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force.
+ One gallant steed is stretched a mangled corse;
+ Another, hideous sight! unseamed appears,
+ His gory chest unveils life's panting source;
+ Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears;
+Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unharmed he bears.
+
+
+ Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last,
+ Full in the centre stands the bull at bay,
+ Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,
+ And foes disabled in the brutal fray:
+ And now the matadores around him play,
+ Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand:
+ Once more through all he bursts his thundering way\textemdash
+ Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand,
+Wraps his fierce eye---'tis past---he sinks upon the sand.
+
+
+ Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine,
+ Sheathed in his form the deadly weapon lies.
+ He stops---he starts---disdaining to decline:
+ Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries,
+ Without a groan, without a struggle dies.
+ The decorated car appears on high:
+ The corse is piled---sweet sight for vulgar eyes;
+ Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy,
+Hurl the dark bull along, scarce seen in dashing by.
+
+
+ Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
+ The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain:
+ Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights
+ In vengeance, gloating on another's pain.
+ What private feuds the troubled village stain!
+ Though now one phalanxed host should meet the foe,
+ Enough, alas, in humble homes remain,
+ To meditate 'gainst friends the secret blow,
+For some slight cause of wrath, whence life's warm stream must flow.
+
+
+ But Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts,
+ His withered sentinel, duenna sage!
+ And all whereat the generous soul revolts,
+ Which the stern dotard deemed he could encage,
+ Have passed to darkness with the vanished age.
+ Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen
+ (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage),
+ With braided tresses bounding o'er the green,
+While on the gay dance shone Night's lover-loving Queen?
+
+
+ Oh! many a time and oft had Harold loved,
+ Or dreamed he loved, since rapture is a dream;
+ But now his wayward bosom was unmoved,
+ For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream:
+ And lately had he learned with truth to deem
+ Love has no gift so grateful as his wings:
+ How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem,
+ Full from the fount of joy's delicious springs
+Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.
+
+
+ Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind,
+ Though now it moved him as it moves the wise;
+ Not that Philosophy on such a mind
+ E'er deigned to bend her chastely-awful eyes:
+ But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies;
+ And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb,
+ Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise:
+ Pleasure's palled victim! life-abhorring gloom
+Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom.
+
+
+ Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
+ But viewed them not with misanthropic hate;
+ Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song,
+ But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
+ Nought that he saw his sadness could abate:
+ Yet once he struggled 'gainst the demon's sway,
+ And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,
+ Poured forth this unpremeditated lay,
+To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.
+
+\spatium {1\leading}
+
+{
+ \Facies \tituli {#1}
+ \Forma {\rightskip 4.5em}
+ \titulus{TO INEZ}
+
+ \Forma \strophae {0101}
+ \Facies {\strophe}
+ \Nstrophe {0}
+
+Nay, smile not at my sullen brow,
+ Alas! I cannot smile again:
+Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
+ Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain.
+
+And dost thou ask what secret woe
+ I bear, corroding joy and youth?
+And wilt thou vainly seek to know
+ A pang even thou must fail to soothe?
+
+It is not love, it is not hate,
+ Nor low Ambition's honours lost,
+That bids me loathe my present state,
+ And fly from all I prized the most:
+
+It is that weariness which springs
+ From all I meet, or hear, or see:
+To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
+ Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
+
+It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
+ The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore,
+That will not look beyond the tomb,
+ But cannot hope for rest before.
+
+What exile from himself can flee?
+ To zones, though more and more remote,
+Still, still pursues, where'er I be,
+ The blight of life---the demon Thought.
+
+Yet others rapt in pleasure seem,
+ And taste of all that I forsake:
+Oh! may they still of transport dream,
+ And ne'er, at least like me, awake!
+
+Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,
+ With many a retrospection curst;
+And all my solace is to know,
+ Whate'er betides, I've known the worst.
+
+What is that worst? Nay, do not ask\textemdash
+ In pity from the search forbear:
+Smile on---nor venture to unmask
+ Man's heart, and view the hell that's there.
+
+}
+
+ Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!
+ Who may forget how well thy walls have stood?
+ When all were changing, thou alone wert true,
+ First to be free, and last to be subdued.
+ And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude,
+ Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye,
+ A traitor only fell beneath the feud:
+ Here all were noble, save nobility;
+None hugged a conqueror's chain save fallen Chivalry!
+
+
+ Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate!
+ They fight for freedom, who were never free;
+ A kingless people for a nerveless state,
+ Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee,
+ True to the veriest slaves of Treachery;
+ Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,
+ Pride points the path that leads to liberty;
+ Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
+War, war is still the cry, `War even to the knife!'
+
+
+ Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
+ Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife:
+ Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe
+ Can act, is acting there against man's life:
+ From flashing scimitar to secret knife,
+ War mouldeth there each weapon to his need\textemdash
+ So may he guard the sister and the wife,
+ So may he make each curst oppressor bleed,
+So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!
+
+
+ Flows there a tear of pity for the dead?
+ Look o'er the ravage of the reeking plain:
+ Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
+ Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,
+ Then to the vulture let each corse remain;
+ Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw,
+ Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain,
+ Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe:
+Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw!
+
+
+ Nor yet, alas, the dreadful work is done;
+ Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees:
+ It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
+ Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
+ Fall'n nations gaze on Spain: if freed, she frees
+ More than her fell Pizarros once enchained.
+ Strange retribution! now Columbia's ease
+ Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustained,
+While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrained.
+
+
+ Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
+ Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight,
+ Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
+ Have won for Spain her well-asserted right.
+ When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
+ When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?
+ How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
+ Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
+And Freedom's stranger-tree grow native of the soil?
+
+
+ And thou, my friend! since unavailing woe
+ Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain\textemdash
+ Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
+ Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain:
+ But thus unlaurelled to descend in vain,
+ By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
+ And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
+ While glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
+What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest?
+
+
+ Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most!
+ Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear!
+ Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
+ In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
+ And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
+ Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
+ And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier,
+ Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,
+And mourned and mourner lie united in repose.
+
+
+ Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage.
+ Ye who of him may further seek to know,
+ Shall find some tidings in a future page,
+ If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
+ Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so:
+ Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld
+ In other lands, where he was doomed to go:
+ Lands that contain the monuments of eld,
+Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.
+
+
+\canto
+
+
+ Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven!---but thou, alas,
+ Didst never yet one mortal song inspire\textemdash
+ Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
+ And is, despite of war and wasting fire,
+ And years, that bade thy worship to expire:
+ But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
+ Is the drear sceptre and dominion dire
+ Of men who never felt the sacred glow
+That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow.
+
+
+ Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
+ Where are thy men of might, thy grand in soul?
+ Gone---glimmering through the dream of things that were:
+ First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
+ They won, and passed away---is this the whole?
+ A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
+ The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
+ Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
+Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power.
+
+
+ Son of the morning, rise! approach you here!
+ Come---but molest not yon defenceless urn!
+ Look on this spot---a nation's sepulchre!
+ Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.
+ E'en gods must yield---religions take their turn:
+ 'Twas Jove's---'tis Mahomet's; and other creeds
+ Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
+ Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;
+Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.
+
+
+ Bound to the earth, he lifts his eyes to heaven\textemdash
+ Is't not enough, unhappy thing, to know
+ Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,
+ That being, thou wouldst be again, and go,
+ Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so
+ On earth no more, but mingled with the skies!
+ Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?
+ Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies:
+That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.
+
+
+ Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound;
+ Far on the solitary shore he sleeps;
+ He fell, and falling nations mourned around;
+ But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
+ Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
+ Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell
+ Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps:
+ Is that a temple where a God may dwell?
+Why, e'en the worm at last disdains her shattered cell!
+
+
+ Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
+ Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
+ Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,
+ The dome of Thought, the Palace of the South
+ Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
+ The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit,
+ And Passion's host, that never brooked control:
+ Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,
+People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?
+
+
+ Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
+ `All that we know is, nothing can be known.'
+ Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
+ Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan
+ With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.
+ Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best;
+ Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron:
+ There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
+But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome rest.
+
+
+ Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be
+ A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
+ To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
+ And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;
+ How sweet it were in concert to adore
+ With those who made our mortal labours light!
+ To hear each voice we feared to hear no more!
+ Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight,
+The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right!
+
+
+ There, thou!---whose love and life together fled,
+ Have left me here to love and live in vain\textemdash
+ Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead,
+ When busy memory flashes on my brain?
+ Well---I will dream that we may meet again,
+ And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
+ If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
+ Be as it may Futurity's behest,
+For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!
+
+
+ Here let me sit upon this mossy stone,
+ The marble column's yet unshaken base!
+ Here, son of Saturn, was thy favourite throne!
+ Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace
+ The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.
+ It may not be: nor even can Fancy's eye
+ Restore what time hath laboured to deface.
+ Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh;
+Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.
+
+
+ But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane
+ On high, where Pallas lingered, loth to flee
+ The latest relic of her ancient reign\textemdash
+ The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
+ Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
+ England! I joy no child he was of thine:
+ Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;
+ Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,
+And bear these altars o'er the long reluctant brine.
+
+
+ But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast,
+ To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:
+ Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
+ His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
+ Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
+ Aught to displace Athena's poor remains:
+ Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
+ Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains,
+And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.
+
+
+ What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue
+ Albion was happy in Athena's tears?
+ Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,
+ Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears;
+ The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears
+ The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:
+ Yes, she, whose generous aid her name endears,
+ Tore down those remnants with a harpy's hand.
+Which envious eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.
+
+
+ Where was thine aegis, Pallas, that appalled
+ Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?
+ Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthralled,
+ His shade from Hades upon that dread day
+ Bursting to light in terrible array!
+ What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more,
+ To scare a second robber from his prey?
+ Idly he wandered on the Stygian shore,
+Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before.
+
+
+ Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
+ Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved;
+ Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
+ Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
+ By British hands, which it had best behoved
+ To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
+ Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
+ And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
+And snatched thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!
+
+
+ But where is Harold? shall I then forget
+ To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave?
+ Little recked he of all that men regret;
+ No loved one now in feigned lament could rave;
+ No friend the parting hand extended gave,
+ Ere the cold stranger passed to other climes.
+ Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave;
+ But Harold felt not as in other times,
+And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes.
+
+
+ He that has sailed upon the dark blue sea,
+ Has viewed at times, I ween, a full fair sight;
+ When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
+ The white sails set, the gallant frigate tight,
+ Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
+ The glorious main expanding o'er the bow,
+ The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
+ The dullest sailer wearing bravely now,
+So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.
+
+
+ And oh, the little warlike world within!
+ The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy,
+ The hoarse command, the busy humming din,
+ When, at a word, the tops are manned on high:
+ Hark to the boatswain's call, the cheering cry,
+ While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides
+ Or schoolboy midshipman that, standing by,
+ Strains his shrill pipe, as good or ill betides,
+And well the docile crew that skilful urchin guides.
+
+
+ White is the glassy deck, without a stain,
+ Where on the watch the staid lieutenant walks:
+ Look on that part which sacred doth remain
+ For the lone chieftain, who majestic stalks,
+ Silent and feared by all: not oft he talks
+ With aught beneath him, if he would preserve
+ That strict restraint, which broken, ever baulks
+ Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve
+From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve.
+
+
+ Blow, swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale,
+ Till the broad sun withdraws his lessening ray;
+ Then must the pennant-bearer slacken sail,
+ That lagging barks may make their lazy way.
+ Ah! grievance sore, and listless dull delay,
+ To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze!
+ What leagues are lost before the dawn of day,
+ Thus loitering pensive on the willing seas,
+The flapping sails hauled down to halt for logs like these!
+
+
+ The moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve!
+ Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand!
+ Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe:
+ Such be our fate when we return to land!
+ Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand
+ Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love:
+ A circle there of merry listeners stand,
+ Or to some well-known measure featly move,
+Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove.
+
+
+ Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;
+ Europe and Afric, on each other gaze!
+ Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor,
+ Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze:
+ How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
+ Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
+ Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase:
+ But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,
+From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.
+
+
+ 'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel
+ We once have loved, though love is at an end:
+ The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
+ Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
+ Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
+ When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?
+ Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,
+ Death hath but little left him to destroy!
+Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
+
+
+ Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
+ To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,
+ The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,
+ And flies unconscious o'er each backward year.
+ None are so desolate but something dear,
+ Dearer than self, possesses or possessed
+ A thought, and claims the homage of a tear;
+ A flashing pang! of which the weary breast
+Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.
+
+
+ To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
+ To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
+ Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
+ And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
+ To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
+ With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
+ Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean:
+ This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold
+Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.
+
+
+ But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
+ To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
+ And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
+ With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
+ Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
+ None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
+ If we were not, would seem to smile the less
+ Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued:
+This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
+
+
+ More blest the life of godly eremite,
+ Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,
+ Watching at eve upon the giant height,
+ Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene,
+ That he who there at such an hour hath been,
+ Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;
+ Then slowly tear him from the witching scene,
+ Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,
+Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.
+
+
+ Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track
+ Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
+ Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,
+ And each well-known caprice of wave and wind;
+ Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
+ Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;
+ The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,
+ As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell,
+Till on some jocund morn---lo, land! and all is well.
+
+ But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,
+ The sister tenants of the middle deep;
+ There for the weary still a haven smiles,
+ Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep,
+ And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep
+ For him who dared prefer a mortal bride:
+ Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap
+ Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide;
+While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.
+
+
+ Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
+ But trust not this; too easy youth, beware!
+ A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
+ And thou mayst find a new Calypso there.
+ Sweet Florence! could another ever share
+ This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:
+ But checked by every tie, I may not dare
+ To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
+Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.
+
+
+ Thus Harold deemed, as on that lady's eye
+ He looked, and met its beam without a thought,
+ Save Admiration glancing harmless by:
+ Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,
+ Who knew his votary often lost and caught,
+ But knew him as his worshipper no more,
+ And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought:
+ Since now he vainly urged him to adore,
+Well deemed the little god his ancient sway was o'er.
+
+
+ Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze,
+ One who, 'twas said, still sighed to all he saw,
+ Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze,
+ Which others hailed with real or mimic awe,
+ Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law:
+ All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims:
+ And much she marvelled that a youth so raw
+ Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames,
+Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.
+
+
+ Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
+ Now masked by silence or withheld by pride,
+ Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,
+ And spread its snares licentious far and wide;
+ Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside,
+ As long as aught was worthy to pursue:
+ But Harold on such arts no more relied;
+ And had he doted on those eyes so blue,
+Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.
+
+
+ Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast,
+ Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs;
+ What careth she for hearts when once possessed?
+ Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes,
+ But not too humbly, or she will despise
+ Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes;
+ Disguise e'en tenderness, if thou art wise;
+ Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes;
+Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes.
+
+
+ 'Tis an old lesson: Time approves it true,
+ And those who know it best deplore it most;
+ When all is won that all desire to woo,
+ The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
+ Youth wasted, minds degraded, honour lost,
+ These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these!
+ If, kindly cruel, early hope is crossed,
+ Still to the last it rankles, a disease,
+Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please.
+
+
+ Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
+ For we have many a mountain path to tread,
+ And many a varied shore to sail along,
+ By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led\textemdash
+ Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head
+ Imagined in its little schemes of thought;
+ Or e'er in new Utopias were read:
+ To teach man what he might be, or he ought;
+If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.
+
+
+ Dear Nature is the kindest mother still;
+ Though always changing, in her aspect mild:
+ From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+ Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.
+ Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,
+ Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:
+ To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+ Though I have marked her when none other hath,
+And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.
+
+
+ Land of Albania! where Iskander rose;
+ Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,
+ And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes,
+ Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprise:
+ Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
+ On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!
+ The cross descends, thy minarets arise,
+ And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen,
+Through many a cypress grove within each city's ken.
+
+
+ Childe Harold sailed, and passed the barren spot
+ Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave;
+ And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
+ The lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave.
+ Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save
+ That breast imbued with such immortal fire?
+ Could she not live who life eternal gave?
+ If life eternal may await the lyre,
+That only Heaven to which Earth's children may aspire.
+
+
+ 'Twas on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve,
+ Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar;
+ A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave:
+ Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war,
+ Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar:
+ Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight
+ (Born beneath some remote inglorious star)
+ In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight,
+But loathed the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial wight.
+
+
+ But when he saw the evening star above
+ Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe,
+ And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,
+ He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow:
+ And as the stately vessel glided slow
+ Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount,
+ He watched the billows' melancholy flow,
+ And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,
+More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front.
+
+
+ Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania's hills,
+ Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak,
+ Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,
+ Arrayed in many a dun and purple streak,
+ Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,
+ Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer;
+ Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak,
+ Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear,
+And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.
+
+
+ Now Harold felt himself at length alone,
+ And bade to Christian tongues a long adieu:
+ Now he adventured on a shore unknown,
+ Which all admire, but many dread to view:
+ His breast was armed 'gainst fate, his wants were few:
+ Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet:
+ The scene was savage, but the scene was new;
+ This made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet,
+Beat back keen winter's blast; and welcomed summer's heat.
+
+
+ Here the red cross, for still the cross is here,
+ Though sadly scoffed at by the circumcised,
+ Forgets that pride to pampered priesthood dear;
+ Churchman and votary alike despised.
+ Foul Superstition! howsoe'er disguised,
+ Idol, saint, virgin, prophet, crescent, cross,
+ For whatsoever symbol thou art prized,
+ Thou sacerdotal gain, but general loss!
+Who from true worship's gold can separate thy dross.
+
+
+ Ambracia's gulf behold, where once was lost
+ A world for woman, lovely, harmless thing!
+ In yonder rippling bay, their naval host
+ Did many a Roman chief and Asian king
+ To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter, bring
+ Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose,
+ Now, like the hands that reared them, withering;
+ Imperial anarchs, doubling human woes!
+God! was thy globe ordained for such to win and lose?
+
+
+ From the dark barriers of that rugged clime,
+ E'en to the centre of Illyria's vales,
+ Childe Harold passed o'er many a mount sublime,
+ Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales:
+ Yet in famed Attica such lovely dales
+ Are rarely seen; nor can fair Tempe boast
+ A charm they know not; loved Parnassus fails,
+ Though classic ground, and consecrated most,
+To match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast.
+
+
+ He passed bleak Pindus, Acherusia's lake,
+ And left the primal city of the land,
+ And onwards did his further journey take
+ To greet Albania's chief, whose dread command
+ Is lawless law; for with a bloody hand
+ He sways a nation, turbulent and bold:
+ Yet here and there some daring mountain-band
+ Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold
+Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold.
+
+
+ Monastic Zitza! from thy shady brow,
+ Thou small, but favoured spot of holy ground!
+ Where'er we gaze, around, above, below,
+ What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
+ Rock, river, forest, mountain all abound,
+ And bluest skies that harmonise the whole:
+ Beneath, the distant torrent's rushing sound
+ Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll
+Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.
+
+ Amidst the grove that crowns yon tufted hill,
+ Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh
+ Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still,
+ Might well itself be deemed of dignity,
+ The convent's white walls glisten fair on high;
+ Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,
+ Nor niggard of his cheer: the passer-by
+ Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee
+From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen to see.
+
+
+ Here in the sultriest season let him rest,
+ Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees;
+ Here winds of gentlest wing will fan his breast,
+ From heaven itself he may inhale the breeze:
+ The plain is far beneath---oh! let him seize
+ Pure pleasure while he can; the scorching ray
+ Here pierceth not, impregnate with disease:
+ Then let his length the loitering pilgrim lay,
+And gaze, untired, the morn, the noon, the eve away.
+
+
+ Dusky and huge, enlarging on the sight,
+ Nature's volcanic amphitheatre,
+ Chimera's alps extend from left to right:
+ Beneath, a living valley seems to stir;
+ Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain fir
+ Nodding above; behold black Acheron!
+ Once consecrated to the sepulchre.
+ Pluto! if this be hell I look upon,
+Close shamed Elysium's gates, my shade shall seek for none.
+
+
+ No city's towers pollute the lovely view;
+ Unseen is Yanina, though not remote,
+ Veiled by the screen of hills: here men are few,
+ Scanty the hamlet, rare the lonely cot;
+ But, peering down each precipice, the goat
+ Browseth: and, pensive o'er his scattered flock,
+ The little shepherd in his white capote
+ Doth lean his boyish form along the rock,
+Or in his cave awaits the tempest's short-lived shock.
+
+
+ Oh! where, Dodona, is thine aged grove,
+ Prophetic fount, and oracle divine?
+ What valley echoed the response of Jove?
+ What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine?
+ All, all forgotten---and shall man repine
+ That his frail bonds to fleeting life are broke?
+ Cease, fool! the fate of gods may well be thine:
+ Wouldst thou survive the marble or the oak,
+When nations, tongues, and worlds must sink beneath the stroke?
+
+
+ Epirus' bounds recede, and mountains fail;
+ Tired of up-gazing still, the wearied eye
+ Reposes gladly on as smooth a vale
+ As ever Spring yclad in grassy dye:
+ E'en on a plain no humble beauties lie,
+ Where some bold river breaks the long expanse,
+ And woods along the banks are waving high,
+ Whose shadows in the glassy waters dance,
+Or with the moonbeam sleep in Midnight's solemn trance.
+
+
+ The sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit,
+ The Laos wide and fierce came roaring by;
+ The shades of wonted night were gathering yet,
+ When, down the steep banks winding wearily
+ Childe Harold saw, like meteors in the sky,
+ The glittering minarets of Tepalen,
+ Whose walls o'erlook the stream; and drawing nigh,
+ He heard the busy hum of warrior-men
+Swelling the breeze that sighed along the lengthening glen.
+
+
+ He passed the sacred harem's silent tower,
+ And underneath the wide o'erarching gate
+ Surveyed the dwelling of this chief of power
+ Where all around proclaimed his high estate.
+ Amidst no common pomp the despot sate,
+ While busy preparation shook the court;
+ Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;
+ Within, a palace, and without a fort,
+Here men of every clime appear to make resort.
+
+
+ Richly caparisoned, a ready row
+ Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
+ Circled the wide-extending court below;
+ Above, strange groups adorned the corridor;
+ And ofttimes through the area's echoing door,
+ Some high-capped Tartar spurred his steed away;
+ The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor,
+ Here mingled in their many-hued array,
+While the deep war-drum's sound announced the close of day.
+
+
+ The wild Albanian kirtled to his knee,
+ With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
+ And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see:
+ The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon;
+ The Delhi with his cap of terror on,
+ And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek;
+ And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son;
+ The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak,
+Master of all around, too potent to be meek,
+
+
+ Are mixed conspicuous: some recline in groups,
+ Scanning the motley scene that varies round;
+ There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
+ And some that smoke, and some that play are found;
+ Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground;
+ Half-whispering there the Greek is heard to prate;
+ Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound,
+ The muezzin's call doth shake the minaret,
+`There is no god but God!---to prayer---lo! God is great!'
+
+
+ Just at this season Ramazani's fast
+ Through the long day its penance did maintain.
+ But when the lingering twilight hour was past,
+ Revel and feast assumed the rule again:
+ Now all was bustle, and the menial train
+ Prepared and spread the plenteous board within;
+ The vacant gallery now seemed made in vain,
+ But from the chambers came the mingling din,
+As page and slave anon were passing out and in.
+
+
+ Here woman's voice is never heard: apart
+ And scarce permitted, guarded, veiled, to move,
+ She yields to one her person and her heart,
+ Tamed to her cage, nor feels a wish to rove;
+ For, not unhappy in her master's love,
+ And joyful in a mother's gentlest cares,
+ Blest cares! all other feelings far above!
+ Herself more sweetly rears the babe she bears,
+Who never quits the breast, no meaner passion shares.
+
+
+ In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
+ Of living water from the centre rose,
+ Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
+ And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
+ Ali reclined, a man of war and woes:
+ Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
+ While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
+ Along that aged venerable face,
+The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.
+
+
+ It is not that yon hoary lengthening beard
+ Ill suits the passions which belong to youth:
+ Love conquers age---so Hafiz hath averred,
+ So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth\textemdash
+ But crimes that scorn the tender voice of ruth,
+ Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
+ In years, have marked him with a tiger's tooth:
+ Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span,
+In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.
+
+
+ Mid many things most new to ear and eye,
+ The pilgrim rested here his weary feet,
+ And gazed around on Moslem luxury,
+ Till quickly wearied with that spacious seat
+ Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat
+ Of sated Grandeur from the city's noise:
+ And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet;
+ But Peace abhorreth artificial joys,
+And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys.
+
+
+ Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack
+ Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.
+ Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
+ Who can so well the toil of war endure?
+ Their native fastnesses not more secure
+ Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
+ Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,
+ When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,
+Unshaken rushing on where'er their chief may lead.
+
+
+ Childe Harold saw them in their chieftain's tower,
+ Thronging to war in splendour and success;
+ And after viewed them, when, within their power,
+ Himself awhile the victim of distress;
+ That saddening hour when bad men hotlier press:
+ But these did shelter him beneath their roof,
+ When less barbarians would have cheered him less,
+ And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof\textemdash
+In aught that tries the heart how few withstand the proof!
+
+
+ It chanced that adverse winds once drove his bark
+ Full on the coast of Suli's shaggy shore,
+ When all around was desolate and dark;
+ To land was perilous, to sojourn more;
+ Yet for awhile the mariners forbore,
+ Dubious to trust where treachery might lurk:
+ At length they ventured forth, though doubting sore
+ That those who loathe alike the Frank and Turk
+Might once again renew their ancient butcher-work.
+
+
+ Vain fear! the Suliotes stretched the welcome hand,
+ Led them o'er rocks and past the dangerous swamp,
+ Kinder than polished slaves, though not so bland,
+ And piled the hearth, and wrung their garments damp,
+ And filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful lamp,
+ And spread their fare: though homely, all they had:
+ Such conduct bears Philanthropy's rare stamp\textemdash
+ To rest the weary and to soothe the sad,
+Doth lesson happier men, and shames at least the bad.
+
+
+ It came to pass, that when he did address
+ Himself to quit at length this mountain land,
+ Combined marauders half-way barred egress,
+ And wasted far and near with glaive and brand;
+ And therefore did he take a trusty band
+ To traverse Acarnania forest wide,
+ In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned,
+ Till he did greet white Achelous' tide,
+And from his farther bank AEtolia's wolds espied.
+
+
+ Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,
+ And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
+ How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
+ Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
+ As winds come whispering lightly from the west,
+ Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene:
+ Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
+ Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,
+For many a joy could he from night's soft presence glean.
+
+
+ On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed,
+ The feast was done, the red wine circling fast,
+ And he that unawares had there ygazed
+ With gaping wonderment had stared aghast;
+ For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past,
+ The native revels of the troop began;
+ Each palikar his sabre from him cast,
+ And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man,
+Yelling their uncouth dirge, long danced the kirtled clan.
+
+
+ Childe Harold at a little distance stood,
+ And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie,
+ Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude:
+ In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see
+ Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee:
+ And as the flames along their faces gleamed,
+ Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free,
+ The long wild locks that to their girdles streamed,
+While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half screamed:
+
+\spatium {1\leading}
+
+{
+ \Forma \strophae {0000}
+ \Facies {\strophe}
+ \Nstrophe {0}
+
+Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy larum afar
+Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war;
+All the sons of the mountains arise at the note,
+Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!
+
+Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,
+To his snowy camese and his shaggy capote?
+To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,
+And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.
+
+Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive
+The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?
+Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?
+What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?
+
+Macedonia sends forth her invincible race;
+For a time they abandon the cave and the chase:
+But those scarves of blood-red shall be redder, before
+The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o'er.
+
+Then the pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves,
+And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
+Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar,
+And track to his covert the captive on shore.
+
+I ask not the pleasure that riches supply,
+My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy:
+Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair,
+And many a maid from her mother shall tear.
+
+I love the fair face of the maid in her youth;
+Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe:
+Let her bring from her chamber the many-toned lyre,
+And sing us a song on the fall of her sire.
+
+Remember the moment when Previsa fell,
+The shrieks of the conquered, the conqueror's yell;
+The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared,
+The wealthy we slaughtered, the lovely we spared.
+
+I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear;
+He neither must know who would serve the Vizier;
+Since the days of our prophet, the crescent ne'er saw
+A chief ever glorious like Ali Pasha.
+
+Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped,
+Let the yellow-haired Giaours view his horsetail with dread;
+When his Delhis come dashing in blood o'er the banks,
+How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks!
+
+Selictar! unsheath then our chief's scimitar:
+Tambourgi! thy larum gives promise of war.
+Ye mountains that see us descend to the shore,
+Shall view us as victors, or view us no more!
+}
+
+ Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
+ Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
+ Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
+ And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
+ Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
+ The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
+ In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait\textemdash
+ Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
+Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?
+
+
+ Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
+ Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
+ Couldst thou forbode the dismal hour which now
+ Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
+ Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
+ But every carle can lord it o'er thy land;
+ Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
+ Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
+From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.
+
+
+ In all save form alone, how changed! and who
+ That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,
+ Who would but deem their bosom burned anew
+ With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty!
+ And many dream withal the hour is nigh
+ That gives them back their fathers' heritage:
+ For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,
+ Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,
+Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page.
+
+
+ Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
+ Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
+ By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
+ Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
+ True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
+ But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.
+ Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
+ Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
+Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame.
+
+
+ The city won for Allah from the Giaour,
+ The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest;
+ And the Serai's impenetrable tower
+ Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;
+ Or Wahab's rebel brood, who dared divest
+ The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,
+ May wind their path of blood along the West;
+ But ne'er will Freedom seek this fated soil,
+But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.
+
+ Yet mark their mirth---ere lenten days begin,
+ That penance which their holy rites prepare
+ To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin,
+ By daily abstinence and nightly prayer;
+ But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear,
+ Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,
+ To take of pleasaunce each his secret share,
+ In motley robe to dance at masking ball,
+And join the mimic train of merry Carnival.
+
+ And whose more rife with merriment than thine,
+ O Stamboul! once the empress of their reign?
+ Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine
+ And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:
+ (Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)
+ Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,
+ All felt the common joy they now must feign;
+ Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song,
+As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.
+
+
+ Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore;
+ Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone,
+ And timely echoed back the measured oar,
+ And rippling waters made a pleasant moan:
+ The Queen of tides on high consenting shone;
+ And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave,
+ 'Twas as if, darting from her heavenly throne,
+ A brighter glance her form reflected gave,
+Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave.
+
+
+ Glanced many a light caique along the foam,
+ Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
+ No thought had man or maid of rest or home,
+ While many a languid eye and thrilling hand
+ Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
+ Or gently pressed, returned the pressure still:
+ Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
+ Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
+These hours, and only these, redeemed Life's years of ill!
+
+
+ But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
+ Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,
+ E'en through the closest searment half-betrayed?
+ To such the gentle murmurs of the main
+ Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;
+ To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd
+ Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain:
+ How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,
+And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!
+
+
+ This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,
+ If Greece one true-born patriot can boast:
+ Not such as prate of war but skulk in peace,
+ The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,
+ Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost,
+ And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:
+ Ah, Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most\textemdash
+ Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record
+Of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!
+
+
+ When riseth Lacedaemon's hardihood,
+ When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
+ When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
+ When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
+ Then mayst thou be restored; but not till then.
+ A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
+ An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
+ Can man its shattered splendour renovate,
+Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?
+
+
+ And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
+ Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!
+ Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
+ Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now;
+ Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow,
+ Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
+ Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
+ So perish monuments of mortal birth,
+So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;
+
+
+ Save where some solitary column mourns
+ Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
+ Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
+ Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
+ Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
+ Where the grey stones and unmolested grass
+ Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
+ While strangers only not regardless pass,
+Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh `Alas!'
+
+
+ Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild:
+ Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
+ Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled,
+ And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
+ There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
+ The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
+ Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
+ Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
+Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
+
+
+ Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground;
+ No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
+ But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
+ And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
+ Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
+ The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
+ Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
+ Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
+Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
+
+
+ The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;
+ Unchanged in all except its foreign lord\textemdash
+ Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame;
+ The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
+ First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
+ As on the morn to distant Glory dear,
+ When Marathon became a magic word;
+ Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear
+The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.
+
+
+ The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
+ The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
+ Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below;
+ Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
+ Such was the scene---what now remaineth here?
+ What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground,
+ Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
+ The rifled urn, the violated mound,
+The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.
+
+
+ Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past
+ Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng:
+ Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,
+ Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
+ Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
+ Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore:
+ Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
+ Which sages venerate and bards adore,
+As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.
+
+
+ The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
+ If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;
+ He that is lonely, hither let him roam,
+ And gaze complacent on congenial earth.
+ Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth;
+ But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,
+ And scarce regret the region of his birth,
+ When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,
+Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.
+
+
+ Let such approach this consecrated land,
+ And pass in peace along the magic waste:
+ But spare its relics---let no busy hand
+ Deface the scenes, already how defaced!
+ Not for such purpose were these altars placed.
+ Revere the remnants nations once revered;
+ So may our country's name be undisgraced,
+ So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was reared,
+By every honest joy of love and life endeared!
+
+
+ For thee, who thus in too protracted song
+ Hath soothed thine idlesse with inglorious lays,
+ Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng
+ Of louder minstrels in these later days:
+ To such resign the strife for fading bays\textemdash
+ Ill may such contest now the spirit move
+ Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise,
+ Since cold each kinder heart that might approve,
+And none are left to please where none are left to love.
+
+
+ Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
+ Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me;
+ Who did for me what none beside have done,
+ Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
+ What is my being? thou hast ceased to be!
+ Nor stayed to welcome here thy wanderer home,
+ Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see\textemdash
+ Would they had never been, or were to come!
+Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam!
+
+
+ Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
+ How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
+ And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
+ But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
+ All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death, thou hast:
+ The parent, friend, and now the more than friend;
+ Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
+ And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
+Hath snatched the little joy that life had yet to lend.
+
+
+ Then must I plunge again into the crowd,
+ And follow all that Peace disdains to seek?
+ Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,
+ False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek,
+ To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak!
+ Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer,
+ To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique;
+ Smiles form the channel of a future tear,
+Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.
+
+
+ What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
+ What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
+ To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
+ And be alone on earth, as I am now.
+ Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
+ O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroyed:
+ Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
+ Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,
+And with the ills of eld mine earlier years alloyed.
+
+
+
+\canto
+
+
+ Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
+ Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
+ When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled,
+ And then we parted,---not as now we part,
+ But with a hope. --- \\
+ Awaking with a start,
+ The waters heave around me; and on high
+ The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
+ Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
+When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
+
+
+ Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+ And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
+ That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
+ Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
+ Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
+ And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,
+ Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
+ Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
+Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.
+
+ In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
+ The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
+ Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
+ And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
+ Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find
+ The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
+ Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
+ O'er which all heavily the journeying years
+Plod the last sands of life---where not a flower appears.
+
+ Since my young days of passion---joy, or pain,
+ Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,
+ And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
+ I would essay as I have sung to sing.
+ Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling,
+ So that it wean me from the weary dream
+ Of selfish grief or gladness---so it fling
+ Forgetfulness around me---it shall seem
+To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.
+
+
+ He who, grown aged in this world of woe,
+ In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
+ So that no wonder waits him; nor below
+ Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
+ Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
+ Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
+ Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
+ With airy images, and shapes which dwell
+Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell,
+
+ 'Tis to create, and in creating live
+ A being more intense, that we endow
+ With form our fancy, gaining as we give
+ The life we image, even as I do now.
+ What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
+ Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
+ Invisible but gazing, as I glow
+ Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
+And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth.
+
+
+ Yet must I think less wildly: I \textit{have} thought
+ Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
+ In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
+ A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
+ And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
+ My springs of life were poisoned. 'Tis too late!
+ Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
+ In strength to bear what time cannot abate,
+And feed on bitter fruits without accusing fate.
+
+
+ Something too much of this: but now 'tis past,
+ And the spell closes with its silent sea
+ Long-absent Harold reappears at last;
+ He of the breast which fain no more would feel,
+ Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;
+ Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
+ In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
+ Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
+And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
+
+
+ His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found
+ The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again,
+ And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
+ And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain!
+ Still round him clung invisibly a chain
+ Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,
+ And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain,
+ Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
+Entering with every step he took through many a scene.
+
+
+ Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed
+ Again in fancied safety with his kind,
+ And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed
+ And sheathed with an invulnerable mind,
+ That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind;
+ And he, as one, might midst the many stand
+ Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
+ Fit speculation; such as in strange land
+He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand.
+
+
+ But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek
+ To wear it? who can curiously behold
+ The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek,
+ Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?
+ Who can contemplate fame through clouds unfold
+ The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?
+ Harold, once more within the vortex rolled
+ On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
+Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime.
+
+
+ But soon he knew himself the most unfit
+ Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
+ Little in common; untaught to submit
+ His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled,
+ In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,
+ He would not yield dominion of his mind
+ To spirits against whom his own rebelled;
+ Proud though in desolation; which could find
+A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
+
+
+ Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
+ Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
+ Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
+ He had the passion and the power to roam;
+ The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
+ Were unto him companionship; they spake
+ A mutual language, clearer than the tome
+ Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
+For nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake.
+
+
+ Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,
+ Till he had peopled them with beings bright
+ As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
+ And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
+ Could he have kept his spirit to that flight,
+ He had been happy; but this clay will sink
+ Its spark immortal, envying it the light
+ To which it mounts, as if to break the link
+That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.
+
+
+ But in Man's dwellings he became a thing
+ Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
+ Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
+ To whom the boundless air alone were home:
+ Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
+ As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
+ His breast and beak against his wiry dome
+ Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat
+Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.
+
+
+ Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
+ With naught of hope left, but with less of gloom;
+ The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
+ That all was over on this side the tomb,
+ Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
+ Which, though 'twere wild---as on the plundered wreck
+ When mariners would madly meet their doom
+ With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck\textemdash
+Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.
+
+
+ Stop! for thy tread is on an empire's dust!
+ An earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
+ Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?
+ Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
+ None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so,
+ As the ground was before, thus let it be;\textemdash
+ How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
+ And is this all the world has gained by thee,
+Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory?
+
+
+ And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
+ The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!
+ How in an hour the power which gave annuls
+ Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!
+ In `pride of place' here last the eagle flew,
+ Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,
+ Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through:
+ Ambition's life and labours all were vain;
+He wears the shattered links of the world's broken chain.
+
+
+ Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit,
+ And foam in fetters, but is Earth more free?
+ Did nations combat to make \textit{One} submit;
+ Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?
+ What! shall reviving thraldom again be
+ The patched-up idol of enlightened days?
+ Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we
+ Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
+And servile knees to thrones? No; \textit{prove} before ye praise!
+
+
+ If not, o'er one fall'n despot boast no more!
+ In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears
+ For Europe's flowers long rooted up before
+ The trampler of her vineyards; in vain years
+ Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,
+ Have all been borne, and broken by the accord
+ Of roused-up millions: all that most endears
+ Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword
+Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant lord.
+
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night,
+ And Belgium's capital had gathered then
+ Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
+ The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
+ A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
+ Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
+ Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
+ And all went merry as a marriage bell;
+But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
+
+
+ Did ye not hear it?---No; 'twas but the wind,
+ Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
+ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
+ No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
+ To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
+ But hark!---that heavy sound breaks in once more,
+ As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
+ And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
+Arm! arm! it is---it is---the cannon's opening roar!
+
+
+ Within a windowed niche of that high hall
+ Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear
+ That sound, the first amidst the festival,
+ And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
+ And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
+ His heart more truly knew that peal too well
+ Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
+ And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell:
+He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.
+
+ Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
+ And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
+ And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
+ Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
+ And there were sudden partings, such as press
+ The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
+ Which ne'er might be repeated: who would guess
+ If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
+Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!
+
+
+ And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
+ The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
+ Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
+ And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
+ And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
+ And near, the beat of the alarming drum
+ Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
+ While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
+Or whispering, with white lips---`The foe! They come! they come!'
+
+
+ And wild and high the Cameron's gathering' rose,
+ The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
+ Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:
+ How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills
+ Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
+ Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
+ With the fierce native daring which instils
+ The stirring memory of a thousand years,
+And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears.
+
+
+ And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
+ Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
+ Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
+ Over the unreturniug brave,---alas!
+ Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
+ Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
+ In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
+ Of living valour, rolling on the foe,
+And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
+
+
+ Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
+ Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
+ The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
+ The morn the marshalling in arms,---the day
+ Battle's magnificently stern array!
+ The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
+ The earth is covered thick with other clay,
+ Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
+Rider and horse,---friend, foe,---in one red burial blent!
+
+
+ Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
+ Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
+ Partly because they blend me with his line,
+ And partly that I did his sire some wrong,
+ And partly that bright names will hallow song;
+ And his was of the bravest, and when showered
+ The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
+ Even where the thickest of war's tempest lowered,
+They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!
+
+
+ There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
+ And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
+ But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
+ Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
+ And saw around me the wild field revive
+ With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
+ Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
+ With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
+I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.
+
+
+ I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each
+ And one as all a ghastly gap did make
+ In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
+ Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
+ The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
+ Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame
+ May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake
+ The fever of vain longing, and the name
+So honoured, but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.
+
+
+ They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn:
+ The tree will wither long before it fall:
+ The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;
+ The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
+ In massy hoariness; the ruined wall
+ Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
+ The bars survive the captive they enthral;
+ The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
+And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
+
+
+ E'en as a broken mirror, which the glass
+ In every fragment multiplies; and makes
+ A thousand images of one that was,
+ The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
+ And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
+ Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold,
+ And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
+ Yet withers on till all without is old,
+Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
+
+
+ There is a very life in our despair,
+ Vitality of poison,---a quick root
+ Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were
+ As nothing did we die; but life will suit
+ Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
+ Like to the apples on the Dead Sea shore,
+ All ashes to the taste: Did man compute
+ Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er
+Such hours 'gainst years of life,---say, would he name threescore?
+
+
+ The Psalmist numbered out the years of man:
+ They are enough: and if thy tale be \textit{true},
+ Thou, who didst grudge him e'en that fleeting span,
+ More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo!
+ Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
+ Their children's lips shall echo them, and say,
+ `Here, where the sword united nations drew,
+ Our countrymen were warring on that day!'
+And this is much, and all which will not pass away.
+
+
+ There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
+ Whose spirit anithetically mixed
+ One moment of the mightiest, and again
+ On little objects with like firmness fixed;
+ Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
+ Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
+ For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
+ Even now to reassume the imperial mien,
+And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
+
+
+ Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou!
+ She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
+ Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
+ That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
+ Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became
+ The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
+ A god unto thyself; nor less the same
+ To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
+Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.
+
+
+ Oh, more or less than man---in high or low,
+ Battling with nations, flying from the field;
+ Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
+ More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield:
+ An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
+ But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
+ However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
+ Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war,
+Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
+
+
+ Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
+ With that untaught innate philosophy,
+ Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
+ Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
+ When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
+ To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
+ With a sedate and all-enduring eye;
+ When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
+He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.
+
+
+ Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
+ Ambition steeled thee on to far too show
+ That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
+ Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
+ To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
+ And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
+ Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
+ 'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
+So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
+
+
+ If, like a tower upon a headland rock,
+ Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
+ Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
+ But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
+ \textit{their} admiration thy best weapon shone;
+ The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
+ (Unless aside thy purple had been thrown)
+ Like stern Diogenes to mock at men;
+For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.
+
+
+ But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
+ And \textit{there} hath been thy bane; there is a fire
+ And motion of the soul, which will not dwell
+ In its own narrow being, but aspire
+ Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
+ And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
+ Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
+ Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
+Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
+
+
+ This makes the madmen who have made men mad
+ By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings,
+ Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
+ Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
+ Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
+ And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
+ Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
+ Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
+Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:
+
+
+ Their breath is agitation, and their life
+ A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
+ And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
+ That should their days, surviving perils past,
+ Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
+ With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
+ Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
+ With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
+Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
+
+
+ He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
+ The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
+ He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
+ Must look down on the hate of those below.
+ Though high \textit{above} the sun of glory glow,
+ And far \textit{beneath} the earth and ocean spread,
+ \textit{round} him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
+ Contending tempests on his naked head,
+And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.
+
+
+ Away with these; true Wisdom's world will be
+ Within its own creation, or in thine,
+ Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,
+ Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
+ There Harold gazes on a work divine,
+ A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,
+ Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine,
+ And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
+From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.
+
+
+ And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind,
+ Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
+ All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,
+ Or holding dark communion with the cloud.
+ There was a day when they were young and proud,
+ Banners on high, and battles passed below;
+ But they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
+ And those which waved are shredless dust ere now,
+And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.
+
+
+ Beneath these battlements, within those walls,
+ Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state
+ Each robber chief upheld his armed halls,
+ Doing his evil will, nor less elate
+ Than mightier heroes of a longer date.
+ What want these outlaws conquerors should have
+ But History's purchased page to call them great?
+ A wider space, an ornamented grave?
+Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave.
+
+
+ In their baronial feuds and single fields,
+ What deeds of prowess unrecorded died!
+ And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields,
+ With emblems well devised by amorous pride,
+ Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide;
+ But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on
+ Keen contest and destruction near allied,
+ And many a tower for some fair mischief won,
+Saw the discoloured Rhine beneath its ruin run.
+
+
+ But thou, exulting and abounding river!
+ Making thy waves a blessing as they flow
+ Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever,
+ Could man but leave thy bright creation so,
+ Nor its fair promise from the surface mow
+ With the sharp scythe of conflict,---then to see
+ Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know
+ Earth paved like Heaven; and to seem such to me
+Even now what wants thy stream?---that it should Lethe be.
+
+
+ A thousand battles have assailed thy banks,
+ But these and half their fame have passed away,
+ And Slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks:
+ Their very graves are gone, and what are they?
+ Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday,
+ And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
+ Glassed with its dancing light the sunny ray;
+ But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream
+Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.
+
+
+ Thus Harold inly said, and passed along,
+ Yet not insensible to all which here
+ Awoke the jocund birds to early song
+ In glens which might have made e'en exile dear:
+ Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
+ And tranquil sternness which had ta'en the place
+ Of feelings fierier far but less severe,
+ Joy was not always absent from his face,
+But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace.
+
+
+ Nor was all love shut from him, though his days
+ Of passion had consumed themselves to dust.
+ It is in vain that we would coldly gaze
+ On such as smile upon us; the heart must
+ Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust
+ Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt,
+ For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust
+ In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
+And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.
+
+
+ And he had learned to love,---I know not why,
+ For this in such as him seems strange of mood,\textemdash
+ The helpless looks of blooming infancy,
+ Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
+ To change like this, a mind so far imbued
+ With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
+ But thus it was; and though in solitude
+ Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
+In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.
+
+
+ And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
+ Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
+ Than the church links withal; and, though unwed,
+ \textit{that} love was pure, and, far above disguise,
+ Had stood the test of mortal enmities
+ Still undivided, and cemented more
+ By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
+ But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
+Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!
+
+\spatium {1\leading}
+
+{
+ \Forma \strophae [10]{0}
+ \Facies {\strophe}
+ \Nstrophe {0}
+
+ The castled crag of Drachenfels
+ Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine.
+ Whose breast of waters broadly swells
+ Between the banks which bear the vine,
+ And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
+ And fields which promise corn and wine,
+ And scattered cities crowning these,
+ Whose far white walls along them shine,
+ Have strewed a scene, which I should see
+ With double joy wert \textit{thou} with me!
+
+ And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
+ And hands which offer early flowers,
+ Walk smiling o'er this paradise;
+ Above, the frequent feudal towers
+ Through green leaves lift their walls of grey,
+ And many a rock which steeply lours,
+ And noble arch in proud decay,
+ Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers:
+ But one thing want these banks of Rhine,\textemdash
+ Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!
+
+ I send the lilies given to me;
+ Though long before thy hand they touch,
+ I know that they must withered be,
+ But yet reject them not as such;
+ For I have cherished them as dear,
+ Because they yet may meet thine eye,
+ And guide thy soul to mine e'en here,
+ When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
+ And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
+ And offered from my heart to thine!
+
+ The river nobly foams and flows,
+ The charm of this enchanted ground,
+ And all its thousand turns disclose
+ Some fresher beauty varying round;
+ The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
+ Through life to dwell delighted here;
+ Nor could on earth a spot be found
+ To Nature and to me so dear,
+ Could thy dear eyes in following mine
+ Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!
+
+}
+
+ By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
+ There is a small and simple pyramid,
+ Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
+ Beneath its base are heroes' ashes hid,
+ Our enemy's,---but let not that forbid
+ Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb
+ Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid,
+ Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
+Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.
+
+
+ Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,\textemdash
+ His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes;
+ And fitly may the stranger lingering here
+ Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose;
+ For he was Freedom's champion, one of those,
+ The few in number, who had not o'erstept
+ The charter to chastise which she bestows
+ On such as wield her weapons; he had kept
+The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept.
+
+
+ Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered wall
+ Black with the miner's blast, upon her height
+ Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball
+ Rebounding idly on her strength did light;
+ A tower of victory! from whence the flight
+ Of baffled foes was watched along the plain;
+ But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
+ And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain\textemdash
+On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain.
+
+
+ Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long, delighted,
+ The stranger fain would linger on his way;
+ Thine is a scene alike where souls united
+ Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
+ And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey
+ On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
+ Where Nature, not too sombre nor too gay,
+ Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
+Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.
+
+
+ Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
+ There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
+ The mind is coloured by thy every hue;
+ And if reluctantly the eyes resign
+ Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
+ 'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
+ More mighty spots may rise---more glaring shine,
+ But none unite in one attaching maze
+The brilliant, fair, and soft;---the glories of old days.
+
+
+ The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
+ Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
+ The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
+ The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,
+ The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
+ In mockery of man's art; and these withal
+ A race of faces happy as the scene,
+ Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
+Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall.
+
+ But these recede. Above me are the Alps,
+ The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
+ Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
+ And throned Eternity in icy halls
+ Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
+ The avalanche---the thunderbolt of snow!
+ All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
+ Gathers around these summits, as to show
+How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
+
+
+ But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,
+ There is a spot should not be passed in vain,\textemdash
+ Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man
+ May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,
+ Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain;
+ Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host,
+ A bony heap, through ages to remain,
+ Themselves their monument;---the Stygian coast
+Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.
+
+
+ While Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies,
+ Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
+ They were true Glory's stainless victories,
+ Won by the unambitious heart and hand
+ Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band,
+ All unbought champions in no princely cause
+ Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land
+ Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws
+Making king's rights divine, by some Draconic clause.
+
+
+ By a lone wall a lonelier column rears
+ A grey and grief-worn aspect of old days
+ 'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,
+ And looks as with the wild bewildered gaze
+ Of one to stone converted by amaze,
+ Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands,
+ Making a marvel that it not decays,
+ When the coeval pride of human hands,
+Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.
+
+
+ And there---oh! sweet and sacred be the name!\textemdash
+ Julia---the daughter, the devoted---gave
+ Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim
+ Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.
+ Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
+ The life she lived in; but the judge was just,
+ And then she died on him she could not save.
+ Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,
+And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.
+
+
+ But these are deeds which should not pass away,
+ And names that must not wither, though the earth
+ Forgets her empires with a just decay,
+ The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;
+ The high, the mountain-majesty of worth,
+ Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
+ And from its immortality look forth
+ In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,
+Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
+
+
+ Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
+ The mirror where the stars and mountains view
+ The stillness of their aspect in each trace
+ Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
+ There is too much of man here, to look through
+ With a fit mind the might which I behold;
+ But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
+ Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
+Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.
+
+
+ To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind;
+ All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
+ Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
+ Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil
+ In one hot throng, where we become the spoil
+ Of our infection, till too late and long
+ We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
+ In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
+Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.
+
+
+ There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
+ In fatal penitence, and in the blight
+ Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
+ And colour things to come with hues of Night;
+ The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
+ To those that walk in darkness: on the sea,
+ The boldest steer but where their ports invite,
+ But there are wanderers o'er Eternity
+Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
+
+
+ Is it not better, then, to be alone,
+ And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
+ By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,
+ Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
+ Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
+ A fair but froward infant her own care,
+ Kissing its cries away as these awake;\textemdash
+ Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
+Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
+
+
+ I live not in myself, but I become
+ Portion of that around me; and to me,
+ High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
+ Of human cities torture: I can see
+ Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be
+ A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
+ Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
+ And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
+Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
+
+
+ And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:
+ I look upon the peopled desert Past,
+ As on a place of agony and strife,
+ Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
+ To act and suffer, but remount at last
+ With a fresh pinion; which I felt to spring,
+ Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast
+ Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
+Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.
+
+
+ And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
+ From what it hates in this degraded form,
+ Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
+ Existent happier in the fly and worm,\textemdash
+ When elements to elements conform,
+ And dust is as it should be, shall I not
+ Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?
+ The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?
+Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?
+
+
+ Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
+ Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
+ Is not the love of these deep in my heart
+ With a pure passion? should I not contemn
+ All objects, if compared with these? and stem
+ A tide of suffering, rather than forego
+ Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
+ Of those whose eyes are only turned below,
+Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?
+
+
+ But this is not my theme; and I return
+ To that which is immediate, and require
+ Those who find contemplation in the urn,
+ To look on One whose dust was once all fire,
+ A native of the land where I respire
+ The clear air for awhile---a passing guest,
+ Where he became a being,---whose desire
+ Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest,
+The which to gain and keep he sacrificed all rest.
+
+
+ Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,
+ The apostle of affliction, he who threw
+ Enchantment over passion, and from woe
+ Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew
+ The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
+ How to make madness beautiful, and cast
+ O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue
+ Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
+The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.
+
+
+ His love was passion's essence---as a tree
+ On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
+ Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
+ Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.
+ But his was not the love of living dame,
+ Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
+ But of Ideal beauty, which became
+ In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
+Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.
+
+
+ \textit{This} breathed itself to life in Julie, \textit{this}
+ Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
+ This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss
+ Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,
+ From hers, who but with friendship his would meet:
+ But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast
+ Flashed the thrilled spirit's love-devouring heat;
+ In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest,
+Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.
+
+
+ His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
+ Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind
+ Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose
+ For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,
+ 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
+ But he was frenzied,---wherefore, who may know?
+ Since cause might be which skill could never find;
+ But he was frenzied by disease or woe
+To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.
+
+
+ For then he was inspired, and from him came,
+ As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore,
+ Those oracles which set the world in flame,
+ Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more:
+ Did he not this for France, which lay before
+ Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?
+ Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore,
+ Till by the voice of him and his compeers
+Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o'ergrown fears?
+
+
+ They made themselves a fearful monument!
+ The wreck of old opinions---things which grew,
+ Breathed from the birth of time: the veil they rent,
+ And what behind it lay, all earth shall view.
+ But good with ill they also overthrew,
+ Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild
+ Upon the same foundation, and renew
+ Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled,
+As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed.
+
+
+ But this will not endure, nor be endured!
+ Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.
+ They might have used it better, but, allured
+ By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt
+ On one another; Pity ceased to melt
+ With her once natural charities. But they,
+ Who in Oppression's darkness caved had dwelt,
+ They were not eagles, nourished with the day;
+What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?
+
+
+ What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
+ The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
+ That which disfigures it; and they who war
+ With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear
+ Silence, but not submission: in his lair
+ Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour
+ Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
+ It came, it cometh, and will come,---the power
+To punish or forgive---in \textit{one} we shall be slower.
+
+
+ Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
+ With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
+ Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
+ Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
+ This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
+ To waft me from distraction; once I loved
+ Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
+ Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,
+That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
+
+
+ It is the hush of night, and all between
+ Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
+ Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen.
+ Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
+ Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
+ There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
+ Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
+ Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
+Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
+
+
+ He is an evening reveller, who makes
+ His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
+ At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
+ Starts into voice a moment, then is still
+ There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
+ But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
+ All silently their tears of love instil,
+ Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
+Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.
+
+
+ Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
+ If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
+ Of men and empires,---'tis to be forgiven,
+ That in our aspirations to be great,
+ Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
+ And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
+ A beauty and a mystery, and create
+ In us such love and reverence from afar,
+That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.
+
+
+ All heaven and earth are still---though not in sleep,
+ But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
+ And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep: \textemdash
+ All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
+ Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
+ All is concentered in a life intense,
+ Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
+ But hath a part of being, and a sense
+Of that which is of all Creator and defence.
+
+
+ Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
+ In solitude, where we are \textit{least} alone;
+ A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
+ And purifies from self: it is a tone,
+ The soul and source of music, which makes known
+ Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
+ Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
+ Binding all things with beauty;---'twould disarm
+The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.
+
+
+ Nor vainly did the early Persian make
+ His altar the high places and the peak
+ Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take
+ A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
+ The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
+ Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare
+ Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
+ With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
+Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
+
+
+ The sky is changed!---and such a change! O night,
+ And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
+ Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
+ Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
+ From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
+ Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
+ But every mountain now hath found a tongue;
+ And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
+Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
+
+
+ And this is in the night: ---Most glorious night!
+ Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
+ A sharer in thy fierce and far delight\textemdash
+ A portion of the tempest and of thee!
+ How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
+ And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
+ And now again 'tis black,---and now, the glee
+ Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
+As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
+
+
+ Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
+ Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
+ In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
+ That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
+ Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
+ Love was the very root of the fond rage
+ Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:
+ Itself expired, but leaving them an age
+Of years all winters---war within themselves to wage.
+
+
+ Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
+ The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand;
+ For here, not one, but many, make their play,
+ And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,
+ Flashing and cast around: of all the band,
+ The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
+ His lightnings, as if he did understand
+ That in such gaps as desolation worked,
+There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.
+
+
+ Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,
+ With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
+ To make these felt and feeling, well may be
+ Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
+ Of your departing voices, is the knoll
+ Of what in me is sleepless,---if I rest.
+ But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
+ Are ye like those within the human breast?
+Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
+
+
+ Could I embody and unbosom now
+ That which is most within me,---could I wreak
+ My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
+ Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
+ All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
+ Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe---into one word,
+ And that one word were lightning, I would speak;
+ But as it is, I live and die unheard,
+With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.
+
+
+ The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
+ With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
+ Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
+ And living as if earth contained no tomb,\textemdash
+ And glowing into day: we may resume
+ The march of our existence: and thus I,
+ Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room
+ And food for meditation, nor pass by
+Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.
+
+
+ Clarens! sweet Clarens! birthplace of deep Love!
+ Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;
+ Thy trees take root in love; the snows above
+ The very glaciers have his colours caught,
+ And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought
+ By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks,
+ The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought
+ In them a refuge from the worldly shocks,
+Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks.
+
+
+ Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,\textemdash
+ Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne
+ To which the steps are mountains; where the god
+ Is a pervading life and light,---so shown
+ Not on those summits solely, nor alone
+ In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower
+ His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown,
+ His soft and summer breath, whose tender power
+Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.
+
+
+ All things are here of \textit{Him}; from the black pines,
+ Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar
+ Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines
+ Which slope his green path downward to the shore,
+ Where the bowed waters meet him, and adore,
+ Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood,
+ The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar,
+ But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood,
+Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude.
+
+
+ A populous solitude of bees and birds,
+ And fairy-formed and many coloured things,
+ Who worship him with notes more sweet than words,
+ And innocently open their glad wings,
+ Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs,
+ And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend
+ Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings
+ The swiftest thought of beauty, here extend,
+Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end.
+
+
+ He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore,
+ And make his heart a spirit: he who knows
+ That tender mystery, will love the more,
+ For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes,
+ And the world's waste, have driven him far from those,
+ For 'tis his nature to advance or die;
+ He stands not still, but or decays, or grows
+ Into a boundless blessing, which may vie
+With the immortal lights, in its eternity!
+
+
+ 'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot,
+ Peopling it with affections; but he found
+ It was the scene which passion must allot
+ To the mind's purified beings; 'twas the ground
+ Where early Love his Psyche's zone unbound,
+ And hallowed it with loveliness: 'tis lone,
+ And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound,
+ And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone
+Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne.
+
+
+ Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes
+ Of names which unto you bequeathed a name;
+ Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads,
+ A path to perpetuity of fame:
+ They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
+ Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile
+ Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
+ Of Heaven, again assailed, if Heaven the while
+On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.
+
+
+ The one was fire and fickleness, a child
+ Most mutable in wishes, but in mind
+ A wit as various,---gay, grave, sage, or wild,\textemdash
+ Historian, bard, philosopher combined:
+ He multiplied himself among mankind,
+ The Proteus of their talents: But his own
+ Breathed most in ridicule,---which, as the wind,
+ Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,\textemdash
+Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
+
+
+ The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,
+ And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
+ In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought,
+ And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
+ Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
+ The lord of irony,---that master spell,
+ Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear,
+ And doomed him to the zealot's ready hell,
+Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.
+
+ Yet, peace be with their ashes,---for by them,
+ If merited, the penalty is paid;
+ It is not ours to judge, far less condemn;
+ The hour must come when such things shall be made
+ Known unto all,---or hope and dread allayed
+ By slumber on one pillow, in the dust,
+ Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decayed;
+ And when it shall revive, as is our trust,
+'Twill be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just.
+
+
+ But let me quit man's works, again to read
+ His Maker's spread around me, and suspend
+ This page, which from my reveries I feed,
+ Until it seems prolonging without end.
+ The clouds above me to the white Alps tend,
+ And I must pierce them, and survey whate'er
+ May be permitted, as my steps I bend
+ To their most great and growing region, where
+The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air.
+
+
+ Italia! too, Italia! looking on thee
+ Full flashes on the soul the light of ages,
+ Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee,
+ To the last halo of the chiefs and sages
+ Who glorify thy consecrated pages;
+ Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still,
+ The fount at which the panting mind assuages
+ Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,
+Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill.
+
+ Thus far have I proceeded in a theme
+ Renewed with no kind auspices: ---to feel
+ We are not what we have been, and to deem
+ We are not what we should be, and to steel
+ The heart against itself; and to conceal,
+ With a proud caution, love or hate, or aught,\textemdash
+ Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,\textemdash
+ Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought,
+Is a stern task of soul: ---No matter,---it is taught.
+
+
+ And for these words, thus woven into song,
+ It may be that they are a harmless wile,\textemdash
+ The colouring of the scenes which fleet along,
+ Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile
+ My breast, or that of others, for a while.
+ Fame is the thirst of youth,---but I am not
+ So young as to regard men's frown or smile
+ As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;
+I stood and stand alone,---remembered or forgot.
+
+
+ I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
+ I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
+ To its idolatries a patient knee,\textemdash
+ Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
+ In worship of an echo; in the crowd
+ They could not deem me one of such; I stood
+ Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
+ Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
+Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
+
+
+ I have not loved the world, nor the world me,\textemdash
+ But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
+ Though I have found them not, that there may be
+ Words which are things,---hopes which will not deceive,
+ And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
+ Snares for the falling: I would also deem
+ O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
+ That two, or one, are almost what they seem,\textemdash
+That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
+
+
+ My daughter! with thy name this song begun\textemdash
+ My daughter! with thy name this much shall end\textemdash
+ I see thee not, I hear thee not,---but none
+ Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
+ To whom the shadows of far years extend:
+ Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,
+ My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
+ And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,\textemdash
+A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
+
+
+ To aid thy mind's development,---to watch
+ Thy dawn of little joys,---to sit and see
+ Almost thy very growth,---to view thee catch
+ Knowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee!
+ To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
+ And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,\textemdash
+ This, it should seem, was not reserved for me
+ Yet this was in my nature: ---As it is,
+I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
+
+
+ Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
+ I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
+ Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
+ With desolation, and a broken claim:
+ Though the grave closed between us,---'twere the same,
+ I know that thou wilt love me: though to drain
+ \textit{my} blood from out thy being were an aim,
+ And an attainment,---all would be in vain,\textemdash
+Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.
+
+
+ The child of love,---though born in bitterness,
+ And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire
+ These were the elements, and thine no less.
+ As yet such are around thee; but thy fire
+ Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher.
+ Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea,
+ And from the mountains where I now respire,
+ Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
+As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me!
+
+
+\canto
+
+
+ I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
+ A palace and a prison on each hand:
+ I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+ As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
+ A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
+ Around me, and a dying glory smiles
+ O'er the far times when many a subject land
+ Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
+Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
+
+
+ She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
+ Rising with her tiara of proud towers
+ At airy distance, with majestic motion,
+ A ruler of the waters and their powers:
+ And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
+ From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
+ Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
+ In purple was she robed, and of her feast
+Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
+
+
+ In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,
+ And silent rows the songless gondolier;
+ Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
+ And music meets not always now the ear:
+ Those days are gone---but beauty still is here.
+ States fall, arts fade---but Nature doth not die,
+ Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
+ The pleasant place of all festivity,
+The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
+
+
+ But unto us she hath a spell beyond
+ Her name in story, and her long array
+ Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
+ Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;
+ Ours is a trophy which will not decay
+ With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
+ And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away\textemdash
+ The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
+For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
+
+
+ The beings of the mind are not of clay;
+ Essentially immortal, they create
+ And multiply in us a brighter ray
+ And more beloved existence: that which Fate
+ Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
+ Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
+ First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
+ Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
+And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
+
+
+ Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
+ The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
+ And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
+ And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:
+ Yet there are things whose strong reality
+ Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
+ More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
+ And the strange constellations which the Muse
+O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:
+
+
+ I saw or dreamed of such,---but let them go\textemdash
+ They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams;
+ And whatsoe'er they were---are now but so;
+ I could replace them if I would: still teems
+ My mind with many a form which aptly seems
+ Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
+ Let these too go---for waking reason deems
+ Such overweening phantasies unsound,
+And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
+
+
+ I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes
+ Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
+ Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
+ Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
+ A country with---ay, or without mankind;
+ Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
+ Not without cause; and should I leave behind
+ The inviolate island of the sage and free,
+And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,
+
+
+ Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay
+ My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
+ My spirit shall resume it---if we may
+ Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
+ My hopes of being remembered in my line
+ With my land's language: if too fond and far
+ These aspirations in their scope incline,\textemdash
+ If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
+Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.
+
+
+ My name from out the temple where the dead
+ Are honoured by the nations---let it be\textemdash
+ And light the laurels on a loftier head!
+ And be the Spartan's epitaph on me\textemdash
+ `Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.'
+ Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
+ The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
+ I planted,---they have torn me, and I bleed:
+I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
+
+
+ The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
+ And, annual marriage now no more renewed,
+ The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
+ Neglected garment of her widowhood!
+ St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
+ Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
+ Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,
+ And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
+When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.
+
+
+ The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns\textemdash
+ An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
+ Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
+ Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
+ From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
+ The sunshine for a while, and downward go
+ Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt:
+ Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
+The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
+
+
+ Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,
+ Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
+ But is not Doria's menace come to pass?
+ Are they not \textit{bridled}?---Venice, lost and won,
+ Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
+ Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!
+ Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,
+ Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes,
+From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.
+
+
+ In youth she was all glory,---a new Tyre,\textemdash
+ Her very byword sprung from victory,
+ The `Planter of the Lion,' which through fire
+ And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;
+ Though making many slaves, herself still free
+ And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite:
+ Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye
+ Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!
+For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.
+
+
+ Statues of glass---all shivered---the long file
+ Of her dead doges are declined to dust;
+ But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
+ Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
+ Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
+ Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
+ Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
+ Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
+Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.
+
+
+ When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
+ And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
+ Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,
+ Her voice their only ransom from afar:
+ See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
+ Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins
+ Fall from his hands---his idle scimitar
+ Starts from its belt---he rends his captive's chains,
+And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.
+
+
+ Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
+ Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
+ Thy choral memory of the bard divine,
+ Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
+ Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
+ Is shameful to the nations,---most of all,
+ Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not
+ Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
+Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.
+
+ I loved her from my boyhood: she to me
+ Was as a fairy city of the heart,
+ Rising like water-columns from the sea,
+ Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart
+ And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art,
+ Had stamped her image in me, and e'en so,
+ Although I found her thus, we did not part,
+ Perchance e'en dearer in her day of woe,
+Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.
+
+
+ I can repeople with the past---and of
+ The present there is still for eye and thought,
+ And meditation chastened down, enough;
+ And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
+ And of the happiest moments which were wrought
+ Within the web of my existence, some
+ From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:
+ There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,
+Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.
+
+
+ But from their nature will the tannen grow
+ Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,
+ Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
+ Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks
+ Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks
+ The howling tempest, till its height and frame
+ Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks
+ Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came,
+And grew a giant tree;---the mind may grow the same.
+
+
+ Existence may be borne, and the deep root
+ Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
+ In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
+ The camel labours with the heaviest load,
+ And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed
+ In vain should such examples be; if they,
+ Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
+ Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
+May temper it to bear,---it is but for a day.
+
+
+ All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,
+ Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,
+ Ends: ---Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,
+ Return to whence they came---with like intent,
+ And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,
+ Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time,
+ And perish with the reed on which they leant;
+ Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,
+According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.
+
+
+ But ever and anon of griefs subdued
+ There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
+ Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
+ And slight withal may be the things which bring
+ Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
+ Aside for ever: it may be a sound\textemdash
+ A tone of music---summer's eve---or spring\textemdash
+ A flower---the wind---the ocean---which shall wound,
+Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.
+
+
+ And how and why we know not, nor can trace
+ Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
+ But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
+ The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
+ Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
+ When least we deem of such, calls up to view
+ The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,\textemdash
+ The cold---the changed---perchance the dead---anew,
+The mourned, the loved, the lost---too many!---yet how few!
+
+
+ But my soul wanders; I demand it back
+ To meditate amongst decay, and stand
+ A ruin amidst ruins; there to track
+ Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land
+ Which \textit{was} the mightiest in its old command,
+ And \textit{is} the loveliest, and must ever be
+ The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand,
+ Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,
+The beautiful, the brave---the lords of earth and sea.
+
+
+ The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome!
+ And even since, and now, fair Italy!
+ Thou art the garden of the world, the home
+ Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree;
+ Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
+ Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste
+ More rich than other climes' fertility;
+ Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced
+With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.
+
+
+ The moon is up, and yet it is not night\textemdash
+ Sunset divides the sky with her---a sea
+ Of glory streams along the Alpine height
+ Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
+ From clouds, but of all colours seems to be\textemdash
+ Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
+ Where the day joins the past eternity;
+ While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
+Floats through the azure air---an island of the blest!
+
+
+ A single star is at her side, and reigns
+ With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
+ Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
+ Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill,
+ As Day and Night contending were, until
+ Nature reclaimed her order: ---gently flows
+ The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
+ The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
+Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,
+
+
+ Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,
+ Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
+ From the rich sunset to the rising star,
+ Their magical variety diffuse:
+ And now they change; a paler shadow strews
+ Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
+ Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
+ With a new colour as it gasps away,
+The last still loveliest, till---'tis gone---and all is grey.
+
+
+ There is a tomb in Arqua;---reared in air,
+ Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose
+ The bones of Laura's lover: here repair
+ Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
+ The pilgrims of his genius. He arose
+ To raise a language, and his land reclaim
+ From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:
+ Watering the tree which bears his lady's name
+With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.
+
+
+ They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;
+ The mountain-village where his latter days
+ Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride\textemdash
+ An honest pride---and let it be their praise,
+ To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
+ His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain
+ And venerably simple, such as raise
+ A feeling more accordant with his strain,
+Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.
+
+
+ And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt
+ Is one of that complexion which seems made
+ For those who their mortality have felt,
+ And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed
+ In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,
+ Which shows a distant prospect far away
+ Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,
+ For they can lure no further; and the ray
+Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday.
+
+
+ Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers
+ And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,
+ Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours
+ With a calm languor, which, though to the eye
+ Idlesse it seem, hath its morality,
+ If from society we learn to live,
+ 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;
+ It hath no flatterers; vanity can give
+No hollow aid; alone---man with his God must strive:
+
+
+ Or, it may be, with demons, who impair
+ The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey
+ In melancholy bosoms, such as were
+ Of moody texture from their earliest day,
+ And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,
+ Deeming themselves predestined to a doom
+ Which is not of the pangs that pass away;
+ Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
+The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.
+
+
+ Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,
+ Whose symmetry was not for solitude,
+ There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seat's
+ Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood
+ Of Este, which for many an age made good
+ Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore
+ Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood
+ Of petty power impelled, of those who wore
+The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.
+
+
+ And Tasso is their glory and their shame.
+ Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!
+ And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,
+ And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell
+ The miserable despot could not quell
+ The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend
+ With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell
+ Where he had plunged it. Glory without end
+Scattered the clouds away---and on that name attend.
+
+
+ The tears and praises of all time, while thine
+ Would rot in its oblivion---in the sink
+ Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line
+ Is shaken into nothing; but the link
+ Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think
+ Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn\textemdash
+ Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink
+ From thee! if in another station born,
+Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn:
+
+
+ \textit{Thou}! formed to eat, and be despised, and die,
+ Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou
+ Hadst a more splendid trough, and wider sty:
+ \textit{He}! with a glory round his furrowed brow,
+ Which emanated then, and dazzles now
+ In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,
+ And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow
+ No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,
+That whetstone of the teeth---monotony in wire!
+
+
+ Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
+ In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
+ Aimed with their poisoned arrows---but to miss.
+ Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song!
+ Each year brings forth its millions; but how long
+ The tide of generations shall roll on,
+ And not the whole combined and countless throng
+ Compose a mind like thine? Though all in one
+Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a sun.
+
+
+ Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those
+ Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
+ The bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose
+ The Tuscan father's comedy divine;
+ Then, not unequal to the Florentine,
+ The Southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth
+ A new creation with his magic line,
+ And, like the Ariosto of the North,
+Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth.
+
+
+ The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust
+ The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
+ Nor was the ominous element unjust,
+ For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves
+ Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
+ And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
+ Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
+ Know that the lightning sanctifies below
+Whate'er it strikes;---yon head is doubly sacred now.
+
+
+ Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
+ The fatal gift of beauty, which became
+ A funeral dower of present woes and past,
+ On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,
+ And annals graved in characters of flame.
+ Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness
+ Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
+ Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
+To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;
+
+
+ Then mightst thou more appal; or, less desired,
+ Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored
+ For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
+ Would not be seen the armed torrents poured
+ Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
+ Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
+ Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
+ Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so,
+Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.
+
+
+ Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
+ The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,
+ The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
+ The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
+ Came Megara before me, and behind
+ AEgina lay, Piraeus on the right,
+ And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
+ Along the prow, and saw all these unite
+In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;
+
+
+ For time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
+ Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
+ Which only make more mourned and more endeared
+ The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
+ And the crushed relics of their vanished might.
+ The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
+ These sepulchres of cities, which excite
+ Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
+The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.
+
+
+ That page is now before me, and on mine
+ \textit{his} country's ruin added to the mass
+ Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
+ And I in desolation: all that \textit{was}
+ Of then destruction \textit{is}; and now, alas!
+ Rome---Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,
+ In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
+ The skeleton of her Titanic form,
+Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.
+
+
+ Yet, Italy! through every other land
+ Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;
+ Mother of Arts! as once of Arms; thy hand
+ Was then our Guardian, and is still our guide;
+ Parent of our religion! whom the wide
+ Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven!
+ Europe, repentant of her parricide,
+ Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
+Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.
+
+
+ But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
+ Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
+ A softer feeling for her fairy halls.
+ Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
+ Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps
+ To laughing life, with her redundant horn.
+ Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,
+ Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,
+And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.
+
+
+ There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills
+ The air around with beauty; we inhale
+ The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
+ Part of its immortality; the veil
+ Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale
+ We stand, and in that form and face behold
+ What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
+ And to the fond idolaters of old
+Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:
+
+
+ We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
+ Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
+ Reels with its fulness; there---for ever there\textemdash
+ Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
+ We stand as captives, and would not depart.
+ Away!---there need no words, nor terms precise,
+ The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
+ Where Pedantry gulls Folly---we have eyes:
+Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.
+
+
+ Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise?
+ Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
+ In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies
+ Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
+ And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
+ Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
+ Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are
+ With lava kisses melting while they burn,
+Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
+
+
+ Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,
+ Their full divinity inadequate
+ That feeling to express, or to improve,
+ The gods become as mortals, and man's fate
+ Has moments like their brightest! but the weight
+ Of earth recoils upon us;---let it go!
+ We can recall such visions, and create
+ From what has been, or might be, things which grow,
+Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.
+
+
+ I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,
+ The artist and his ape, to teach and tell
+ How well his connoisseurship understands
+ The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
+ Let these describe the undescribable:
+ I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
+ Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;
+ The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
+That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.
+
+
+ In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie
+ Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
+ E'en in itself an immortality,
+ Though there were nothing save the past, and this
+ The particle of those sublimities
+ Which have relapsed to chaos: ---here repose
+ Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,
+ The starry Galileo, with his woes;
+Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.
+
+
+ These are four minds, which, like the elements,
+ Might furnish forth creation: ---Italy!
+ Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
+ Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
+ And hath denied, to every other sky,
+ Spirits which soar from ruin: ---thy decay
+ Is still impregnate with divinity,
+ Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
+Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.
+
+
+ But where repose the all Etruscan three\textemdash
+ Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
+ The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
+ Of the Hundred Tales of love---where did they lay
+ Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
+ In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
+ And have their country's marbles nought to say?
+ Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
+Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?
+
+
+ Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
+ Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
+ Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
+ Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
+ Their children's children would in vain adore
+ With the remorse of ages; and the crown
+ Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
+ Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
+His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled---not thine own.
+
+
+ Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed
+ His dust,---and lies it not her great among,
+ With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
+ O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?
+ That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
+ The poetry of speech? No;---even his tomb
+ Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigots' wrong,
+ No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
+Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for \textit{whom}?
+
+
+ And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
+ Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
+ The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
+ Did but of Rome's best son remind her more:
+ Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
+ Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps
+ The immortal exile;---Arqua, too, her store
+ Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
+While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps.
+
+
+ What is her pyramid of precious stones?
+ Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
+ Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
+ Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews
+ Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
+ Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
+ Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,
+ Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
+Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.
+
+
+ There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
+ In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
+ Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies;
+ There be more marvels yet---but not for mine;
+ For I have been accustomed to entwine
+ My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields
+ Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
+ Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields
+Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields
+
+
+ Is of another temper, and I roam
+ By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles
+ Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
+ For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
+ Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
+ The host between the mountains and the shore,
+ Where Courage falls in her despairing files,
+ And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
+Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er,
+
+
+ Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
+ And such the storm of battle on this day,
+ And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
+ To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,
+ An earthquake reeled unheededly away!
+ None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
+ And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
+ Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;
+Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet.
+
+
+ The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
+ Which bore them to Eternity; they saw
+ The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
+ The motions of their vessel: Nature's law,
+ In them suspended, recked not of the awe
+ Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
+ Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw
+ From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
+Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.
+
+
+ Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
+ Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
+ Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
+ Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
+ Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en\textemdash
+ A little rill of scanty stream and bed\textemdash
+ A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
+ And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
+Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.
+
+
+ But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
+ Of the most living crystal that was e'er
+ The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
+ Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
+ Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
+ Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!
+ And most serene of aspect, and most clear:
+ Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,
+A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!
+
+
+ And on thy happy shore a temple still,
+ Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
+ Upon a mild declivity of hill,
+ Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
+ Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
+ The finny darter with the glittering scales,
+ Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
+ While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails
+Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.
+
+
+ Pass not unblest the genius of the place!
+ If through the air a zephyr more serene
+ Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
+ Along his margin a more eloquent green,
+ If on the heart the freshness of the scene
+ Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
+ Of weary life a moment lave it clean
+ With Nature's baptism,---'tis to him ye must
+Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.
+
+
+ The roar of waters!---from the headlong height
+ Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
+ The fall of waters! rapid as the light
+ The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
+ The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
+ And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
+ Of their great agony, wrung out from this
+ Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
+That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
+
+
+ And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
+ Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
+ With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
+ Is an eternal April to the ground,
+ Making it all one emerald. How profound
+ The gulf! and how the giant element
+ From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
+ Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
+With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent,
+
+
+ To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
+ More like the fountain of an infant sea
+ Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
+ Of a new world, than only thus to be
+ Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
+ With many windings through the vale: ---Look back!
+ Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
+ As if to sweep down all things in its track,
+Charming the eye with dread,---a matchless cataract,
+
+
+ Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
+ From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
+ An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
+ Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn
+ Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
+ By the distracted waters, bears serene
+ Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
+ Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,
+Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
+
+
+ Once more upon the woody Apennine,
+ The infant Alps, which---had I not before
+ Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
+ Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
+ The thundering lauwine---might be worshipped more;
+ But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
+ Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
+ Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,
+And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
+
+
+ The Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
+ And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly
+ Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame,
+ For still they soared unutterably high:
+ I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
+ Athos, Olympus, AEtna, Atlas, made
+ These hills seem things of lesser dignity,
+ All, save the lone Soracte's height displayed,
+Not \textit{now} in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid.
+
+
+ For our remembrance, and from out the plain
+ Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
+ And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
+ May he who will his recollections rake,
+ And quote in classic raptures, and awake
+ The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred
+ Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,
+ The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
+In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record.
+
+
+ Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
+ My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
+ My mind to meditate what then it learned,
+ Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought
+ By the impatience of my early thought,
+ That, with the freshness wearing out before
+ My mind could relish what it might have sought,
+ If free to choose, I cannot now restore
+Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.
+
+
+ Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
+ Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
+ To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow,
+ To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
+ Although no deeper moralist rehearse
+ Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art,
+ Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce,
+ Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
+Yet fare thee well---upon Soracte's ridge we part.
+
+
+ O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
+ The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
+ Lone mother of dead empires! and control
+ In their shut breasts their petty misery.
+ What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
+ The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
+ O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
+ Whose agonies are evils of a day---
+A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
+
+
+ The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
+ Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
+ An empty urn within her withered hands,
+ Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
+ The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
+ The very sepulchres lie tenantless
+ Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
+ Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
+Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!
+
+
+ The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,
+ Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride:
+ She saw her glories star by star expire,
+ And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
+ Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
+ Temple and tower went down, nor left a site;\textemdash
+ Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
+ O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
+And say, `Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night?
+
+
+ The double night of ages, and of her,
+ Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap
+ All round us; we but feel our way to err:
+ The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map;
+ And knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
+ But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
+ Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap
+ Our hands, and cry, `Eureka!' it is clear\textemdash
+When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
+
+
+ Alas, the lofty city! and alas
+ The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
+ When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
+ The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
+ Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
+ And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be
+ Her resurrection; all beside---decay.
+ Alas for Earth, for never shall we see
+That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
+
+
+ O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
+ Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue
+ Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
+ The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
+ Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew
+ O'er prostrate Asia;---thou, who with thy frown
+ Annihilated senates---Roman, too,
+ With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down
+With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown\textemdash
+
+
+ The dictatorial wreath,---couldst thou divine
+ To what would one day dwindle that which made
+ Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
+ By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?
+ She who was named eternal, and arrayed
+ Her warriors but to conquer---she who veiled
+ Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed
+ Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,
+Her rushing wings---Oh! she who was almighty hailed!
+
+
+ Sylla was first of victors; but our own,
+ The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!---he
+ Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
+ Down to a block---immortal rebel! See
+ What crimes it costs to be a moment free
+ And famous through all ages! But beneath
+ His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
+ His day of double victory and death
+Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.
+
+
+ The third of the same moon whose former course
+ Had all but crowned him, on the self-same day
+ Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
+ And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.
+ And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
+ And all we deem delightful, and consume
+ Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
+ Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
+Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom!
+
+
+ And thou, dread statue! yet existent in
+ The austerest form of naked majesty,
+ Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din,
+ At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
+ Folding his robe in dying dignity,
+ An offering to thine altar from the queen
+ Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
+ And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
+Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?
+
+
+ And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!
+ She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
+ The milk of conquest yet within the dome
+ Where, as a monument of antique art,
+ Thou standest: ---Mother of the mighty heart,
+ Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat,
+ Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
+ And thy limbs blacked with lightning---dost thou yet
+Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?
+
+
+ Thou dost;---but all thy foster-babes are dead\textemdash
+ The men of iron; and the world hath reared
+ Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
+ In imitation of the things they feared,
+ And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
+ At apish distance; but as yet none have,
+ Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
+ Save one vain man, who is not in the grave,
+But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave,
+
+
+ The fool of false dominion---and a kind
+ Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
+ With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
+ Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,
+ With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,
+ And an immortal instinct which redeemed
+ The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold.
+ Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
+At Cleopatra's feet, and now himself he beamed.
+
+
+ And came, and saw, and conquered. But the man
+ Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee,
+ Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,
+ Which he, in sooth, long led to victory,
+ With a deaf heart which never seemed to be
+ A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
+ With but one weakest weakness---vanity:
+ Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed
+At what? Can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?
+
+
+ And would be all or nothing---nor could wait
+ For the sure grave to level him; few years
+ Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate,
+ On whom we tread: For \textit{this} the conqueror rears
+ The arch of triumph! and for this the tears
+ And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
+ An universal deluge, which appears
+ Without an ark for wretched man's abode,
+And ebbs but to reflow!---Renew thy rainbow, God!
+
+
+ What from this barren being do we reap?
+ Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
+ Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
+ And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale;
+ Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil
+ Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
+ And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale
+ Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
+And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.
+
+
+ And thus they plod in sluggish misery,
+ Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,
+ Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,
+ Bequeathing their hereditary rage
+ To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
+ War for their chains, and rather than be free,
+ Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
+ Within the same arena where they see
+Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.
+
+
+ I speak not of men's creeds---they rest between
+ Man and his Maker---but of things allowed,
+ Averred, and known,---and daily, hourly seen\textemdash
+ The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
+ And the intent of tyranny avowed,
+ The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
+ The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
+ And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
+Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.
+
+
+ Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
+ And Freedom find no champion and no child
+ Such as Columbia saw arise when she
+ Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled?
+ Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
+ Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar
+ Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled
+ On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
+Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
+
+
+ But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,
+ And fatal have her Saturnalia been
+ To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
+ Because the deadly days which we have seen,
+ And vile Ambition, that built up between
+ Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
+ And the base pageant last upon the scene,
+ Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
+Which nips Life's tree, and dooms man's worst---his second fall.
+
+ Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
+ Streams like the thunder-storm \textit{against} the wind;
+ Thy trumpet-voice, though broken now and dying,
+ The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;
+ Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
+ Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
+ But the sap lasts,---and still the seed we find
+ Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
+So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
+
+
+ There is a stern round tower of other days,
+ Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
+ Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
+ Standing with half its battlements alone,
+ And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
+ The garland of eternity, where wave
+ The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown:
+ What was this tower of strength? within its cave
+What treasure lay so locked, so hid?---A woman's grave.
+
+
+ But who was she, the lady of the dead,
+ Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
+ Worthy a king's---or more---a Roman's bed?
+ What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?
+ What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
+ How lived---how loved---how died she? Was she not
+ So honoured---and conspicuously there,
+ Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
+Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?
+
+
+ Was she as those who love their lords, or they
+ Who love the lords of others? such have been
+ Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
+ Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
+ Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen,
+ Profuse of joy; or 'gainst it did she war,
+ Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
+ To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
+Love from amongst her griefs?---for such the affections are.
+
+
+ Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed
+ With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
+ That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud
+ Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
+ In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
+ Heaven gives its favourites---early death; yet shed
+ A sunset charm around her, and illume
+ With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
+Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.
+
+
+ Perchance she died in age---surviving all,
+ Charms, kindred, children---with the silver grey
+ On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
+ It may be, still a something of the day
+ When they were braided, and her proud array
+ And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
+ By Rome---But whither would Conjecture stray?
+ Thus much alone we know---Metella died,
+The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!
+
+
+ I know not why---but standing thus by thee
+ It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
+ Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
+ With recollected music, though the tone
+ Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
+ Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
+ Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone
+ Till I had bodied forth the heated mind,
+Forms from the floating wreck which ruin leaves behind;
+
+
+ And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,
+ Built me a little bark of hope, once more
+ To battle with the ocean and the shocks
+ Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
+ Which rushes on the solitary shore
+ Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:
+ But could I gather from the wave-worn store
+ Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
+There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.
+
+
+ Then let the winds howl on! their harmony
+ Shall henceforth be my music, and the night
+ The sound shall temper with the owlet's cry,
+ As I now hear them, in the fading light
+ Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,
+ Answer each other on the Palatine,
+ With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright,
+ And sailing pinions.---Upon such a shrine
+What are our petty griefs?---let me not number mine.
+
+
+ Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown
+ Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped
+ On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown
+ In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped
+ In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,
+ Deeming it midnight: ---Temples, baths, or halls?
+ Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped
+ From her research hath been, that these are walls\textemdash
+Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls.
+
+
+ There is the moral of all human tales:
+ 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
+ First Freedom, and then Glory---when that fails,
+ Wealth, vice, corruption---barbarism at last.
+ And History, with all her volumes vast,
+ Hath but \textit{one} page,---'tis better written here,
+ Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
+ All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
+Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask---Away with words! draw near,
+
+
+ Admire, exult---despise---laugh, weep---for here
+ There is such matter for all feeling: ---Man!
+ Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
+ Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
+ This mountain, whose obliterated plan
+ The pyramid of empires pinnacled,
+ Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van
+ Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled!
+Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build?
+
+
+ Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
+ Thou nameless column with the buried base!
+ What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow?
+ Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
+ Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
+ Titus or Trajan's? No; 'tis that of Time:
+ Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace,
+ Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb
+To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
+
+
+ Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
+ And looking to the stars; they had contained
+ A spirit which with these would find a home,
+ The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,
+ The Roman globe, for after none sustained
+ But yielded back his conquests: ---he was more
+ Than a mere Alexander, and unstained
+ With household blood and wine, serenely wore
+His sovereign virtues---still we Trajan's name adore.
+
+
+ Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
+ Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep
+ Tarpeian---fittest goal of Treason's race,
+ The promontory whence the traitor's leap
+ Cured all ambition? Did the Conquerors heap
+ Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
+ A thousand years of silenced factions sleep\textemdash
+ The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
+And still the eloquent air breathes---burns with Cicero!
+
+
+ The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood:
+ Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
+ From the first hour of empire in the bud
+ To that when further worlds to conquer failed;
+ But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
+ And Anarchy assumed her attributes:
+ Till every lawless soldier who assailed
+ Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,
+Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.
+
+
+ Then turn we to our latest tribune's name,
+ From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
+ Redeemer of dark centuries of shame\textemdash
+ The friend of Petrarch---hope of Italy\textemdash
+ Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree
+ Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
+ Even for thy tomb a garland let it be---
+ The forum's champion, and the people's chief\textemdash
+Her new-born Numa thou, with reign, alas! too brief.
+
+
+ Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
+ Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
+ As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
+ Or wert,---a young Aurora of the air,
+ The nympholepsy of some fond despair;
+ Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,
+ Who found a more than common votary there
+ Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth,
+Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.
+
+
+ The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled
+ With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
+ Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,
+ Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,
+ Whose green wild margin now no more erase
+ Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,
+ Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base
+ Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
+The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep,
+
+
+ Fantastically tangled; the green hills
+ Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass
+ The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills
+ Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass;
+ Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
+ Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
+ Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
+ The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes,
+Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.
+
+
+ Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
+ Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
+ For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
+ The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
+ With her most starry canopy, and seating
+ Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?
+ This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
+ Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
+Haunted by holy Love---the earliest oracle!
+
+
+ And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
+ Blend a celestial with a human heart;
+ And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
+ Share with immortal transports? could thine art
+ Make them indeed immortal, and impart
+ The purity of heaven to earthly joys,
+ Expel the venom and not blunt the dart\textemdash
+ The dull satiety which all destroys---
+And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?
+
+
+ Alas! our young affections run to waste,
+ Or water but the desert: whence arise
+ But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
+ Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,
+ Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
+ And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
+ Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
+ O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants
+For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.
+
+
+ O Love! no habitant of earth thou art\textemdash
+ An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,---
+ A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,
+ But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see,
+ The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
+ The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,
+ Even with its own desiring phantasy,
+ And to a thought such shape and image given,
+As haunts the unquenched soul---parched---wearied---wrung---and riven.
+
+
+ Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
+ And fevers into false creation;---where,
+ Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
+ In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
+ Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
+ Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
+ The unreached Paradise of our despair,
+ Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,
+And overpowers the page where it would bloom again.
+
+
+ Who loves, raves---'tis youth's frenzy---but the cure
+ Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds
+ Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
+ Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's
+ Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
+ The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
+ Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
+ The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
+Seems ever near the prize---wealthiest when most undone.
+
+
+ We wither from our youth, we gasp away\textemdash
+ Sick---sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,
+ Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
+ Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first\textemdash
+ But all too late,---so are we doubly curst.
+ Love, fame, ambition, avarice---'tis the same\textemdash
+ Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst\textemdash
+ For all are meteors with a different name,
+And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
+
+
+ Few---none---find what they love or could have loved:
+ Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
+ Necessity of loving, have removed
+ Antipathies---but to recur, ere long,
+ Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
+ And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
+ And miscreator, makes and helps along
+ Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
+Whose touch turns hope to dust---the dust we all have trod.
+
+
+ Our life is a false nature---'tis not in
+ The harmony of things,---this hard decree,
+ This uneradicable taint of sin,
+ This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,
+ Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
+ The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew\textemdash
+ Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see---
+ And worse, the woes we see not---which throb through
+The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
+
+
+ Yet let us ponder boldly---'tis a base
+ Abandonment of reason to resign
+ Our right of thought---our last and only place
+ Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
+ Though from our birth the faculty divine
+ Is chained and tortured---cabined, cribbed, confined,
+ And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
+ Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
+The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.
+
+
+ Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
+ Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
+ Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
+ Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
+ As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
+ Should be the light which streams here, to illume
+ This long explored but still exhaustless mine
+ Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
+Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
+
+
+ Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
+ Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
+ And shadows forth its glory. There is given
+ Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
+ A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
+ His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
+ And magic in the ruined battlement,
+ For which the palace of the present hour
+Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.
+
+
+ O Time! the beautifier of the dead,
+ Adorner of the ruin, comforter
+ And only healer when the heart hath bled\textemdash
+ Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
+ The test of truth, love,---sole philosopher,
+ For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,
+ Which never loses though it doth defer\textemdash
+ Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
+My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
+
+
+ Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
+ And temple more divinely desolate,
+ Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
+ Ruins of years---though few, yet full of fate:
+ If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
+ Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
+ Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
+ Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
+This iron in my soul in vain---shall \textit{they} not mourn?
+
+
+ And thou, who never yet of human wrong
+ Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!
+ Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long\textemdash
+ Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
+ And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
+ For that unnatural retribution---just,
+ Had it but been from hands less near---in this
+ Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
+Dost thou not hear my heart?---Awake! thou shalt, and must.
+
+
+ It is not that I may not have incurred
+ For my ancestral faults or mine the wound
+ I bleed withal, and had it been conferred
+ With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound.
+ But now my blood shall not sink in the ground;
+ To thee I do devote it---\textit{thou} shalt take
+ The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,
+ Which if \textit{I} have not taken for the sake\textemdash
+But let that pass---I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.
+
+
+ And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now
+ I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
+ Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
+ Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
+ But in this page a record will I seek.
+ Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
+ Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
+ The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
+And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!
+
+
+ That curse shall be forgiveness.---Have I not\textemdash
+ Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!\textemdash
+ Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
+ Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
+ Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
+ Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
+ And only not to desperation driven,
+ Because not altogether of such clay
+As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
+
+
+ From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
+ Have I not seen what human things could do?
+ From the loud roar of foaming calumny
+ To the small whisper of the as paltry few
+ And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
+ The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
+ Learning to lie with silence, would \textit{seem} true,
+ And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
+Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.
+
+
+ But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
+ My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
+ And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
+ But there is that within me which shall tire
+ Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire:
+ Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
+ Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
+ Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
+In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.
+
+
+ The seal is set.---Now welcome, thou dread Power
+ Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
+ Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
+ With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear:
+ Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
+ Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
+ Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
+ That we become a part of what has been,
+And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.
+
+
+ And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
+ In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
+ As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.
+ And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
+ Such were the bloody circus' genial laws,
+ And the imperial pleasure.---Wherefore not?
+ What matters where we fall to fill the maws
+ Of worms---on battle-plains or listed spot?
+Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.
+
+
+ I see before me the Gladiator lie:
+ He leans upon his hand---his manly brow
+ Consents to death, but conquers agony,
+ And his drooped head sinks gradually low\textemdash
+ And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
+ From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
+ Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
+ The arena swims around him: he is gone,
+Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
+
+
+ He heard it, but he heeded not---his eyes
+ Were with his heart, and that was far away;
+ He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
+ But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
+ \textit{There} were his young barbarians all at play,
+ \textit{There} was their Dacian mother---he, their sire,
+ Butchered to make a Roman holiday\textemdash
+ All this rushed with his blood---Shall he expire,
+And unavenged?---Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
+
+
+ But here, where murder breathed her bloody steam;
+ And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
+ And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream
+ Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
+ Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
+ Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,
+ My voice sounds much---and fall the stars' faint rays
+ On the arena void---seats crushed, walls bowed,
+And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.
+
+
+ A ruin---yet what ruin! from its mass
+ Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
+ Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
+ And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
+ Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
+ Alas! developed, opens the decay,
+ When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
+ It will not bear the brightness of the day,
+Which streams too much on all, years, man, have reft away.
+
+
+ But when the rising moon begins to climb
+ Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
+ When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
+ And the low night-breeze waves along the air,
+ The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear,
+ Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
+ When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,
+ Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
+Heroes have trod this spot---'tis on their dust ye tread.
+
+
+ `While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
+ When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
+ And when Rome falls---the World.' From our own land
+ Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
+ In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
+ Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
+ On their foundations, and unaltered all;
+ Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
+The World, the same wide den---of thieves, or what ye will.
+
+ Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime\textemdash
+ Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
+ From Jove to Jesus---spared and blest by time;
+ Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
+ Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
+ His way through thorns to ashes---glorious dome!
+ Shalt thou not last?---Time's scythe and tyrants' rods
+ Shiver upon thee---sanctuary and home
+Of art and piety---Pantheon!---pride of Rome!
+
+
+ Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
+ Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads
+ A holiness appealing to all hearts---
+ To art a model; and to him who treads
+ Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
+ Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
+ Who worship, here are altars for their beads;
+ And they who feel for genius may repose
+Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.
+
+
+ There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
+ What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!
+ Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight\textemdash
+ Two insulated phantoms of the brain:
+ It is not so: I see them full and plain\textemdash
+ An old man, and a female young and fair,
+ Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
+ The blood is nectar: ---but what doth she there,
+With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?
+
+
+ Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
+ Where \textit{on} the heart and \textit{from} the heart we took
+ Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,
+ Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
+ Or even the piping cry of lips that brook
+ No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives
+ Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook
+ She sees her little bud put forth its leaves\textemdash
+What may the fruit be yet?---I know not---Cain was Eve's.
+
+
+ But here youth offers to old age the food,
+ The milk of his own gift: ---it is her sire
+ To whom she renders back the debt of blood
+ Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire
+ While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
+ Of health and holy feeling can provide
+ Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
+ Than Egypt's river: ---from that gentle side
+Drink, drink and live, old man! heaven's realm holds no such tide.
+
+
+ The starry fable of the milky way
+ Has not thy story's purity; it is
+ A constellation of a sweeter ray,
+ And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
+ Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
+ Where sparkle distant worlds: ---Oh, holiest nurse!
+ No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
+ To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source
+With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.
+
+
+ Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high,
+ Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
+ Colossal copyist of deformity,
+ Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
+ Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
+ To build for giants, and for his vain earth,
+ His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles
+ The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,
+To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!
+
+
+ But lo! the dome---the vast and wondrous dome,
+ To which Diana's marvel was a cell---
+ Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb!
+ I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle---
+ Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
+ The hyaena and the jackal in their shade;
+ I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell
+ Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed
+Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;
+
+
+ But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
+ Standest alone---with nothing like to thee\textemdash
+ Worthiest of God, the holy and the true,
+ Since Zion's desolation, when that he
+ Forsook his former city, what could be,
+ Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,
+ Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,
+ Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled
+In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.
+
+
+ Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
+ And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind,
+ Expanded by the genius of the spot,
+ Has grown colossal, and can only find
+ A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
+ Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
+ Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
+ See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
+His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.
+
+
+ Thou movest---but increasing with th' advance,
+ Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
+ Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
+ Vastness which grows---but grows to harmonise\textemdash
+ All musical in its immensities;
+ Rich marbles---richer painting---shrines where flame
+ The lamps of gold---and haughty dome which vies
+ In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
+Sits on the firm-set ground---and this the clouds must claim.
+
+
+ Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break
+ To separate contemplation, the great whole;
+ And as the ocean many bays will make,
+ That ask the eye---so here condense thy soul
+ To more immediate objects, and control
+ Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
+ Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
+ In mighty graduations, part by part,
+The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.
+
+
+ Not by its fault---but thine: Our outward sense
+ Is but of gradual grasp---and as it is
+ That what we have of feeling most intense
+ Outstrips our faint expression; e'en so this
+ Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
+ Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
+ Defies at first our nature's littleness,
+ Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
+Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.
+
+
+ Then pause and be enlightened; there is more
+ In such a survey than the sating gaze
+ Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
+ The worship of the place, or the mere praise
+ Of art and its great masters, who could raise
+ What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
+ The fountain of sublimity displays
+ Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man
+Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.
+
+
+ Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
+ Laocoon's torture dignifying pain\textemdash
+ A father's love and mortal's agony
+ With an immortal's patience blending: ---Vain
+ The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
+ And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
+ The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain
+ Rivets the living links,---the enormous asp
+Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.
+
+
+ Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
+ The God of life, and poesy, and light\textemdash
+ The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
+ All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
+ The shaft hath just been shot---the arrow bright
+ With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
+ And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
+ And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
+Developing in that one glance the Deity.
+
+
+ But in his delicate form---a dream of Love,
+ Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
+ Longed for a deathless lover from above,
+ And maddened in that vision---are expressed
+ All that ideal beauty ever blessed
+ The mind within its most unearthly mood,
+ When each conception was a heavenly guest\textemdash
+ A ray of immortality---and stood
+Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god?
+
+
+ And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven
+ The fire which we endure, it was repaid
+ By him to whom the energy was given
+ Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
+ With an eternal glory---which, if made
+ By human hands, is not of human thought
+ And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
+ One ringlet in the dust---nor hath it caught
+A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.
+
+
+ But where is he, the pilgrim of my song,
+ The being who upheld it through the past?
+ Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
+ He is no more---these breathings are his last;
+ His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,
+ And he himself as nothing: ---if he was
+ Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed
+ With forms which live and suffer---let that pass\textemdash
+His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,
+
+
+ Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all
+ That we inherit in its mortal shroud,
+ And spreads the dim and universal pall
+ Thro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud
+ Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,
+ Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
+ A melancholy halo scarce allowed
+ To hover on the verge of darkness; rays
+Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,
+
+
+ And send us prying into the abyss,
+ To gather what we shall be when the frame
+ Shall be resolved to something less than this
+ Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
+ And wipe the dust from off the idle name
+ We never more shall hear,---but never more,
+ Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:
+ It is enough, in sooth, that \textit{once} we bore
+These fardels of the heart---the heart whose sweat was gore.
+
+
+ Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
+ A long, low distant murmur of dread sound,
+ Such as arises when a nation bleeds
+ With some deep and immedicable wound;
+ Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground.
+ The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief
+ Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,
+ And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief
+She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.
+
+
+ Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
+ Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
+ Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
+ Some less majestic, less beloved head?
+ In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
+ The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
+ Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled
+ The present happiness and promised joy
+Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy.
+
+
+ Peasants bring forth in safety.---Can it be,
+ O thou that wert so happy, so adored!
+ Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
+ And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
+ Her many griefs for One; for she had poured
+ Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head
+ Beheld her Iris.---Thou, too, lonely lord,
+ And desolate consort---vainly wert thou wed!
+The husband of a year! the father of the dead!
+
+
+ Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made:
+ Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust
+ The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,
+ The love of millions! How we did entrust
+ Futurity to her! and, though it must
+ Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed
+ Our children should obey her child, and blessed
+ Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed
+Like star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beamed.
+
+
+ Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:
+ The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
+ Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
+ Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
+ Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung
+ Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate
+ Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
+ Against their blind omnipotence a weight
+Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,\textemdash
+
+
+ These might have been her destiny; but no,
+ Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
+ Good without effort, great without a foe;
+ But now a bride and mother---and now \textit{there}!
+ How many ties did that stern moment tear!
+ From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
+ Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
+ Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed
+The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.
+
+
+ Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills
+ So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
+ The oak from his foundation, and which spills
+ The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
+ Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
+ The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
+ And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears
+ A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
+All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.
+
+
+ And near Albano's scarce divided waves
+ Shine from a sister valley;---and afar
+ The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
+ The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
+ `Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star
+ Rose o'er an empire,---but beneath thy right
+ Tully reposed from Rome;---and where yon bar
+ Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight,
+The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.
+
+
+ But I forget.---My pilgrim's shrine is won,
+ And he and I must part,---so let it be,\textemdash
+ His task and mine alike are nearly done;
+ Yet once more let us look upon the sea:
+ The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
+ And from the Alban mount we now behold
+ Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
+ Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
+Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled
+
+
+ Upon the blue Symplegades: long years\textemdash
+ Long, though not very many---since have done
+ Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
+ Have left us nearly where we had begun:
+ Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
+ We have had our reward---and it is here;
+ That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun,
+ And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
+As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.
+
+
+ Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
+ With one fair Spirit for my minister,
+ That I might all forget the human race,
+ And, hating no one, love but only her!
+ Ye Elements!---in whose ennobling stir
+ I feel myself exalted---can ye not
+ Accord me such a being? Do I err
+ In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
+Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
+
+
+ There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
+ There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
+ There is society where none intrudes,
+ By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
+ I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
+ From these our interviews, in which I steal
+ From all I may be, or have been before,
+ To mingle with the Universe, and feel
+What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
+
+ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean---roll!
+ Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
+ Man marks the earth with ruin---his control
+ Stops with the shore;---upon the watery plain
+ The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
+ A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
+ When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
+ He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
+Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
+
+
+ His steps are not upon thy paths,---thy fields
+ Are not a spoil for him,---thou dost arise
+ And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
+ For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
+ Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
+ And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
+ And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
+ His petty hope in some near port or bay,
+And dashest him again to earth: ---there let him lay.
+
+
+ The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
+ Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
+ And monarchs tremble in their capitals.
+ The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
+ Their clay creator the vain title take
+ Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
+ These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
+ They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
+Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
+
+
+ Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee\textemdash
+ Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
+ Thy waters wasted them while they were free
+ And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
+ The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
+ Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,
+ Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play\textemdash
+ Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow\textemdash
+Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
+
+
+ Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
+ Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
+ Calm or convulsed---in breeze, or gale, or storm,
+ Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
+ Dark-heaving;---boundless, endless, and sublime\textemdash
+ The image of Eternity---the throne
+ Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
+ The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
+Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
+
+
+ And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
+ Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
+ Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
+ I wantoned with thy breakers---they to me
+ Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
+ Made them a terror---'twas a pleasing fear,
+ For I was as it were a child of thee,
+ And trusted to thy billows far and near,
+And laid my hand upon thy mane---as I do here.
+
+
+ My task is done---my song hath ceased---my theme
+ Has died into an echo; it is fit
+ The spell should break of this protracted dream.
+ The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
+ My midnight lamp---and what is writ, is writ\textemdash
+ Would it were worthier! but I am not now
+ That which I have been---and my visions flit
+ Less palpably before me---and the glow
+Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.
+
+
+ Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been\textemdash
+ A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!
+ Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
+ Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
+ A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
+ A single recollection, not in vain
+ He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;
+ Farewell! with \textit{Him} alone may rest the pain,
+If such there were---with \textit{you}, the moral of his strain.
+
+
+\endVersus
+
+\end{document}