Stanzas For Music

by George Gordon Byron · Explore poems

1.
Bright be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control,
In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
On earth thou wert all but divine,
As thy soul shall immortally be;[nk]
And our sorrow may cease to repine
When we know that thy God is with thee.
2.
Light be the turf of thy tomb![nl][318]
May its verdure like emeralds be![nm]
There should not be the shadow of gloom
In aught that reminds us of thee.
Young flowers and an evergreen tree[nn]
May spring from the spot of thy rest:
But nor cypress nor yew let us see;
For why should we mourn for the blest?
[First published, _Examiner_, June 4, 1815.]
NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL.[319]
[FROM THE FRENCH.]
1.
Farewell to the Land, where the gloom of my Glory
Arose and o'ershadowed the earth with her name--
She abandons me now--but the page of her story,
The brightest or blackest, is filled with my fame.[no]
I have warred with a World which vanquished me only
When the meteor of conquest allured me too far;
I have coped with the nations which dread me thus lonely,
The last single Captive to millions in war.
2.
Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crowned me,
I made thee the gem and the wonder of earth,--
But thy weakness decrees I should leave as I found thee,[np]
Decayed in thy glory, and sunk in thy worth.
Oh! for the veteran hearts that were wasted
In strife with the storm, when their battles were won--
Then the Eagle, whose gaze in that moment was blasted
Had still soared with eyes fixed on Victory's sun![nq]
3.
Farewell to thee, France!--but when Liberty rallies
Once more in thy regions, remember me then,--
The Violet still grows in the depth of thy valleys;
Though withered, thy tear will unfold it again--
Yet, yet, I may baffle the hosts that surround us,
And yet may thy heart leap awake to my voice--
There are links which must break in the chain that has bound us,
_Then_ turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice!
_July_ 25, 1815. London.
[First published, _Examiner_, July 30, 1815.]
FROM THE FRENCH.[320]
I.
Must thou go, my glorious Chief,
Severed from thy faithful few?
Who can tell thy warrior's grief,
Maddening o'er that long adieu?[nr]
Woman's love, and Friendship's zeal,
Dear as both have been to me--[ns]
What are they to all I feel,
With a soldier's faith for thee?[nt]
II.
Idol of the soldier's soul!
First in fight, but mightiest now;[nu]
Many could a world control;
Thee alone no doom can bow.
By thy side for years I dared
Death; and envied those who fell,
When their dying shout was heard,
Blessing him they served so well.[321]
III.
Would that I were cold with those,
Since this hour I live to see;
When the doubts of coward foes[nv]
Scarce dare trust a man with thee,
Dreading each should set thee free!
Oh! although in dungeons pent,
All their chains were light to me,
Gazing on thy soul unbent.
IV.
Would the sycophants of him
Now so deaf to duty's prayer,[nw]
Were his borrowed glories dim,
In his native darkness share?
Were that world this hour his own,
All thou calmly dost resign,
Could he purchase with that throne
Hearts like those which still are thine?[nx]
V.
My Chief, my King, my Friend, adieu!
Never did I droop before;
Never to my Sovereign sue,
As his foes I now implore:
All I ask is to divide
Every peril he must brave;
Sharing by the hero's side
His fall--his exile--and his grave.[ny]
[First published, _Poems_, 1816,]
ODE FROM THE FRENCH.[322]
I.
We do not curse thee, Waterloo!
Though Freedom's blood thy plain bedew;
There 'twas shed, but is not sunk--
Rising from each gory trunk,
Like the water-spout from ocean,
With a strong and growing motion--
It soars, and mingles in the air,
With that of lost La Bédoyère--[323]
With that of him whose honoured grave
Contains the "bravest of the brave."
A crimson cloud it spreads and glows,
But shall return to whence it rose;
When 'tis full 'twill burst asunder--
Never yet was heard such thunder
As then shall shake the world with wonder--
Never yet was seen such lightning
As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning!
Like the Wormwood Star foretold
By the sainted Seer of old,
Show'ring down a fiery flood,
Turning rivers into blood.[324]
II.
The Chief has fallen, but not by you,
Vanquishers of Waterloo!
When the soldier citizen
Swayed not o'er his fellow-men--
Save in deeds that led them on
Where Glory smiled on Freedom's son--
Who, of all the despots banded,
With that youthful chief competed?
Who could boast o'er France defeated,
Till lone Tyranny commanded?
Till, goaded by Ambition's sting,
The Hero sunk into the King?
Then he fell:--so perish all,
Who would men by man enthral!
III.
And thou, too, of the snow-white plume!
Whose realm refused thee ev'n a tomb;[325]
Better hadst thou still been leading
France o'er hosts of hirelings bleeding,
Than sold thyself to death and shame
For a meanly royal name;
Such as he of Naples wears,
Who thy blood-bought title bears.
Little didst thou deem, when dashing
On thy war-horse through the ranks.
Like a stream which burst its banks,
While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing,
Shone and shivered fast around thee--
Of the fate at last which found thee:
Was that haughty plume laid low
By a slave's dishonest blow?
Once--as the Moon sways o'er the tide,
It rolled in air, the warrior's guide;
Through the smoke-created night
Of the black and sulphurous fight,
The soldier raised his seeking eye
To catch that crest's ascendancy,--
And, as it onward rolling rose,
So moved his heart upon our foes.
There, where death's brief pang was quickest,
And the battle's wreck lay thickest,
Strewed beneath the advancing banner
Of the eagle's burning crest--
(There with thunder-clouds to fan her,
_Who_ could then her wing arrest--
Victory beaming from her breast?)
While the broken line enlarging
Fell, or fled along the plain;
There be sure was Murat charging!
There he ne'er shall charge again!
IV.
O'er glories gone the invaders march,
Weeps Triumph o'er each levelled arch--
But let Freedom rejoice,
With her heart in her voice;
But, her hand on her sword,
Doubly shall she be adored;
France hath twice too well been taught
The "moral lesson"[326] dearly bought--
Her safety sits not on a throne,
With Capet or Napoleon!
But in equal rights and laws,
Hearts and hands in one great cause--
Freedom, such as God hath given
Unto all beneath his heaven,
With their breath, and from their birth,
Though guilt would sweep it from the earth;
With a fierce and lavish hand
Scattering nations' wealth like sand;
Pouring nations' blood like water,
In imperial seas of slaughter!
V.
But the heart and the mind,
And the voice of mankind,
Shall arise in communion--
And who shall resist that proud union?
The time is past when swords subdued--
Man may die--the soul's renewed:
Even in this low world of care
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her for ever bounding spirit--
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble--
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet.[327]
[First published, _Morning Chronicle_, March 15, 1816.]
STANZAS FOR MUSIC.
1.
There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charméd Ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lulled winds seem dreaming:
2.
And the midnight Moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.
_March_ 28 [1816].
[First published, _Poems_, 1816.]
ON THE STAR OF "THE LEGION OF HONOUR."[328]
[FROM THE FRENCH.]
1.
Star of the brave!--whose beam hath shed
Such glory o'er the quick and dead--
Thou radiant and adored deceit!
Which millions rushed in arms to greet,--
Wild meteor of immortal birth!
Why rise in Heaven to set on Earth?
2.
Souls of slain heroes formed thy rays;
Eternity flashed through thy blaze;
The music of thy martial sphere
Was fame on high and honour here;
And thy light broke on human eyes,
Like a Volcano of the skies.
3.
Like lava rolled thy stream of blood,
And swept down empires with its flood;
Earth rocked beneath thee to her base,
As thou didst lighten through all space;
And the shorn Sun grew dim in air,
And set while thou wert dwelling there.
4.
Before thee rose, and with thee grew,
A rainbow of the loveliest hue
Of three bright colours,[329] each divine,
And fit for that celestial sign;
For Freedom's hand had blended them,
Like tints in an immortal gem.
5.
One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes;
One, the blue depth of Seraph's eyes;
One, the pure Spirit's veil of white
Had robed in radiance of its light:
The three so mingled did beseem
The texture of a heavenly dream.
6.
Star of the brave! thy ray is pale,
And darkness must again prevail!
But, oh thou Rainbow of the free!
Our tears and blood must flow for thee.
When thy bright promise fades away,
Our life is but a load of clay.
7.
And Freedom hallows with her tread
The silent cities of the dead;
For beautiful in death are they
Who proudly fall in her array;
And soon, oh, Goddess! may we be
For evermore with them or thee!
[First published, _Examiner_, April 7, 1816.]
STANZAS FOR MUSIC.
I.
They say that Hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past,
And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first--they set the last;
II.
And all that Memory loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.
III.
Alas! it is delusion all:
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
[First published, _Fugitive Pieces_, 1829.]
FOOTNOTES:
[305] {409} [Compare _The Corsair_, Canto I. stanza xv. lines 480-490.]
[mr] {410}
_Never may I behold_
_Moment like this_.--[MS.]
[ms]
_The damp of the morning_
_Clung chill on my brow_.--[MS. erased.]
[mt] _Thy vow hath been broken_.--[MS.]
[mu]
----_lies hidden_
_Our secret of sorrow_--
_And deep in my soul_--
_But deed more forbidden_,
_Our secret lies hidden_,
_But never forgot_.--[Erasures, stanza 3, MS.]
[mv] {411}
_If one_ should _meet thee_
_How should we greet thee?_
_In silence and tears_.--[MS.]
[306] [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for
the first time printed.
The water-mark of the paper on which a much-tortured rough copy of these
lines has been scrawled, is 1809, but, with this exception, there is no
hint as to the date of composition. An entry in the _Diary_ for November
30, 1813, in which Annabella (Miss Milbanke) is described "as an
heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be," etc., and a letter
(Byron to Miss Milbanke) dated November 29, 1813 (see _Letters_, 1898,
ii. 357, and 1899, iii. 407), in which there is more than one allusion
to her would-be suitors, "your thousand and one pretendants," etc.,
suggest the idea that the lines were addressed to his future wife, when
he first made her acquaintance in 1812 or 1813.]
[307] {413} ["Thou hast asked me for a song, and I enclose you an
experiment, which has cost me something more than trouble, and is,
therefore, less likely to be worth your taking any in your proposed
setting. Now, if it be so, throw it into the fire without
_phrase_."--Letter to Moore, May 4, 1814, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 80.]
[mw] _I speak not--I breathe not--I write not that name_.--[MS. erased.]
[mx] {414}
_We have loved--and oh, still, my adored one we love!_
_Oh the moment is past, when that Passion might cease._--
[MS. erased.]
[my] _The thought may be madness--the wish may be--guilt_.--[MS.
erased.]
[mz]
{_But I cannot repent what we ne'er can recall._
{_But the heart which is thine would disdain to recall_.--
[MS. erased.]
[na] ----_though I feel that thou mayst_.--[MS. L. erased.]
[nb]
_This soul in its bitterest moments shall be_,
_And our days run as swift--and our moments more sweet_,
_With thee at my side, than the world at my feet_.--[MS.]
[nc] {415}
_And thine is that love which I will never forego_
_Though the price which I pay be Eternity's woe_.--[MS. erased]
[nd] _One tear of thy sorrow, one smile_----.--[MS. erased]
[308] [The "Caledonian Meeting," at which these lines were, or were
intended to be, recited (see _Life_, p. 254), was a meeting of
subscribers to the Highland Society, held annually in London, in support
of the [Royal] _Caledonian Asylum_ "for educating and supporting
children of soldiers, sailors, and marines, natives of Scotland." "To
soothe," says the compiler of the _Report_ for 1814, p. 4, "by the
assurance that their offspring will be reared in virtue and comfort, the
minds of those brave men, through whose exposure to hardship and danger
the independence of the Empire has been preserved, is no less an act of
sound policy than of gratitude."]
[309] {416} [As an instance of Scottish gallantry in the Peninsular War
it is sufficient to cite the following list of "casualties" at the
battle of Vittoria, June 21, 1813: "The battalion [the seventy-first
Highland Light Infantry] suffered very severely, having had 1 field
officer, 1 captain, 2 lieutenants, 6 sergeants, 1 bugler, and 78 rank
and file killed; 1 field officer, 3 captains, 7 lieutenants, 13
sergeants, 2 buglers, and 255 rank and file were wounded."--_Historical
Record of the 71st Highland Light Infantry_, by Lieut. Henry J. T.
Hildyard, 1876, p. 91.]
[310] [Compare _Temora_, bk. vii., "The king took his deathful spear,
and struck the deeply-sounding shield.... Ghosts fled on every side, and
rolled their gathered forms on the wind.--Thrice from the winding vale
arose the voices of death."--_Works of Ossian_, 1765, ii. 160.]
[311] {417} [The last six lines are printed from the MS.]
[312] [Sir P. Parker fell in August, 1814, in his twenty-ninth year,
whilst leading a party from his ship, the _Menelaus_, at the storming of
the American camp near Baltimore. He was Byron's first cousin (his
father, Christopher Parker (1761-1804), married Charlotte Augusta,
daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron); but they had never met since
boyhood. (See letter to Moore, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 150; see too
_Letters_, i. 6, note 1.) The stanzas were included in _Hebrew
Melodies_, 1815, and in the Ninth Edition of _Childe Harold_, 1818.]
[313] [Compare Tasso's sonnet--"Questa Tomba non è, ehe non è morto,"
etc. _Rime Eroiche_, Parte Seconda, No. 38, _Opere di Torquato Tasso_,
Venice, 1736, vi. 169.]
[314] {419} [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now
for the first time printed.]
[ne] {421}
1.
_The red light glows, the wassail flows_,
_Around the royal hall;_
_And who, on earth, dare mar the mirth_
_Of that high festival?_
_The prophet dares--before thee glows_--
_Belshazzar rise, nor dare despise_
_The writing on the wall!_
2.
_Thy vice might raise th' avenging steel_,
_Thy meanness shield thee from the blow_--
_And they who loathe thee proudly feel_.--[MS.]
[nf] {422}
_The words of God along the wall_.--[MS. erased.]
_The word of God--the graven wall_.--[MS.]
[ng] _Behold it written_----.--[MS.]
[nh] ----_thy sullied diadem_.--[MS.]
[315] {423} [Byron gave these verses to Moore for Mr. Power of the
Strand, who published them, with music by Sir John Stevenson. "I feel
merry enough," he wrote, March 2, "to send you a sad song." And again,
March 8, 1815, "An event--the death of poor Dorset--and the recollection
of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not--set me
pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in your
hands." A year later, in another letter to Moore, he says, "I pique
myself on these lines as being the _truest_, though the most melancholy,
I ever wrote." (March 8, 1816.)--_Letters_, 1899, iii. 181, 183, 274.]
[ni] _'Tis not the blush alone that fades from Beauty's cheek_.--[MS.]
[nj] {424} _As ivy o'er the mouldering wall that heavily hath
crept_.--[MS.]
[316] [Compare--
"And oft we see gay ivy's wreath
The tree with brilliant bloom o'erspread,
When, part its leaves and gaze beneath,
We find the hidden tree is dead."
"To Anna," _The Warrior's Return, etc._, by Mrs. Opie, 1808, p. 144.]
[317] {425} [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now
for the first time printed. The MS. is headed, in pencil, "Lines written
on the Death of the Duke of Dorset, a College Friend of Lord Byron's,
who was killed by a fall from his horse while hunting." It is endorsed,
"Bought of Markham Thorpe, August 29, 1844." (For Duke of Dorset, see
_Poetical Works, 1898, i. 194, note 2_; and _Letters, 1899, in. 181,
note 1._)]
[nk] {426} ----_shall eternally be_.--[MS. erased.]
[nl] _Green be the turf_----.--[MS.]
[318] [Compare "O lay me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my
hills: let the thick hazels be around, let the rustling oaks be near.
Green be the place of my rest."--"The War of Inis-Thona," _Works of
Ossin_, 1765, i. 156.]
[nm] _May its verdure be sweetest to see_.--[MS.]
[nn] {427}
_Young flowers and a far-spreading tree_
_May wave on the spot of thy rest;_
_But nor cypress nor yew let it be_.--[MS.]
[319] ["We need scarcely remind our readers that there are points in
these spirited lines, with which our opinions do not accord; and,
indeed, the author himself has told us that he rather adapted them to
what he considered the speaker's feelings than his own."--_Examiner_,
July 30, 1815.]
[no] _The brightest and blackest are due to my fame_.--[MS.]
[np] _But thy destiny wills_----.--[MS.]
[nq] {428}
_Oh for the thousands of Those who have perished_
_By elements blasted, unvanquished by man_--
_Then the hope which till now I have fearlessly cherished_,
_Had waved o'er thine eagles in Victory's van_.--[MS.]
[320] ["All wept, but particularly Savary, and a Polish officer who had
been exalted from the ranks by Buonaparte. He clung to his master's
knees; wrote a letter to Lord Keith, entreating permission to accompany
him, even in the most menial capacity, which could not be
admitted."--_Private Letter from Brussels._]
[nr] {429} ----_that mute adieu_.--[MS.]
[ns] _Dear as they have seemed to me_.--[MS.]
[nt] _In the faith I pledged to thee_.--[MS.]
[nu]
_Glory lightened from thy soul_.
_Never did I grieve till now_.--[MS.]
[321] ["At Waterloo one man was seen, whose left arm was shattered by a
cannon-ball, to wrench it off with the other, and, throwing it up in the
air, exclaimed to his comrades, 'Vive l'Empereur, jusqu'à la mort!'
There were many other instances of the like: this you may, however,
depend on as true."--_Private Letter from Brussels._]
[nv] _When the hearts of coward foes_.--[MS.]
[nw] {430} ----_to Friendship's prayer_.--[MS.]
[nx]
_'Twould not gather round his throne_
_Half the hearts that still are thine_.--[MS.]
[ny]
_Let me but partake his doom_,
_Be it exile or the grave_.
or,
_All I ask is to abide_
_All the perils he must brave_,
_All my hope was to divide_.--[MS.]
or,
_Let me still partake his gloom_,
_Late his soldier, now his slave_--
_Grant me but to share the gloom_
_Of his exile or his grave_.--[MS.]
[322] {431} [These lines "are said to have been done into English verse
by R. S. ---- P. L. P. R., Master of the Royal Spanish Inqn., etc.,
etc."--_Morning Chronicle_, March 15, 1816. "The French have their
_Poems_ and _Odes_ on the famous Battle of Waterloo, as well as
ourselves. Nay, they seem to glory in the battle as the source of great
events to come. We have received the following poetical version of a
poem, the original of which is circulating in Paris, and which is
ascribed (we know not with what justice) to the Muse of M. de
Chateaubriand. If so, it may be inferred that in the poet's eye a new
change is at hand, and he wishes to prove his secret indulgence of old
principles by reference to this effusion."--Note, _ibid._]
[323] [Charles Angélique François Huchet, Comte de La Bédoyère, born
1786, was in the retreat from Moscow, and in 1813 distinguished himself
at the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen. On the return of Napoleon from
Elba he was the first to bring him a regiment. He was promoted, and
raised to the peerage, but being found in Paris after its occupation by
the Allied army, he was tried by a court-martial, and suffered death
August 15, 1815.]
[324] {432} See _Rev._ Chap. viii. V. 7, etc., "The first angel sounded,
and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood," etc. V. 8, "And
the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with
fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood,"
etc. V. 10, "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star
from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part
of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters." V. 11, "And the name
of the star is called _Wormwood_: and the third part of the waters
became _wormwood_; and many men died of the waters, because they were
made bitter."
[325] Murat's remains are said to have been torn from the grave and
burnt. ["Poor dear Murat, what an end ...! His white plume used to be a
rallying point in battle, like Henry the Fourth's. He refused a
confessor and a bandage; so would neither suffer his soul or body to be
bandaged."--Letter to Moore, November 4. 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii.
245. See, too, for Joachim Murat (born 1771), proclaimed King of Naples
and the Two Sicilies, August, 1808, _ibid_., note 1.]
[326] {434} ["Write, Britain, write the moral lesson down." Scott's
_Field of Waterloo_, Conclusion, stanza vi. line 3.]
[327] {435} ["Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem says, pray look at
the conclusion of my 'Ode on Waterloo,' written in the year 1815, and
comparing it with the Duke de Berri's catastrophe in 1820, tell me if I
have not as good a right to the character of '_Vates_,' in both senses
of the word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge?--
'Crimson tears will follow yet;'
and have not they?"--Letter to Murray, April 24, 1820.
In the Preface to _The Tyrant's Downfall, etc_., 1814, W. L. Fitzgerald
(see _English Bards, etc._, line 1, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 297, note
3) "begs leave to refer his reader to the dates of his Napoleonics ...
to prove his legitimate title to the prophetical meaning of _Vates_"
(_Cent. Mag._, July, 1814, vol. lxxxiv. p. 58). Coleridge claimed to
have foretold the restoration of the Bourbons (see _Biographia
Literaria_, cap. x.).]
[328] {436} ["The Friend who favoured us with the following lines, the
poetical spirit of which wants no trumpet of ours, is aware that they
imply more than an impartial observer of the late period might feel, and
are written rather as by Frenchman than Englishman;--but certainly,
neither he nor any lover of liberty can help feeling and regretting that
in the latter time, at any rate, the symbol he speaks of was once more
comparatively identified with the cause of Freedom."--_Examiner_. April
7, 1816.]
[329] {437} The tricolor.
THE SIEGE OF CORINTH
"Guns, Trumpets, Blunderbusses, Drums and Thunder."
Pope, _Sat._ i. 26.[330]
INTRODUCTION TO _THE SIEGE OF CORINTH_.
In a note to the "Advertisement" to the _Siege of Corinth_ (_vide post_,
p. 447), Byron puts it on record that during the years 1809-10 he had
crossed the Isthmus of Corinth eight times, and in a letter to his
mother, dated Patras, July 30, 1810, he alludes to a recent visit to the
town of Corinth, in company with his friend Lord Sligo. (See, too, his
letter to Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 228.)
It is probable that he revisited Corinth more than once in the autumn of
1810; and we may infer that, just as the place and its surroundings--the
temple with its "two or three columns" (line 497), and the view across
the bay from Acro-Corinth--are sketched from memory, so the story of the
siege which took place in 1715 is based upon tales and legends which
were preserved and repeated by the grandchildren of the besieged, and
were taken down from their lips. There is point and meaning in the
apparently insignificant line (stanza xxiv. line 765), "We have heard
the hearers say" (see _variant_ i. p. 483), which is slipped into the
description of the final catastrophe. It bears witness to the fact that
the _Siege of Corinth_ is not a poetical expansion of a chapter in
history, but a heightened reminiscence of local tradition.
History has, indeed, very little to say on the subject. The anonymous
_Compleat History of the Turks_ (London, 1719), which Byron quotes as an
authority, is meagre and inaccurate. Hammer-Purgstall (_Histoire de
l'Empire Ottoman_, 1839, xiii. 269), who gives as his authorities
Girolamo Ferrari and Raschid, dismisses the siege in a few lines; and it
was not till the publication of Finlay's _History of Greece_ (vol. v.,
a.d. 1453-1821), in 1856, that the facts were known or reported.
Finlay's newly discovered authority was a then unpublished MS. of a
journal kept by Benjamin Brue, a connection of Voltaire's, who
accompanied the Grand Vizier, Ali Cumurgi, as his interpreter, on the
expedition into the Morea. According to Brue (_Journal de la Campagne
... en_ 1715 ... Paris, 1870, p. 18), the siege began on June 28, 1715.
A peremptory demand on the part of the Grand Vizier to surrender at
discretion was answered by the Venetian proveditor-general, Giacomo
Minetto, with calm but assured defiance ("Your menaces are useless, for
we are prepared to resist all your attacks, and, with confidence in the
assistance of God, we will preserve this fortress to the most serene
Republic. God is with us"). Nevertheless, the Turks made good their
threat, and on the 2nd of July the fortress capitulated. On the
following day at noon, whilst a party of Janissaries, contrary to order,
were looting and pillaging in all directions, the fortress was seen to
be enveloped in smoke. How or why the explosion happened was never
discovered, but the result was that some of the pillaging Janissaries
perished, and that others, to avenge their death, which they attributed
to Venetian treachery, put the garrison to the sword. It was believed at
the time that Minetto was among the slain; but, as Brue afterwards
discovered, he was secretly conveyed to Smyrna, and ultimately ransomed
by the Dutch Consul.
The late Professor Kölbing (_Siege of Corinth_, 1893, p. xxvii.), in
commenting on the sources of the poem, suggests, under reserve, that
Byron may have derived the incident of Minetto's self-immolation from an
historic source--the siege of Zsigetvar, in 1566, when a multitude of
Turks perished from the explosion of a powder magazine which had been
fired at the cost of his own life by the Hungarian commander Zrini.
It is, at least, equally probable that local patriotism was, in the
first instance, responsible for the poetic colouring, and that Byron
supplemented the meagre and uninteresting historic details which were at
his disposal by "intimate knowledge" of the Corinthian version of the
siege. (See _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord
Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222; and _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
Lord Byron_, by George Clinton, London, 1825, p. 284.)
It has been generally held that the _Siege of Corinth_ was written in
the second half of 1815 (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. vii.). "It
appears," says John Wright (_Works_, 1832, x. 100), "by the original
MS., to have been begun in July, 1815;" and Moore (_Life_, p. 307), who
probably relied on the same authority, speaks of "both the _Siege of
Corinth_ and _Parisina_ having been produced but a short time before the
Separation" (i.e. spring, 1816). Some words which Medwin
(_Conversations_, 1824, p. 55) puts into Byron's mouth point to the same
conclusion. Byron's own testimony, which is completely borne out by the
MS. itself (dated J^y [i.e. January, not July] 31, 1815), is in direct
conflict with these statements. In a note to stanza xix. lines 521-532
(_vide post_, pp. 471-473) he affirms that it "was not till after these
lines were written" that he heard "that wild and singularly original and
beautiful poem [_Christabel_] recited;" and in a letter to S. T.
Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 228), he is
careful to explain that "the enclosed extract from an unpublished poem
(i.e. stanza xix. lines 521-532) ... was written before (not seeing your
_Christabelle_ [sic], for that you know I never did till this day), but
before I heard Mr. S[cott] repeat it, which he did in June last, and
this thing was begun in January, and more than half written before the
Summer." The question of plagiarism will be discussed in an addendum to
Byron's note on the lines in question; but, subject to the correction
that it was, probably, at the end of May (see Lockhart's _Memoir of the
Life of Sir W. Scott_, 1871, pp. 311-313), not in June, that Scott
recited _Christabel_ for Byron's benefit, the date of the composition of
the poem must be determined by the evidence of the author himself.
The copy of the MS. of the _Siege of Corinth_ was sent to Murray at the
beginning (probably on the 2nd, the date of the copy) of November, and
was placed in Gifford's hands about the same time (see letter to Murray,
November 4, 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 245; and Murray's undated letter
on Gifford's "great delight" in the poem, and his "three critical
remarks," _Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 356). As with _Lara_, Byron
began by insisting that the _Siege_ should not be published separately,
but slipped into a fourth volume of the collected works, and once again
(possibly when he had at last made up his mind to accept a thousand
guineas for his own requirements, and not for other
beneficiaries--Godwin, Coleridge, or Maturin) yielded to his publisher's
wishes and representations. At any rate, the _Siege of Corinth_ and
_Parisina_, which, says Moore, "during the month of January and part of
February were in the hands of the printers" (_Life_, p. 300), were
published in a single volume on February 7, 1816. The greater reviews
were silent, but notices appeared in numerous periodicals; e.g. the
_Monthly Review_, February, 1816, vol. lxxix. p. 196; the _Eclectic
Review_, March, 1816, N.S. vol. v. p. 269; the _European_, May, 1816,
vol. lxxix. p. 427; the _Literary Panorama_, June, 1816, N.S. vol. iv.
p. 418; etc. Many of these reviews took occasion to pick out and hold up
to ridicule the illogical sentences, the grammatical solecisms, and
general imperfections of _technique_ which marked and disfigured the
_Siege of Corinth_. A passage in a letter which John Murray wrote to his
brother-publisher, William Blackwood (_Annals of a Publishing House_,
1897, i. 53), refers to these cavillings, and suggests both an apology
and a retaliation--
"Many who by 'numbers judge a poet's song' are so stupid as not to
see the powerful effect of the poems, which is the great object of
poetry, because they can pick out fifty careless or even bad lines.
The words may be carelessly put together; but this is secondary.
Many can write polished lines who will never reach the name of
poet. You see it is all poetically conceived in Lord B.'s mind."
In such wise did Murray bear testimony to Byron's "splendid and
imperishable excellence, which covers all his offences and outweighs all
his defects--the excellence of sincerity and strength."
To
JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.,
this poem is inscribed,
by his
FRIEND.
_January 22nd_, 1816.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The grand army of the Turks (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open
to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege
of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that
country,[331] thought it best in the first place to attack Corinth, upon
which they made several storms. The garrison being weakened, and the
governor seeing it was impossible to hold out such a place against so
mighty a force, thought it fit to beat a parley: but while they were
treating about the articles, one of the magazines in the Turkish camp,
wherein they had six hundred barrels of powder, blew up by accident,
whereby six or seven hundred men were killed; which so enraged the
infidels, that they would not grant any capitulation, but stormed the
place with so much fury, that they took it, and put most of the
garrison, with Signior Minotti, the governor, to the sword. The rest,
with Signior or Antonio Bembo, Proveditor Extraordinary, were made
prisoners of war."--_A Compleat History of the Turks_ [London, 1719],
iii. 151.
NOTE ON THE MS. OF _THE SIEGE OF CORINTH_.
The original MS. of the _Siege of Corinth_ (now in the possession of
Lord Glenesk) consists of sixteen folio and nine quarto sheets, and
numbers fifty pages. Sheets 1-4 are folios, sheets 5-10 are quartos,
sheets 11-22 are folios, and sheets 23-25 are quartos.
To judge from the occasional and disconnected pagination, this MS.
consists of portions of two or more fair copies of a number of detached
scraps written at different times, together with two or three of the
original scraps which had not been transcribed.
The water-mark of the folios is, with one exception (No. 8, 1815), 1813;
and of the quartos, with one exception (No. 8, 1814), 1812.
Lord Glenesk's MS. is dated January 31, 1815. Lady Byron's transcript,
from which the _Siege of Corinth_ was printed, and which is in Mr.
Murray's possession, is dated November 2, 1815.
THE SIEGE OF CORINTH
In the year since Jesus died for men,[332]
Eighteen hundred years and ten,[333]
We were a gallant company,
Riding o'er land, and sailing o'er sea.
Oh! but we went merrily![334]
We forded the river, and clomb the high hill,
Never our steeds for a day stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed;
Whether we couched in our rough capote,[335] 10
On the rougher plank of our gliding boat,
Or stretched on the beach, or our saddles spread,
As a pillow beneath the resting head,
Fresh we woke upon the morrow:
All our thoughts and words had scope,
We had health, and we had hope,
Toil and travel, but no sorrow.
We were of all tongues and creeds;--
Some were those who counted beads,
Some of mosque, and some of church, 20
And some, or I mis-say, of neither;
Yet through the wide world might ye search,
Nor find a motlier crew nor blither.
But some are dead, and some are gone,
And some are scattered and alone,
And some are rebels on the hills[336]
That look along Epirus' valleys,
Where Freedom still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood Oppression's ills;
And some are in a far countree, 30
And some all restlessly at home;
But never more, oh! never, we
Shall meet to revel and to roam.
But those hardy days flew cheerily![nz]
And when they now fall drearily,
My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main,[337]
And bear my spirit back again
Over the earth, and through the air,
A wild bird and a wanderer.
'Tis this that ever wakes my strain, 40
And oft, too oft, implores again
The few who may endure my lay,[oa]
To follow me so far away.
Stranger, wilt thou follow now,
And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow?
I.[338]
Many a vanished year and age,[ob]
And Tempest's breath, and Battle's rage,
Have swept o'er Corinth; yet she stands,
A fortress formed to Freedom's hands.[oc]
The Whirlwind's wrath, the Earthquake's shock, 50
Have left untouched her hoary rock,
The keystone of a land, which still,
Though fall'n, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide
That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
But could the blood before her shed
Since first Timoleon's brother bled,[339]
Or baffled Persia's despot fled, 60
Arise from out the Earth which drank
The stream of Slaughter as it sank,
That sanguine Ocean would o'erflow
Her isthmus idly spread below:
Or could the bones of all the slain,[od]
Who perished there, be piled again,
That rival pyramid would rise
More mountain-like, through those clear skies[oe]
Than yon tower-capp'd Acropolis,
Which seems the very clouds to kiss. 70
II.
On dun Cithæron's ridge appears
The gleam of twice ten thousand spears;
And downward to the Isthmian plain,
From shore to shore of either main,[of]
The tent is pitched, the Crescent shines
Along the Moslem's leaguering lines;
And the dusk Spahi's bands[340] advance
Beneath each bearded Pacha's glance;
And far and wide as eye can reach[og]
The turbaned cohorts throng the beach; 80
And there the Arab's camel kneels,
And there his steed the Tartar wheels;
The Turcoman hath left his herd,[341]
The sabre round his loins to gird;
And there the volleying thunders pour,
Till waves grow smoother to the roar.
The trench is dug, the cannon's breath
Wings the far hissing globe of death;[342]
Fast whirl the fragments from the wall,
Which crumbles with the ponderous ball; 90
And from that wall the foe replies,
O'er dusty plain and smoky skies,
With fares that answer fast and well
The summons of the Infidel.
III.
But near and nearest to the wall
Of those who wish and work its fall,
With deeper skill in War's black art,
Than Othman's sons, and high of heart
As any Chief that ever stood
Triumphant in the fields of blood; 100
From post to post, and deed to deed,
Fast spurring on his reeking steed,
Where sallying ranks the trench assail,
And make the foremost Moslem quail;
Or where the battery, guarded well,
Remains as yet impregnable,
Alighting cheerly to inspire
The soldier slackening in his fire;
The first and freshest of the host
Which Stamboul's Sultan there can boast, 110
To guide the follower o'er the field,
To point the tube, the lance to wield,
Or whirl around the bickering blade;--
Was Alp, the Adrian renegade![343]
IV.
From Venice--once a race of worth
His gentle Sires--he drew his birth;
But late an exile from her shore,[oh]
Against his countrymen he bore
The arms they taught to bear; and now
The turban girt his shaven brow. 120
Through many a change had Corinth passed
With Greece to Venice' rule at last;
And here, before her walls, with those
To Greece and Venice equal foes,
He stood a foe, with all the zeal
Which young and fiery converts feel,
Within whose heated bosom throngs
The memory of a thousand wrongs.
To him had Venice ceased to be
Her ancient civic boast--"the Free;" 130
And in the palace of St. Mark
Unnamed accusers in the dark
Within the "Lion's mouth" had placed
A charge against him uneffaced:[344]
He fled in time, and saved his life,
To waste his future years in strife,[oi]
That taught his land how great her loss
In him who triumphed o'er the Cross,
'Gainst which he reared the Crescent high,
And battled to avenge or die. 140
V.
Coumourgi[345]--he whose closing scene
Adorned the triumph of Eugene,
When on Carlowitz' bloody plain,
The last and mightiest of the slain,
He sank, regretting not to die,
But cursed the Christian's victory--
Coumourgi--can his glory cease,
That latest conqueror of Greece,
Till Christian hands to Greece restore
The freedom Venice gave of yore? 150
A hundred years have rolled away
Since he refixed the Moslem's sway;
And now he led the Mussulman,
And gave the guidance of the van
To Alp, who well repaid the trust
By cities levelled with the dust;
And proved, by many a deed of death,
How firm his heart in novel faith.
VI.
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them poured the ceaseless shot, 160
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din[oj]
Rose from each heated culverin;
And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb;
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell's volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flashed
The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, 170
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven;[ok]
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,
With volumed smoke that slowly grew[ol]
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.
VII.
But not for vengeance, long delayed,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
His skill to pierce the promised breach: 180
Within these walls a Maid was pent
His hope would win, without consent
Of that inexorable Sire,
Whose heart refused him in its ire,
When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin hand aspired to claim.
In happier mood, and earlier time,
While unimpeached for traitorous crime,
Gayest in Gondola or Hall,
He glittered through the Carnival; 190
And tuned the softest serenade
That e'er on Adria's waters played
At midnight to Italian maid.[om]
VIII.
And many deemed her heart was won;
For sought by numbers, given to none,
Had young Francesca's hand remained
Still by the Church's bonds unchained:
And when the Adriatic bore
Lanciotto to the Paynim shore,
Her wonted smiles were seen to fail, 200
And pensive waxed the maid and pale;
More constant at confessional,
More rare at masque and festival;
Or seen at such, with downcast eyes,
Which conquered hearts they ceased to prize:
With listless look she seems to gaze:
With humbler care her form arrays;
Her voice less lively in the song;
Her step, though light, less fleet among
The pairs, on whom the Morning's glance 210
Breaks, yet unsated with the dance.
IX.
Sent by the State to guard the land,
(Which, wrested from the Moslem's hand,[346]
While Sobieski tamed his pride
By Buda's wall and Danube's side,[on]
The chiefs of Venice wrung away
From Patra to Euboea's bay,)
Minotti held in Corinth's towers[oo]
The Doge's delegated powers,
While yet the pitying eye of Peace 220
Smiled o'er her long forgotten Greece:
And ere that faithless truce was broke
Which freed her from the unchristian yoke,
With him his gentle daughter came;
Nor there, since Menelaus' dame
Forsook her lord and land, to prove
What woes await on lawless love,
Had fairer form adorned the shore
Than she, the matchless stranger, bore.[op]
X.
The wall is rent, the ruins yawn; 230
And, with to-morrow's earliest dawn,
O'er the disjointed mass shall vault
The foremost of the fierce assault.
The bands are ranked--the chosen van
Of Tartar and of Mussulman,
The full of hope, misnamed "forlorn,"[347]
Who hold the thought of death in scorn,
And win their way with falchion's force,
Or pave the path with many a corse,
O'er which the following brave may rise, 240
Their stepping-stone--the last who dies![oq]
XI.
'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown[348]
The cold, round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,[or][349]
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining
And turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away, 250
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmured meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillowed on the waves;
The banners drooped along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
And that deep silence was unbroke, 260
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill,
And echo answered from the hill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer;
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone Spirit's o'er the plain:
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet, 270
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.[os]
It seemed to those within the wall
A cry prophetic of their fall:
It struck even the besieger's ear
With something ominous and drear,[350]
An undefined and sudden thrill,
Which makes the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed 280
Of that strange sense its silence framed;
Such as a sudden passing-bell
Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.[ot]
XII.
The tent of Alp was on the shore;
The sound was hushed, the prayer was o'er;
The watch was set, the night-round made,
All mandates issued and obeyed:
'Tis but another anxious night,
His pains the morrow may requite
With all Revenge and Love can pay, 290
In guerdon for their long delay.
Few hours remain, and he hath need
Of rest, to nerve for many a deed
Of slaughter; but within his soul
The thoughts like troubled waters roll.[ou]
He stood alone among the host;
Not his the loud fanatic boast
To plant the Crescent o'er the Cross,
Or risk a life with little loss,
Secure in paradise to be 300
By Houris loved immortally:
Nor his, what burning patriots feel,
The stern exaltedness of zeal,
Profuse of blood, untired in toil,
When battling on the parent soil.
He stood alone--a renegade
Against the country he betrayed;
He stood alone amidst his band,
Without a trusted heart or hand:
They followed him, for he was brave, 310
And great the spoil he got and gave;
They crouched to him, for he had skill
To warp and wield the vulgar will:[ov]
But still his Christian origin
With them was little less than sin.
They envied even the faithless fame
He earned beneath a Moslem name;
Since he, their mightiest chief, had been
In youth a bitter Nazarene.
They did not know how Pride can stoop, 320
When baffled feelings withering droop;
They did not know how Hate can burn
In hearts once changed from soft to stern;
Nor all the false and fatal zeal
The convert of Revenge can feel.
He ruled them--man may rule the worst,
By ever daring to be first:
So lions o'er the jackals sway;
The jackal points, he fells the prey,[ow][351]
Then on the vulgar, yelling, press, 330
To gorge the relics of success.
XIII.
His head grows fevered, and his pulse
The quick successive throbs convulse;
In vain from side to side he throws
His form, in courtship of repose;[ox]
Or if he dozed, a sound, a start
Awoke him with a sunken heart.
The turban on his hot brow pressed,
The mail weighed lead-like on his breast,
Though oft and long beneath its weight 340
Upon his eyes had slumber sate,
Without or couch or canopy,
Except a rougher field and sky[oy]
Than now might yield a warrior's bed,
Than now along the heaven was spread.
He could not rest, he could not stay
Within his tent to wait for day,[oz]
But walked him forth along the sand,
Where thousand sleepers strewed the strand.
What pillowed them? and why should he 350
More wakeful than the humblest be,
Since more their peril, worse their toil?
And yet they fearless dream of spoil;
While he alone, where thousands passed
A night of sleep, perchance their last,
In sickly vigil wandered on,
And envied all he gazed upon.
XIV.
He felt his soul become more light
Beneath the freshness of the night.
Cool was the silent sky, though calm, 360
And bathed his brow with airy balm:
Behind, the camp--before him lay,
In many a winding creek and bay,
Lepanto's gulf; and, on the brow
Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow,[pa]
High and eternal, such as shone
Through thousand summers brightly gone,
Along the gulf, the mount, the clime;
It will not melt, like man, to time:
Tyrant and slave are swept away, 370
Less formed to wear before the ray;
But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,[352]
Which on the mighty mount thou hailest,
While tower and tree are torn and rent,
Shines o'er its craggy battlement;
In form a peak, in height a cloud,
In texture like a hovering shroud,
Thus high by parting Freedom spread,
As from her fond abode she fled,
And lingered on the spot, where long 380
Her prophet spirit spake in song.[pb]
Oh! still her step at moments falters
O'er withered fields, and ruined altars,
And fain would wake, in souls too broken,
By pointing to each glorious token:
But vain her voice, till better days
Dawn in those yet remembered rays,
Which shone upon the Persian flying,
And saw the Spartan smile in dying.
XV.
Not mindless of these mighty times 390
Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes;
And through this night, as on he wandered,[pc]
And o'er the past and present pondered,
And thought upon the glorious dead
Who there in better cause had bled,
He felt how faint and feebly dim[pd]
The fame that could accrue to him,
Who cheered the band, and waved the sword,[pe]
A traitor in a turbaned horde;
And led them to the lawless siege, 400
Whose best success were sacrilege.
Not so had those his fancy numbered,[353]
The chiefs whose dust around him slumbered;
Their phalanx marshalled on the plain,
Whose bulwarks were not then in vain.
They fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing;
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and grey, 410
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain;[pf]
The meanest rill, the mightiest river
Rolled mingling with their fame for ever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is Glory's still and theirs![pg]
'Tis still a watch-word to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread, 420
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head:
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or Freedom won.[ph]
XVI.
Still by the shore Alp mutely mused,
And wooed the freshness Night diffused.
There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea,[354]
Which changeless rolls eternally;
So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood,[pi]
Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood;
And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 430
Heedless if she come or go:
Calm or high, in main or bay,
On their course she hath no sway.
The rock unworn its base doth bare,
And looks o'er the surf, but it comes not there;
And the fringe of the foam may be seen below,
On the line that it left long ages ago:
A smooth short space of yellow sand[pj][355]
Between it and the greener land.
He wandered on along the beach, 440
Till within the range of a carbine's reach
Of the leaguered wall; but they saw him not,
Or how could he 'scape from the hostile shot?[pk]
Did traitors lurk in the Christians' hold?
Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts waxed cold?
I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall[pl]
There flashed no fire, and there hissed no ball,
Though he stood beneath the bastion's frown,
That flanked the seaward gate of the town;
Though he heard the sound, and could almost tell 450
The sullen words of the sentinel,
As his measured step on the stone below
Clanked, as he paced it to and fro;
And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their Carnival,[356]
Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;
They were too busy to bark at him!
From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,[357] 460
As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew dull,
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;
So well had they broken a lingering fast
With those who had fallen for that night's repast.
And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band:
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,[358]
All the rest was shaven and bare. 470
The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw:
But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay.
XVII.
Alp turned him from the sickening sight:
Never had shaken his nerves in fight; 480
But he better could brook to behold the dying,
Deep in the tide of their warm blood lying,[pm][359]
Scorched with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,
Than the perishing dead who are past all pain.[pn][360]
There is something of pride in the perilous hour,
Whate'er be the shape in which Death may lower;
For Fame is there to say who bleeds,
And Honour's eye on daring deeds![361]
But when all is past, it is humbling to tread[po]
O'er the weltering field of the tombless dead,[362] 490
And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air,
Beasts of the forest, all gathering there;
All regarding man as their prey,
All rejoicing in his decay.[pp]
XVIII.
There is a temple in ruin stands,
Fashioned by long forgotten hands;
Two or three columns, and many a stone,
Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown!
Out upon Time! it will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before![pq][363] 500
Out upon Time! who for ever will leave
But enough of the past for the future to grieve
O'er that which hath been, and o'er that which must be:
What we have seen, our sons shall see;
Remnants of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone, reared by creatures of clay![pr]
XIX.
He sate him down at a pillar's base,[364]
And passed his hand athwart his face;
Like one in dreary musing mood,
Declining was his attitude; 510
His head was drooping on his breast,
Fevered, throbbing, and oppressed;
And o'er his brow, so downward bent,
Oft his beating fingers went,
Hurriedly, as you may see
Your own run over the ivory key,
Ere the measured tone is taken
By the chords you would awaken.
There he sate all heavily,
As he heard the night-wind sigh. 520
Was it the wind through some hollow stone,[ps]
Sent that soft and tender moan?[365]
He lifted his head, and he looked on the sea,
But it was unrippled as glass may be;
He looked on the long grass--it waved not a blade;
How was that gentle sound conveyed?
He looked to the banners--each flag lay still,
So did the leaves on Cithæron's hill,
And he felt not a breath come over his cheek;
What did that sudden sound bespeak? 530
He turned to the left--is he sure of sight?
There sate a lady, youthful and bright![pt][366]
XX.
He started up with more of fear
Than if an arméd foe were near.
"God of my fathers! what is here?
Who art thou? and wherefore sent
So near a hostile armament?"
His trembling hands refused to sign
The cross he deemed no more divine:
He had resumed it in that hour,[pu] 540
But Conscience wrung away the power.
He gazed, he saw; he knew the face
Of beauty, and the form of grace;
It was Francesca by his side,
The maid who might have been his bride![pv]
The rose was yet upon her cheek,
But mellowed with a tenderer streak:
Where was the play of her soft lips fled?
Gone was the smile that enlivened their red.
The Ocean's calm within their view,[pw] 550
Beside her eye had less of blue;
But like that cold wave it stood still,
And its glance, though clear, was chill.[367]
Around her form a thin robe twining,
Nought concealed her bosom shining;
Through the parting of her hair,
Floating darkly downward there,
Her rounded arm showed white and bare:
And ere yet she made reply,
Once she raised her hand on high; 560
It was so wan, and transparent of hue,
You might have seen the moon shine through.
XXI.
"I come from my rest to him I love best,
That I may be happy, and he may be blessed.
I have passed the guards, the gate, the wall;
Sought thee in safety through foes and all.
'Tis said the lion will turn and flee[368]
From a maid in the pride of her purity;
And the Power on high, that can shield the good
Thus from the tyrant of the wood, 570
Hath extended its mercy to guard me as well
From the hands of the leaguering Infidel.
I come--and if I come in vain,
Never, oh never, we meet again!
Thou hast done a fearful deed
In falling away from thy fathers' creed:
But dash that turban to earth, and sign
The sign of the cross, and for ever be mine;
Wring the black drop from thy heart,
And to-morrow unites us no more to part." 580
"And where should our bridal couch be spread?
In the midst of the dying and the dead?
For to-morrow we give to the slaughter and flame
The sons and the shrines of the Christian name.
None, save thou and thine, I've sworn,
Shall be left upon the morn:
But thee will I bear to a lovely spot,
Where our hands shall be joined, and our sorrow forgot.
There thou yet shall be my bride,
When once again I've quelled the pride 590
Of Venice; and her hated race
Have felt the arm they would debase
Scourge, with a whip of scorpions, those
Whom Vice and Envy made my foes."
Upon his hand she laid her own--
Light was the touch, but it thrilled to the bone,
And shot a chillness to his heart,[px]
Which fixed him beyond the power to start.
Though slight was that grasp so mortal cold,
He could not loose him from its hold; 600
But never did clasp of one so dear
Strike on the pulse with such feeling of fear,
As those thin fingers, long and white,
Froze through his blood by their touch that night.
The feverish glow of his brow was gone,
And his heart sank so still that it felt like stone,
As he looked on the face, and beheld its hue,[py]
So deeply changed from what he knew:
Fair but faint--without the ray
Of mind, that made each feature play 610
Like sparkling waves on a sunny day;
And her motionless lips lay still as death,
And her words came forth without her breath,
And there rose not a heave o'er her bosom's swell,[pz]
And there seemed not a pulse in her veins to dwell.
Though her eye shone out, yet the lids were fixed,[369]
And the glance that it gave was wild and unmixed
With aught of change, as the eyes may seem
Of the restless who walk in a troubled dream;
Like the figures on arras, that gloomily glare, 620
Stirred by the breath of the wintry air[qa]
So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light,[qb]
Lifeless, but life-like, and awful to sight;
As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down
From the shadowy wall where their images frown;
Fearfully flitting to and fro,
As the gusts on the tapestry come and go.[370]
"If not for love of me be given
Thus much, then, for the love of Heaven,--
Again I say--that turban tear 630
From off thy faithless brow, and swear
Thine injured country's sons to spare,
Or thou art lost; and never shalt see--
Not earth--that's past--but Heaven or me.
If this thou dost accord, albeit
A heavy doom' tis thine to meet,
That doom shall half absolve thy sin,
And Mercy's gate may receive thee within:[371]
But pause one moment more, and take
The curse of Him thou didst forsake; 640
And look once more to Heaven, and see
Its love for ever shut from thee.
There is a light cloud by the moon--[372]
'Tis passing, and will pass full soon--
If, by the time its vapoury sail
Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil,
Thy heart within thee is not changed,
Then God and man are both avenged;
Dark will thy doom be, darker still
Thine immortality of ill." 650
Alp looked to heaven, and saw on high
The sign she spake of in the sky;
But his heart was swollen, and turned aside,
By deep interminable pride.[qc]
This first false passion of his breast
Rolled like a torrent o'er the rest.
_He_ sue for mercy! _He_ dismayed
By wild words of a timid maid!
_He_, wronged by Venice, vow to save
Her sons, devoted to the grave! 660
No--though that cloud were thunder's worst,
And charged to crush him--let it burst!
He looked upon it earnestly,
Without an accent of reply;
He watched it passing; it is flown:
Full on his eye the clear moon shone,
And thus he spake--"Whate'er my fate,
I am no changeling--'tis too late:
The reed in storms may bow and quiver,
Then rise again; the tree must shiver. 670
What Venice made me, I must be,
Her foe in all, save love to thee:
But thou art safe: oh, fly with me!"
He turned, but she is gone!
Nothing is there but the column stone.
Hath she sunk in the earth, or melted in air?
He saw not--he knew not--but nothing is there.
XXII.
The night is past, and shines the sun
As if that morn were a jocund one.[373]
Lightly and brightly breaks away 680
The Morning from her mantle grey,[374]
And the Noon will look on a sultry day.[375]
Hark to the trump, and the drum,
And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn,
And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne,
And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum,
And the clash, and the shout, "They come! they come!"
The horsetails[376] are plucked from the ground, and the sword
From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word.
Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, 690
Strike your tents, and throng to the van;
Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,[377]
That the fugitive may flee in vain,
When he breaks from the town; and none escape,
Agéd or young, in the Christian shape;
While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass.[378]
The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;
Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;
White is the foam of their champ on the bit; 700
The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have crumbled before:[379]
Forms in his phalanx each Janizar;
Alp at their head; his right arm is bare,
So is the blade of his scimitar;
The Khan and the Pachas are all at their post;
The Vizier himself at the head of the host.
When the culverin's signal is fired, then on;
Leave not in Corinth a living one-- 710
A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.
God and the prophet--Alla Hu![380]
Up to the skies with that wild halloo!
"There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;
And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?
He who first downs with the red cross may crave[381]
His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!"
Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless Vizier;[382]
The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, 720
And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:--
Silence--hark to the signal--fire!
XXIII.
As the wolves, that headlong go
On the stately buffalo,
Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,
And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore,
He tramples on earth, or tosses on high
The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die
Thus against the wall they went,
Thus the first were backward bent;[383] 730
Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,
Strewed the earth like broken glass,[qd]
Shivered by the shot, that tore
The ground whereon they moved no more:
Even as they fell, in files they lay,
Like the mower's grass at the close of day,[qe]
When his work is done on the levelled plain;
Such was the fall of the foremost slain.[384]
XXIV.
As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,
From the cliffs invading dash 740
Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow,
Till white and thundering down they go,
Like the avalanche's snow
On the Alpine vales below;
Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,
Corinth's sons were downward borne
By the long and oft renewed
Charge of the Moslem multitude.
In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,
Heaped by the host of the Infidel, 750
Hand to hand, and foot to foot:
Nothing there, save Death, was mute;[385]
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them, or for their foes;
If they must mourn, or may rejoice
In that annihilating voice, 760
Which pierces the deep hills through and through
With an echo dread and new:
You might have heard it, on that day,
O'er Salamis and Megara;
(We have heard the hearers say,)[qf]
Even unto Piræus' bay.
XXV.
From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;[386]
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done. 770
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plundered dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,
That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,
Make a pause, and turn again--
With banded backs against the wall,
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780
There stood an old man[387]--his hairs were white,
But his veteran arm was full of might:
So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,
The dead before him, on that day,
In a semicircle lay;
Still he combated unwounded,
Though retreating, unsurrounded.
Many a scar of former fight
Lurked[388] beneath his corslet bright;
But of every wound his body bore, 790
Each and all had been ta'en before:
Though agéd, he was so iron of limb,
Few of our youth could cope with him,
And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,
Outnumbered his thin hairs[389] of silver grey.
From right to left his sabre swept:
Many an Othman mother wept
Sons that were unborn, when dipped[390]
His weapon first in Moslem gore,
Ere his years could count a score. 800
Of all he might have been the sire[391]
Who fell that day beneath his ire:
For, sonless left long years ago,
His wrath made many a childless foe;
And since the day, when in the strait[392]
His only boy had met his fate,
His parent's iron hand did doom
More than a human hecatomb.[393]
If shades by carnage be appeased,
Patroclus' spirit less was pleased 810
Than his, Minotti's son, who died
Where Asia's bounds and ours divide.
Buried he lay, where thousands before
For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore;
What of them is left, to tell
Where they lie, and how they fell?
Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves;
But they live in the verse that immortally saves.[394]
XXVI.
Hark to the Allah shout![395] a band
Of the Mussulman bravest and best is at hand; 820
Their leader's nervous arm is bare,
Swifter to smite, and never to spare--
Unclothed to the shoulder it waves them on;
Thus in the fight is he ever known:
Others a gaudier garb may show,
To tempt the spoil of the greedy foe;
Many a hand's on a richer hilt,
But none on a steel more ruddily gilt;
Many a loftier turban may wear,--
Alp is but known by the white arm bare; 830
Look through the thick of the fight,'tis there!
There is not a standard on that shore
So well advanced the ranks before;
There is not a banner in Moslem war
Will lure the Delhis half so far;
It glances like a falling star!
Where'er that mighty arm is seen,
The bravest be, or late have been;[396]
There the craven cries for quarter
Vainly to the vengeful Tartar; 840
Or the hero, silent lying,
Scorns to yield a groan in dying;
Mustering his last feeble blow
'Gainst the nearest levelled foe,
Though faint beneath the mutual wound,
Grappling on the gory ground.
XXVII.
Still the old man stood erect.
And Alp's career a moment checked.
"Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take,
For thine own, thy daughter's sake." 850
"Never, Renegado, never!
Though the life of thy gift would last for ever."[qg]
"Francesca!--Oh, my promised bride![qh]
Must she too perish by thy pride!"
"She is safe."--"Where? where?"--"In Heaven;
From whence thy traitor soul is driven--
Far from thee, and undefiled."
Grimly then Minotti smiled,
As he saw Alp staggering bow
Before his words, as with a blow. 860
"Oh God! when died she?"--"Yesternight--
Nor weep I for her spirit's flight:
None of my pure race shall be
Slaves to Mahomet and thee--
Come on!"--That challenge is in vain--
Alp's already with the slain!
While Minotti's words were wreaking
More revenge in bitter speaking
Than his falchion's point had found,
Had the time allowed to wound, 870
From within the neighbouring porch
Of a long defended church,
Where the last and desperate few
Would the failing fight renew,
The sharp shot dashed Alp to the ground;
Ere an eye could view the wound
That crashed through the brain of the infidel,
Round he spun, and down he fell;
A flash like fire within his eyes
Blazed, as he bent no more to rise, 880
And then eternal darkness sunk
Through all the palpitating trunk;[qi]
Nought of life left, save a quivering
Where his limbs were slightly shivering:
They turned him on his back; his breast
And brow were stained with gore and dust,
And through his lips the life-blood oozed,
From its deep veins lately loosed;
But in his pulse there was no throb,
Nor on his lips one dying sob; 890
Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath[qj]
Heralded his way to death:
Ere his very thought could pray,
Unaneled he passed away,
Without a hope from Mercy's aid,--
To the last a Renegade.[397]
XXVIII.
Fearfully the yell arose
Of his followers, and his foes;
These in joy, in fury those:[qk]
Then again in conflict mixing,[ql] 900
Clashing swords, and spears transfixing,
Interchanged the blow and thrust,
Hurling warriors in the dust.
Street by street, and foot by foot,
Still Minotti dares dispute
The latest portion of the land
Left beneath his high command;
With him, aiding heart and hand,
The remnant of his gallant band.
Still the church is tenable, 910
Whence issued late the fated ball
That half avenged the city's fall,
When Alp, her fierce assailant, fell:
Thither bending sternly back,
They leave before a bloody track;
And, with their faces to the foe,
Dealing wounds with every blow,[398]
The chief, and his retreating train,
Join to those within the fane;
There they yet may breathe awhile, 920
Sheltered by the massy pile.
XXIX.
Brief breathing-time! the turbaned host,
With added ranks and raging boast,
Press onwards with such strength and heat,
Their numbers balk their own retreat;
For narrow the way that led to the spot
Where still the Christians yielded not;
And the foremost, if fearful, may vainly try
Through the massy column to turn and fly;
They perforce must do or die. 930
They die; but ere their eyes could close,
Avengers o'er their bodies rose;
Fresh and furious, fast they fill
The ranks unthinned, though slaughtered still;
And faint the weary Christians wax
Before the still renewed attacks:
And now the Othmans gain the gate;
Still resists its iron weight,
And still, all deadly aimed and hot,
From every crevice comes the shot; 940
From every shattered window pour
The volleys of the sulphurous shower:
But the portal wavering grows and weak--
The iron yields, the hinges creak--
It bends--it falls--and all is o'er;
Lost Corinth may resist no more!
XXX.
Darkly, sternly, and all alone,
Minotti stood o'er the altar stone:
Madonna's face upon him shone,[399]
Painted in heavenly hues above, 950
With eyes of light and looks of love;
And placed upon that holy shrine
To fix our thoughts on things divine,
When pictured there, we kneeling see
Her, and the boy-God on her knee,
Smiling sweetly on each prayer
To Heaven, as if to waft it there.
Still she smiled; even now she smiles,
Though slaughter streams along her aisles:
Minotti lifted his agéd eye, 960
And made the sign of a cross with a sigh,
Then seized a torch which blazed thereby;
And still he stood, while with steel and flame,
Inward and onward the Mussulman came.
XXXI.
The vaults beneath the mosaic stone[qm]
Contained the dead of ages gone;
Their names were on the graven floor,
But now illegible with gore;[qn]
The carvéd crests, and curious hues
The varied marble's veins diffuse, 970
Were smeared, and slippery--stained, and strown
With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown:
There were dead above, and the dead below
Lay cold in many a coffined row;
You might see them piled in sable state,
By a pale light through a gloomy grate;
But War had entered their dark caves,[qo]
And stored along the vaulted graves
Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread
In masses by the fleshless dead: 980
Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine;
To these a late formed train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource
Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.
XXXII.
The foe came on, and few remain
To strive, and those must strive in vain:
For lack of further lives, to slake
The thirst of vengeance now awake,
With barbarous blows they gash the dead, 990
And lop the already lifeless head,
And fell the statues from their niche,
And spoil the shrines of offerings rich,
And from each other's rude hands wrest
The silver vessels Saints had blessed.
To the high altar on they go;
Oh, but it made a glorious show![400]
On its table still behold
The cup of consecrated gold;
Massy and deep, a glittering prize, 1000
Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes:
That morn it held the holy wine,[qp]
Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,
Which his worshippers drank at the break of day,[qq]
To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray.
Still a few drops within it lay;
And round the sacred table glow
Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,
From the purest metal cast;
A spoil--the richest, and the last. 1010
XXXIII.
So near they came, the nearest stretched
To grasp the spoil he almost reached
When old Minotti's hand
Touched with the torch the train--
'Tis fired![401]
Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turbaned victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurled on high with the shivered fane,
In one wild roar expired![402] 1020
The shattered town--the walls thrown down--
The waves a moment backward bent--
The hills that shake, although unrent,[qr]
As if an Earthquake passed--
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast--
Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er
On that too long afflicted shore:[403]
Up to the sky like rockets go 1030
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again
Like a cinder strewed the plain:
Down the ashes shower like rain;
Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles
With a thousand circling wrinkles;
Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say![qs]
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deemed she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.[404]
Not the matrons that them bore
Could discern their offspring more;[405]
That one moment left no trace 1050
More of human form or face
Save a scattered scalp or bone:
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,[qt]
Deeply dinted in the clay,
All blackened there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
The deadly earth-shock disappeared:
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead;[qu][406] 1060
The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke--
The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;[407]
The wolves yelled on the caverned hill
Where Echo rolled in thunder still;[qv]
The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,[qw][408]
Bayed from afar complainingly, 1070
With a mixed and mournful sound,[qx]
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:[409]
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,
And mounted nearer to the sun,
The clouds beneath him seemed so dun;
Their smoke assailed his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek--
Thus was Corinth lost and won![410]
FOOTNOTES:
[330] "With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss, and Thunder."
[331] {447} Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in
the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains his
government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-11; and,
in the course of journeying through the country from my first arrival in
1809, I crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the
Morea, over the mountains; or in the other direction, when passing from
the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. Both the routes are picturesque
and beautiful, though very different: that by sea has more sameness; but
the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it,
presents many attractive views of the islands Salamis, Ægina, Poros,
etc., and the coast of the Continent.
["Independently of the suitableness of such an event to the power of
Lord Byron's genius, the Fall of Corinth afforded local attractions, by
the intimate knowledge which the poet had of the place and surrounding
objects.... Thus furnished with that topographical information which
could not be well obtained from books and maps, he was admirably
qualified to depict the various operations and progress of the
siege."--_Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord
Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222.]
[332] {449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy
of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the
First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to
Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as
an opening to the _Siege of Corinth_. I had forgotten them, and am not
sure that they had not better be left out now;--on that you and your
Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale,"
October 23rd. First published in _Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 638,
they were included among the _Occasional Poems_ in the edition of 1831,
and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]
[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death
instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an
old ballad (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. 53)--
"Upon the sixteen hunder year
Of God, and fifty-three,
From Christ was born, that bought us dear,
As writings testifie," etc.
See "The Life and Age of Man" (_Burns' Selected Poems_, ed. by J. L.
Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]
[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives
that travellers be!"--_Letters_, 1898, i. 233.]
[335] {450} [For "capote," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza
lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 132,
181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (_Letters_,
1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of
war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak),
and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]
[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who
followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head
of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.
[nz] {451} _But those winged days_----.--[MS.]
[337] [Compare Kingsley's _Last Buccaneer_--
"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main--
To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]
[oa] _The kindly few who love my lay_.--[MS.]
[338] [The MS. is dated J^y (January) 31, 1815. Lady Byron's copy is
dated November 2, 1815.]
[ob] _Many a year, and many an age_.--[MS. G. Copy.]
[oc] _A marvel from her Moslem bands_.--[MS. G.]
[339] {452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes
in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power
in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on
the story, and that Akenside had the same design (_Works_ of Alexander
Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]
[od] _Or could the dead be raised again_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[oe]
----_through yon clear skies_
_Than tower-capt Acropolis_.--[MS. G.]
[of] _Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]_
[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]
[og]
_The turbaned crowd of dusky hue_
_Whose march Morea's fields may rue_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they
dwell in tents.
[342] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 639 (_vide ante_, p. 116)--"The
deathshot hissing from afar."]
[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how
"Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith
Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed
(Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave
Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He
conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf
Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His
epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan
élevée jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en
poussière."--Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l'Empire Othoman_, i.
13-15.]
[oh] _But now an exile_----.--[MS. G.]
[344] {455} ["The _Lions' Mouths_, under the arcade at the summit of the
Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no
doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal
for the public welfare."--_Sketches from Venetian History_, 1832, ii.
380.]
[oi] _To waste its future_----.--[MS. G.]
[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the
charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to
Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one
campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the
battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary,
endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August
16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and
some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus
serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of
Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded
presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was
a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his
expense."
[For his letter to Prince Eugene, "Eh bien! la guerre va décider entre
nous," etc., and for an account of his death, see Hammer-Purgstall,
_Historie de l'Empire Othoman_, xiii. 300, 312.]
[oj] {456} _And death-like rolled_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[ok] _Like comets in convulsion riven_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]
[ol]
_Impervious to the powerless sun_,
_Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew_.--
[MS. G. erased.]
[om] {457} _In midnight courtship to Italian maid_.--[MS. G.]
[346] {458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of
Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks
by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for
the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was
begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]
[on] _By Buda's wall to Danube's side_.--[MS. G.]
[oo] _Pisani held_----.--[MS. G.]
[op] _Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[347] {459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an
equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see _Childe Harold_, Canto
II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]
[oq] _By stepping o'er_----.--[MS. G.]
[348] ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight.
Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]
[or] _Bespangled with her isles_----.--[MS. G.]
[349] ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in _The Pleasures of
Hope_, Part II.--
"The seraph eye shall count the starry train,
Like distant isles embosomed on the main."
And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xi.
lines 14, 15--
"The studded archipelago,
O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."
For other "star-similes," see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza
lxxxviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]
[os]
_And take a dark unmeasured tone._--[MS. G.]
_And make a melancholy moan_,
_To mortal voice and ear unknown._--[MS. G. erased.]
[350] {461} [Compare Scott's _Marmion_, III. xvi. 4--
"And that strange Palmer's boding say,
That fell so ominous and drear."]
[ot]
----_by fancy framed_,
_Which rings a deep, internal knell_,
_A visionary passing-bell._--[MS. G. erased.]
[ou] _The thoughts tumultuously roll._--[MS. G.]
[ov] {462} _To triumph o'er_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[ow]
_They but provide, he fells the prey._--[MS. G.]
_As lions o'er the jackal sway_
_By springing dauntless on the prey;_
_They follow on, and yelling press_
_To gorge the fragments of success._--[MS. G. erased.]
[351] [Lines 329-331 are inserted in the copy. They are in Byron's
handwriting. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 1,
_seq._--"_That's_ an appropriate simile, _that jackal_."]
[ox] {463}
_He vainly turned from side to side_,
_And each reposing posture tried_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[oy] _Beyond a rougher_----.--[MS. G.]
[oz] ----_to sigh for day_.--[MS. G.]
[pa] {464}
_Of Liakura--his unmelting snow_
_Bright and eternal_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[352] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 566 (_vide ante_, p. 113)--
"For where is he that hath beheld
The peak of Liakura unveiled?"
The reference is to the almost perpetual "cap" of mist on Parnassus
(Mount Likeri or Liakura), which lies some thirty miles to the
north-west of Corinth.]
[pb] {465} _Her spirit spoke in deathless song_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[pc] _And in this night_----.--[MS. G.]
[pd] _He felt how little and how dim_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[pe] _Who led the band_----.--[MS. G.]
[353] [Compare _The Giaour_, lines 103, _seq._ (_vide ante_, p.
91)--"Clime of the unforgotten brave!" etc.]
[pf] {466} _Their memory hallowed every fountain_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[pg] Here follows, in the MS.--
_Immortal--boundless--undecayed--_
_Their souls the very soil pervade_.--
[_In the Copy the lines are erased_.]
[ph] _Where Freedom loveliest may be won_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[354] The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible
tides in the Mediterranean.
[pi] _So that fiercest of waves_----.--[MS. G.]
[pj] {467} _A little space of light grey sand_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[355] [Compare _The Island_, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12--
"A narrow segment of the yellow sand
On one side forms the outline of a strand."]
[pk]
_Or would not waste on a single head_
_The ball on numbers better sped_.--[MS. G. erased]
[pl] _I know not in faith_----.--[MS. G.]
[356] [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the
editor of _The Works of Lord Byron_, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, "Lord
Byron gave Mr. Gifford _carte blanche_ to strike out or alter anything
at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is
somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention
whatever to the august "reader's" suggestions and strictures. The sheets
on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but
pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were
made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of
an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January
2, 1817.]
[357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the
wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by
the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between
the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's
_Travels_ [_in Albania_, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those
of some refractory Janizaries.
[358] This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet
will draw them into Paradise by it.
[pm] {469} _Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying_.--[MS. G.
Copy.]
[359] ["Than the mangled corpse in its own blood lying."--Gifford.]
[pn] _Than the rotting dead_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[360] [Strike out--
"Scorch'd with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,
Than the perishing dead who are past all pain."
What is a "perishing dead"?--Gifford.]
[361] [Lines 487, 488 are inserted in the copy in Byron's handwriting.]
[po] _And when all_----.--[MS. G.]
[362] ["O'er the weltering _limbs_ of the tombless dead."--Gifford.]
[pp]
_All that liveth on man will prey_,
_All rejoicing in his decay,_
or,
_Nature rejoicing in his decay_.
_All that can kindle dismay and disgust_
_Follow his frame from the bier to the dust._--[MS. G. erased.]
[pq] {470}
----_it hath left no more_
_Of the mightiest things that have gone before_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[363] [Omit this couplet.--Gifford.]
[pr] After this follows in the MS. erased--
_Monuments that the coming age_
_Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage_--
_Till Ruin makes the relics scarce_,
_Then Learning acts her solemn farce_,
_And, roaming through the marble waste_,
_Prates of beauty, art, and taste_.
XIX.
_That Temple was more in the midst of the plain_--
or,
_What of that shrine did yet remain_
_Lay to his left more in midst of the plain_.--[MS. G.]
[364] [From this all is beautiful to--"He saw not--he knew not--but
nothing is there."--Gifford. For "pillar's base," compare _Childe
Harold_, Canto II. stanza x. line 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 105.]
[ps] {471} _Is it the wind that through the stone._ or,----_o'er the
heavy stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[365] I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance
in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr.
Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were
written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful
poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very
recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is
convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea
undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed
above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer
delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite
of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.
[The lines in _Christabel_, Part the First, 43-52, 57, 58, are these--
"The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek--
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."
" ... What sees she there?
There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white."
Byron (_vide ante_, p. 443), in a letter to Coleridge, dated October 27,
1815, had already expressly guarded himself against a charge of
plagiarism, by explaining that lines 521-532 of stanza xix. were written
before he heard Walter Scott repeat _Christabel_ in the preceding June.
Now, as Byron himself perceived, perhaps for the first time, when he had
the MS. of _Christabel_ before him, the coincidence in language and
style between the two passages is unquestionable; and, as he hoped and
expected that Coleridge's fragment, when completed, would issue from the
press, he was anxious to avoid even the semblance of pilfering, and went
so far as to suggest that the passage should be cancelled. Neither in
the private letter nor the published note does Byron attempt to deny or
explain away the coincidence, but pleads that his lines were written
before he had heard Coleridge's poem recited, and that he had not been
guilty of a "wilful plagiarism." There is no difficulty in accepting his
statement. Long before the summer of 1815 _Christabel_ "had a pretty
general circulation in the literary world" (Medwin, _Conversations_,
1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other
passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of
_Christabel_ had sounded in his ears, he may (as Kölbing points out)
have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey,
or of Scott himself.
Compare _Thalaba the Destroyer_, v. 20 (1838, iv. 187)--
"What sound is borne on the wind?
Is it the storm that shakes
The thousand oaks of the forest?
* * * * *
Is it the river's roar
Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.
Or compare _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, I. xii. 5. _seq._ (1812, p.
24)--
"And now she sits in secret bower
In old Lord David's western tower,
And listens to a heavy sound,
That moans the mossy turrets round.
Is it the roar of Teviot's tide,
That chafes against the scaur's red side?
Is it the wind that swings the oaks?
Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.
Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the
_Siege of Corinth_, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and
fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced
to his notice.]
[pt] {473}_There sate a lady young and bright_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[366] [Contemporary critics fell foul of these lines for various
reasons. The _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p. 151)
remarks that "the following couplet [i.e. lines 531, 532] reminds us of
the _persiflage_ of Lewis or the pathos of a vulgar ballad;" while the
_Dublin Examiner_ (May, 1816, vol. i. p. 19) directs a double charge
against the founders of the schism and their proselyte: "If the
Cumberland _Lakers_ were not well known to be personages of the most
pious and saintly temperament, we would really have serious
apprehensions lest our noble Poet should come to any harm in consequence
of the envy which the two following lines and a great many others
through the poems, might excite by their successful rivalship of some of
the finest effects of babyism that these Gentlemen can boast."]
[pu] _He would have made it_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[pv] _She who would_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[pw] {474} _The ocean spread before their view_.--[Copy.]
[367] ["And its _thrilling_ glance, etc."--Gifford.]
[368] [Warton (_Observations en the Fairy Queen_, 1807, ii. 131),
commenting on Spenser's famous description of "Una and the Lion" (_Faëry
Queene_, Book I. canto iii. stanzas 5, 6, 7), quotes the following
passage from _Seven Champions of Christendom_: "Now, Sabra, I have by
this sufficiently proved thy true virginitie: for it is the nature of a
lion, be he never so furious, not to harme the unspotted virgin, but
humbly to lay his bristled head upon a maiden's lap."
Byron, according to Leigh Hunt (_Lord Byron and some of his
Contemporaries_, 1828, i. 77), could not "see anything" in Spenser, and
was not familiar with the _Fairy Queen_; but he may have had in mind
Scott's allusion to Spenser's Una--
"Harpers have sung and poets told
That he, in fury uncontrolled,
The shaggy monarch of the wood,
Before a virgin, fair and good,
Hath pacified his savage mood."
_Marmion_, Canto II. stanza vii. line 3, _seq_.
(See Kölbing's note to _Siege of Corinth_, 1893, pp. 110-112.)]
[px] {476}
_She laid her fingers on his hand_,
_Its coldness thrilled through every bone_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[py] _As he looked on her face_----.--[MS. G.]
[pz] ----_on her bosom's swell_.--[MS. G. erased. Copy.]
[369] [Compare Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 1, line 30--
"You see, her eyes are open,
Aye, but their sense is shut."
Compare, too, _Christabel_, Conclusion to Part the First (lines 292,
293)--
"With open eyes (ah, woe is me!)
Asleep, and dreaming fearfully."]
[qa] {477}
_Like a picture, that magic had charmed from its frame_,
_Lifeless but life-like, and ever the same_.
or, _Like a picture come forth from its canvas and frame_.--
[MS. G. erased.]
[qb]
_And seen_----.--[MS. G.]
----_its fleecy mail_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[370] [In the summer of 1803, Byron, then turned fifteen, though offered
a bed at Annesley, used at first to return every night to Newstead;
alleging that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths,
which he fancied "had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and
would come down from their frames to haunt him." Moore thinks this
passage may have been suggested by the recollection (_Life_, p. 27).
Compare _Lara_, Canto I. stanza xi. line 1, _seq_. (_vide ante_, p. 331,
note 1).]
[371] [Compare Southey's _Roderick_, Canto XXI. (ed. 1838, ix. 195)--
" ... and till the grave
Open, the gate of mercy is not closed."]
[372] {478} I have been told that the idea expressed in this and the
five following lines has been admired by those whose approbation is
valuable. I am glad of it; but it is not original--at least not mine; it
may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English
version of "Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to
which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a
renewal of gratification.--[The following is the passage: "'Deluded
prince!' said the Genius, addressing the Caliph ... 'This moment is the
last, of grace, allowed thee: ... give back Nouronihar to her father,
who still retains a few sparks of life: destroy thy tower, with all its
abominations: drive Carathis from thy councils: be just to thy subjects:
respect the ministers of the Prophet: compensate for thy impieties by an
exemplary life; and, instead of squandering thy days in voluptuous
indulgence, lament thy crimes on the sepulchres of thy ancestors. Thou
beholdest the clouds that obscure the sun: at the instant he recovers
his splendour, if thy heart be not changed, the time of mercy assigned
thee will be past for ever.'"
"Vathek, depressed with fear, was on the point of prostrating himself at
the feet of the shepherd ... but, his pride prevailing ... he said,
'Whoever thou art, withhold thy useless admonitions.... If what I have
done be so criminal ... there remains not for me a moment of grace. I
have traversed a sea of blood to acquire a power which will make thy
equals tremble; deem not that I shall retire when in view of the port;
or that I will relinquish her who is dearer to me than either my life or
thy mercy. Let the sun appear! let him illumine my career! it matters
not where it may end!' On uttering these words ... Vathek ... commanded
that his horses should be forced back to the road.
"There was no difficulty in obeying these orders; for the attraction had
ceased; the sun shone forth in all his glory, and the shepherd vanished
with a lamentable scream" (ed. 1786, pp. 183-185).]
[qc] {479} _By rooted and unhallowed pride_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[373] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]
[374] {480} [Compare--"While the still morn went out with sandals grey."
_Lycidas_, line 187.]
[375] [Strike out--"And the Noon will look on a sultry day."--Gifford.]
[376] The horsetails, fixed upon a lance, a pacha's standard.
["When the vizir appears in public, three _thoughs_, or horse-tails,
fastened to a long staff, with a large gold ball at top, is borne before
him."--_Moeurs des Ottomans_, par A. L. Castellan (Translated, 1821),
iv. 7.
Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II., "Albanian War-Song," stanza 10, line
2; and _Bride of Abydos_, line 714 (_vide ante_, p. 189).]
[377] [Compare--"Send out moe horses, skirr the country round."
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, line 35.]
[378] [Omit--
"While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass."
--Gifford.]
[379] ["And crush the wall they have _shaken_ before."--Gifford.]
[380] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 734 (_vide ante_, p. 120)--"At solemn
sound of 'Alla Hu!'" And _Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanza viii.]
[381] ["He who first _downs_ with the red cross may crave," etc. What
vulgarism is this!--"He who _lowers_,--or _plucks down_,"
etc.--Gifford.]
[382] [The historian, George Finlay, who met and frequently conversed
with Byron at Mesalonghi, with a view to illustrating "Lord Byron's
_Siege of Corinth_," subjoins in a note the full text of "the summons
sent by the grand vizier, and the answer." (See Finlay's _Greece under
Othoman and Venetian Domination_, 1856, p. 266, note 1; and, for the
original authority, see Brue's _Journal de la Campagne_, ... _en_ 1715,
Paris, 1871, p. 18.)]
[383] {482}
["Thus against the wall they _bent_,
Thus the first were backward _sent_."
--Gifford.]
[qd] _With such volley yields like glass_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[qe] _Like the mowers ridge_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[384] ["Such was the fall of the foremost train."--Gifford.]
[385] {483} [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, Part I. sc. 2 ("Song of
the Soldiers")--
"Our shout shall grow gladder,
And death only be mute."]
[qf] _I have heard_----.--[MS. G.]
[386] [Compare _Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 2, line 55--
"If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal."]
[387] {484} ["There stood a man," etc.--Gifford.]
[388] ["_Lurked_"--a bad word--say "_was hid_."--Gifford.]
[389] ["Outnumbered his hairs," etc.--Gifford.]
[390] ["Sons that were unborn, when _he_ dipped."--Gifford.]
[391] {485} [Bravo!--this is better than King Priam's fifty
sons.--Gifford.]
[392] In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the
Venetians and Turks.
[393] [There can be no such thing; but the whole of this is poor, and
spun out.--Gifford. The solecism, if such it be, was repeated in _Marino
Faliero_, act iii. sc. I, line 38.]
[394] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxix. lines 5-8
(_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 125)--
"Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save?...
If life eternal may await the lyre."]
[395] ["Hark to the Alia Hu!" etc.--Gifford.]
[396] {486} [Gifford has erased lines 839-847.]
[qg] _Though the life of thy giving would last for ever_.--[MS. G.
Copy.]
[qh] _Where's Francesca?--my promised bride!_--[MS. G. Copy.]
[qi] {488} Here follows in _MS. G._--
_Twice and once he roll'd a space_,
_Then lead-like lay upon his face_.
[qj] _Sigh, nor sign, nor parting word_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[397] [The Spanish "renegado" and the Anglicized "renegade" were
favourite terms of reprobation with politicians and others at the
beginning of the century. When Southey's _Wat Tyler_ was reprinted in
1817, William Smith, the Member for Norwich, denounced the Laureate as a
"renegado," an attack which Coleridge did his best to parry by
contributing articles to the _Courier_ on "Apostasy and Renegadoism"
(Letter to Murray, March 26, 1817, _Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i.
306). Byron himself, in _Don Juan_ ("Dedication," stanza i. line 5),
hails Southey as "My Epic Renegade!" Compare, too, stanza xiv. of
"_Lines addressed to a Noble Lord_ (His Lordship will know why), By one
of the small Fry of the Lakes" (i.e. Miss Barker, the "Bhow Begum" of
Southey's _Doctor_)--
"And our Ponds shall better please thee,
Than those now dishonoured seas,
With their shores and Cyclades
Stocked with Pachas, Seraskiers,
Slaves and turbaned Buccaneers;
Sensual Mussulmans atrocious,
Renegadoes more ferocious," etc.]
[qk] {489} _These in rage, in triumph those_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]
[ql] _Then again in fury mixing_.--[MS. G.]
[398] ["Dealing _death_ with every blow."--Gifford.]
[399] {490} [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lxi. lines 1,
_seq._--
"But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round ...
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine."]
[qm]
/ _chequered_ \
----_beneath the_ { } _stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]
\ _inlaid_ /
[qn] _But now half-blotted_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[qo] _But War must make the most of means_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[400] {492} ["Oh, but it made a glorious show!!!" Gifford erases the
line, and adds these marks of exclamation.]
[qp] ----_the sacrament wine_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[qq] _Which the Christians partook at the break of the day_.--[MS. G.
Copy.]
[401] {493} [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act v. sc. 1 (s.f.)--
"_Myr._ Art thou ready?
_Sard._ As the torch in thy grasp.
(_Myrrha fires the pile._)
_Myr._ 'Tis fired! I come."]
[402] [A critic in the _Eclectic Review_ (vol. v. N.S., 1816, p. 273),
commenting on the "obvious carelessness" of these lines, remarks, "We
know not how 'all that of dead remained' could _expire_ in that wild
roar." To apply the word "expire" to inanimate objects is, no doubt, an
archaism, but Byron might have quoted Dryden as an authority, "The
ponderous ball expires."]
[qr] _The hills as by an earthquake bent_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[403] {494} [Strike out from "Up to the sky," etc., to "All blackened
there and reeking lay." Despicable stuff.--Gifford.]
[qs] _Who can see or who shall say?_--[MS. G. erased.]
[404] [Lines 1043-1047 are not in the Copy or MS. G., but were included
in the text of the First Edition.]
[405] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto II. stanza cii. line 1, _seq._--
"Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done
Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to
Such things a mother had not known her son
Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew."
Compare, too, _The Island_, Canto I. section ix. lines 13, 14.]
[qt] {495} _And crashed each mass of stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[qu]
_And left their food the unburied dead_.--[Copy.]
_And left their food the untasted dead_.--[MS. G.]
_And howling left_----.--[MS. G. erased.]
[406] [Omit the next six lines.--Gifford.]
[407] ["I have heard hyænas and jackalls in the ruins of Asia; and
bull-frogs in the marshes; besides wolves and angry
Mussulmans."--_Journal_, November 23, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 340.]
[qv] _Where Echo rolled in horror still_.--[MS. G.]
[qw] _The frightened jackal's shrill sharp cry_.--[MS. G. erased.]
[408] I believe I have taken a poetical licence to transplant the jackal
from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the
ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and
follow armies. [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line 6;
and _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2.]
[qx] _Mixed and mournful as the sound_.--[MS. G.]
[409] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]
[410] [With lines 1058-1079, compare Southey's _Roderick_ (Canto XVIII.,
ed. 1838, ix. 169)--
"Far and wide the thundering shout,
Rolling among reduplicating rocks,
Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales.
The wild ass starting in the forest glade
Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf
Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake;
The sluggish bear, awakened in his den,
Roused up and answered with a sullen growl,
Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar scared,
The brooding eagle from her nest took wing."
A sentence in a letter to Moore, dated January 10, 1815 (_Letters_,
1899, iii. 168), "_I_ have tried the rascals (i.e. the public) with my
Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. Nobody but S....y has done any
thing worth a slice of bookseller's pudding, and _he_ has not luck
enough to be found out in doing a good thing," implies that Byron had
read and admired Southey's _Roderick_--an inference which is curiously
confirmed by a memorandum in Murray's handwriting: "When Southey's poem,
_Don Roderick_ (_sic_), was published, Lord Byron sent in the middle of
the night to ask John Murray if he had heard any opinion of it, for he
thought it one of the finest poems he had ever read." The resemblance
between the two passages, which is pointed out by Professor Kölbing, is
too close to be wholly unconscious, but Byron's expansion of Southey's
lines hardly amounts to a plagiarism.]
PARISINA.
INTRODUCTION TO _PARISINA_.
_Parisina_, which had been begun before the _Siege of Corinth_, was
transcribed by Lady Byron, and sent to the publisher at the beginning of
December, 1815. Murray confessed that he had been alarmed by some hints
which Byron had dropped as to the plot of the narrative, but was
reassured when he traced "the delicate hand that transcribed it." He
could not say enough of this "Pearl" of great price. "It is very
interesting, pathetic, beautiful--do you know I would almost say moral"
(_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 353). Ward, to whom the MS. of
_Parisina_ was shown, and Isaac D'Israeli, who heard it read aloud by
Murray, were enthusiastic as to its merits; and Gifford, who had mingled
censure with praise in his critical appreciation of the _Siege_,
declared that the author "had never surpassed _Parisina_."
The last and shortest of the six narrative poems composed and published
in the four years (the first years of manhood and of fame, the only
years of manhood passed at home in England) which elapsed between the
appearance of the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ and the third,
_Parisina_ has, perhaps, never yet received its due. At the time of its
appearance it shared the odium which was provoked by the publication of
_Fare Thee Well_ and _A Sketch_, and before there was time to reconsider
the new volume on its own merits, the new canto of _Childe Harold_,
followed almost immediately by the _Prisoner of Chillon_ and its
brilliant and noticeable companion poems, usurped the attention of
friend and foe. Contemporary critics (with the exception of the
_Monthly_ and _Critical_ Reviews) fell foul of the subject-matter of the
poem--the guilty passion of a bastard son for his father's wife. "It
was too disgusting to be rendered pleasing by any display of genius"
(_European Magazine_); "The story of _Parisina_ includes adultery not to
be named" (_Literary Panorama_); while the _Eclectic_, on grounds of
taste rather than of morals, gave judgment that "the subject of the tale
was purely unpleasing"--"the impression left simply painful."
Byron, no doubt, for better or worse, was in advance of his age, in the
pursuit of art for art's sake, and in his indifference, not to
morality--the _dénouement_ of the story is severely moral--but to the
moral edification of his readers. The tale was chosen because it is a
tale of love and guilt and woe, and the poet, unconcerned with any other
issue, sets the tale to an enchanting melody. It does not occur to him
to condone or to reprobate the loves of Hugo and Parisina, and in
detailing the issue leaves the actors to their fate. It was this
aloofness from ethical considerations which perturbed and irritated the
"canters," as Byron called them--the children and champions of the
anti-revolution. The modern reader, without being attracted or repelled
by the _motif_ of the story, will take pleasure in the sustained energy
and sure beauty of the poetic strain. Byron may have gone to the
"nakedness of history" for his facts, but he clothed them in singing
robes of a delicate and shining texture.
to
SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES, ESQ.
the following poem
Is Inscribed,
by one who has long admired his talents
and valued his friendship.
_January_ 22, 1816.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The following poem is grounded on a circumstance mentioned in Gibbon's
"Antiquities of the House of Brunswick." I am aware, that in modern
times, the delicacy or fastidiousness of the reader may deem such
subjects unfit for the purposes of poetry. The Greek dramatists, and
some of the best of our old English writers, were of a different
opinion: as Alfieri and Schiller have also been, more recently, upon the
Continent. The following extract will explain the facts on which the
story is founded. The name of _Azo_ is substituted for Nicholas, as more
metrical.--[B.]
"Under the reign of Nicholas III. [A.D. 1425] Ferrara was polluted with
a domestic tragedy. By the testimony of a maid, and his own observation,
the Marquis of Este discovered the incestuous loves of his wife
Parisina, and Hugo his bastard son, a beautiful and valiant youth. They
were beheaded in the castle by the sentence of a father and husband, who
published his shame, and survived their execution.[411] He was
unfortunate, if they were guilty: if they were innocent, he was still
more unfortunate; nor is there any possible situation in which I can
sincerely approve the last act of the justice of a parent."--Gibbon's
_Miscellaneous Works_, vol. iii. p. 470.--[Ed. 1837, p. 830.]
PARISINA.[412]
I.
It is the hour when from the boughs[413]
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue, 10
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.[414]
II.
But it is not to list to the waterfall[qy]
That Parisina leaves her hall,
And it is not to gaze on the heavenly light
That the Lady walks in the shadow of night;
And if she sits in Este's bower,
'Tis not for the sake of its full-blown flower; 20
She listens--but not for the nightingale--
Though her ear expects as soft a tale.
There glides a step through the foliage thick,[qz]
And her cheek grows pale, and her heart beats quick.
There whispers a voice through the rustling leaves,
And her blush returns, and her bosom heaves:
A moment more--and they shall meet--
'Tis past--her Lover's at her feet.
III.
And what unto them is the world beside,
With all its change of time and tide? 30
Its living things--its earth and sky--
Are nothing to their mind and eye.
And heedless as the dead are they
Of aught around, above, beneath;
As if all else had passed away,
They only for each other breathe;
Their very sighs are full of joy
So deep, that did it not decay,
That happy madness would destroy
The hearts which feel its fiery sway: 40
Of guilt, of peril, do they deem
In that tumultuous tender dream?
Who that have felt that passion's power,
Or paused, or feared in such an hour?
Or thought how brief such moments last?
But yet--they are already past!
Alas! we must awake before
We know such vision comes no more.
IV.
With many a lingering look they leave
The spot of guilty gladness past: 50
And though they hope, and vow, they grieve,
As if that parting were the last.
The frequent sigh--the long embrace--
The lip that there would cling for ever,
While gleams on Parisina's face
The Heaven she fears will not forgive her,
As if each calmly conscious star
Beheld her frailty from afar--
The frequent sigh, the long embrace,
Yet binds them to their trysting-place. 60
But it must come, and they must part
In fearful heaviness of heart,
With all the deep and shuddering chill
Which follows fast the deeds of ill.
V.
And Hugo is gone to his lonely bed,
To covet there another's bride;
But she must lay her conscious head
A husband's trusting heart beside.
But fevered in her sleep she seems,
And red her cheek with troubled dreams, 70
And mutters she in her unrest
A name she dare not breathe by day,[415]
And clasps her Lord unto the breast
Which pants for one away:
And he to that embrace awakes,
And, happy in the thought, mistakes
That dreaming sigh, and warm caress,
For such as he was wont to bless;
And could in very fondness weep
O'er her who loves him even in sleep. 80
VI.
He clasped her sleeping to his heart,
And listened to each broken word:
He hears--Why doth Prince Azo start,
As if the Archangel's voice he heard?
And well he may--a deeper doom
Could scarcely thunder o'er his tomb,
When he shall wake to sleep no more,
And stand the eternal throne before.
And well he may--his earthly peace
Upon that sound is doomed to cease. 90
That sleeping whisper of a name
Bespeaks her guilt and Azo's shame.
And whose that name? that o'er his pillow
Sounds fearful as the breaking billow,
Which rolls the plank upon the shore,
And dashes on the pointed rock
The wretch who sinks to rise no more,--
So came upon his soul the shock.
And whose that name?--'tis Hugo's,--his--
In sooth he had not deemed of this!-- 100
'Tis Hugo's,--he, the child of one
He loved--his own all-evil son--
The offspring of his wayward youth,
When he betrayed Bianca's truth,[ra][416]
The maid whose folly could confide
In him who made her not his bride.
VII.
He plucked his poniard in its sheath,
But sheathed it ere the point was bare;
Howe'er unworthy now to breathe,
He could not slay a thing so fair-- 110
At least, not smiling--sleeping--there--
Nay, more:--he did not wake her then,
But gazed upon her with a glance
Which, had she roused her from her trance,
Had frozen her sense to sleep again;
And o'er his brow the burning lamp
Gleamed on the dew-drops big and damp.
She spake no more--but still she slumbered--
While, in his thought, her days are numbered.
VIII.
And with the morn he sought and found, 120
In many a tale from those around,
The proof of all he feared to know,
Their present guilt--his future woe;
The long-conniving damsels seek
To save themselves, and would transfer
The guilt--the shame--the doom--to her:
Concealment is no more--they speak
All circumstance which may compel
Full credence to the tale they tell:
And Azo's tortured heart and ear 130
Have nothing more to feel or hear.
IX.
He was not one who brooked delay:
Within the chamber of his state,
The Chief of Este's ancient sway
Upon his throne of judgement sate;
His nobles and his guards are there,--
Before him is the sinful pair;
Both young,--and _one_ how passing fair!
With swordless belt, and fettered hand,
Oh, Christ! that thus a son should stand 140
Before a father's face!
Yet thus must Hugo meet his sire,
And hear the sentence of his ire,
The tale of his disgrace!
And yet he seems not overcome,
Although, as yet, his voice be dumb.
X.
And still,--and pale--and silently
Did Parisina wait her doom;
How changed since last her speaking eye
Glanced gladness round the glittering room, 150
Where high-born men were proud to wait--
Where Beauty watched to imitate
Her gentle voice--her lovely mien--
And gather from her air and gait
The graces of its Queen:
Then,--had her eye in sorrow wept,
A thousand warriors forth had leapt,
A thousand swords had sheathless shone,
And made her quarrel all their own.[417]
Now,--what is she? and what are they? 160
Can she command, or these obey?
All silent and unheeding now,
With downcast eyes and knitting brow,
And folded arms, and freezing air,
And lips that scarce their scorn forbear,
Her knights, her dames, her court--is there:
And he--the chosen one, whose lance
Had yet been couched before her glance,
Who--were his arm a moment free--
Had died or gained her liberty; 170
The minion of his father's bride,--
He, too, is fettered by her side;
Nor sees her swoln and full eye swim
Less for her own despair than him:
Those lids--o'er which the violet vein
Wandering, leaves a tender stain,
Shining through the smoothest white
That e'er did softest kiss invite--
Now seemed with hot and livid glow
To press, not shade, the orbs below; 180
Which glance so heavily, and fill,
As tear on tear grows gathering still[rb][418]
XI.
And he for her had also wept,
But for the eyes that on him gazed:
His sorrow, if he felt it, slept;
Stern and erect his brow was raised.
Whate'er the grief his soul avowed,
He would not shrink before the crowd;
But yet he dared not look on her;
Remembrance of the hours that were-- 190
His guilt--his love--his present state--
His father's wrath, all good men's hate--
His earthly, his eternal fate--
And hers,--oh, hers! he dared not throw
One look upon that death-like brow!
Else had his rising heart betrayed
Remorse for all the wreck it made.
XII.
And Azo spake:--"But yesterday
I gloried in a wife and son;
That dream this morning passed away; 200
Ere day declines, I shall have none.
My life must linger on alone;
Well,--let that pass,--there breathes not one
Who would not do as I have done:
Those ties are broken--not by me;
Let that too pass;--the doom's prepared!
Hugo, the priest awaits on thee,
And then--thy crime's reward!
Away! address thy prayers to Heaven.
Before its evening stars are met, 210
Learn if thou there canst be forgiven:
Its mercy may absolve thee yet.
But here, upon the earth beneath,
There is no spot where thou and I
Together for an hour could breathe:
Farewell! I will not see thee die--
But thou, frail thing! shall view his head--
Away! I cannot speak the rest:
Go! woman of the wanton breast;
Not I, but thou his blood dost shed: 220
Go! if that sight thou canst outlive,
And joy thee in the life I give."
XIII.
And here stern Azo hid his face--
For on his brow the swelling vein
Throbbed as if back upon his brain
The hot blood ebbed and flowed again;
And therefore bowed he for a space,
And passed his shaking hand along
His eye, to veil it from the throng;
While Hugo raised his chainéd hands, 230
And for a brief delay demands
His father's ear: the silent sire
Forbids not what his words require.
"It is not that I dread the death--
For thou hast seen me by thy side
All redly through the battle ride,
And that--not once a useless brand--
Thy slaves have wrested from my hand
Hath shed more blood in cause of thine,
Than e'er can stain the axe of mine:[419] 240
Thou gav'st, and may'st resume my breath,
A gift for which I thank thee not;
Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot,
Her slighted love and ruined name,
Her offspring's heritage of shame;
But she is in the grave, where he,
Her son--thy rival--soon shall be.
Her broken heart--my severed head--
Shall witness for thee from the dead
How trusty and how tender were 250
Thy youthful love--paternal care.
'Tis true that I have done thee wrong--
But wrong for wrong:--this,--deemed thy bride,
The other victim of thy pride,--
Thou know'st for me was destined long;
Thou saw'st, and coveted'st her charms;
And with thy very crime--my birth,--
Thou taunted'st me--as little worth;
A match ignoble for her arms;
Because, forsooth, I could not claim 260
The lawful heirship of thy name,
Nor sit on Este's lineal throne;
Yet, were a few short summers mine,
My name should more than Este's shine
With honours all my own.
I had a sword--and have a breast
That should have won as haught[420] a crest
As ever waved along the line
Of all these sovereign sires of thine.
Not always knightly spurs are worn 270
The brightest by the better born;
And mine have lanced my courser's flank
Before proud chiefs of princely rank,
When charging to the cheering cry
Of 'Este and of Victory!'
I will not plead the cause of crime,
Nor sue thee to redeem from time
A few brief hours or days that must
At length roll o'er my reckless dust;--
Such maddening moments as my past, 280
They could not, and they did not, last;--
Albeit my birth and name be base,
And thy nobility of race
Disdained to deck a thing like me--
Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father's face,
And in my spirit--all of thee.
From thee this tamelessness of heart--
From thee--nay, wherefore dost thou start?---
From thee in all their vigour came 290
My arm of strength, my soul of flame--
Thou didst not give me life alone,
But all that made me more thine own.
See what thy guilty love hath done!
Repaid thee with too like a son!
I am no bastard in my soul,
For that, like thine, abhorred control;
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,
I valued it no more than thou, 300
When rose thy casque above thy brow,
And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven:
The past is nothing--and at last
The future can but be the past;[421]
Yet would I that I then had died:
For though thou work'dst my mother's ill,
And made thy own my destined bride,
I feel thou art my father still:
And harsh as sounds thy hard decree, 310
'Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As erred the sire, so erred the son,
And thou must punish both in one.
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us too!"[422]
XIV.
He ceased--and stood with folded arms,
On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded, 320
Of all the chiefs that there were ranked,
When those dull chains in meeting clanked:
Till Parisina's fatal charms[423]
Again attracted every eye--
Would she thus hear him doomed to die!
She stood, I said, all pale and still,
The living cause of Hugo's ill:
Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide,
Not once had turned to either side--
Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 330
Or shade the glance o'er which they rose,
But round their orbs of deepest blue
The circling white dilated grew--
And there with glassy gaze she stood
As ice were in her curdled blood;
But every now and then a tear[424]
So large and slowly gathered slid
From the long dark fringe of that fair lid,
It was a thing to see, not hear![425]
And those who saw, it did surprise, 340
Such drops could fall from human eyes.
To speak she thought--the imperfect note
Was choked within her swelling throat,
Yet seemed in that low hollow groan
Her whole heart gushing in the tone.
It ceased--again she thought to speak,
Then burst her voice in one long shriek,
And to the earth she fell like stone
Or statue from its base o'erthrown,
More like a thing that ne'er had life,-- 350
A monument of Azo's wife,--
Than her, that living guilty thing,
Whose every passion was a sting,
Which urged to guilt, but could not bear
That guilt's detection and despair.
But yet she lived--and all too soon
Recovered from that death-like swoon--
But scarce to reason--every sense
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;
And each frail fibre of her brain 360
(As bowstrings, when relaxed by rain,
The erring arrow launch aside)
Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide--
The past a blank, the future black,
With glimpses of a dreary track,
Like lightning on the desert path,
When midnight storms are mustering wrath.
She feared--she felt that something ill
Lay on her soul, so deep and chill;
That there was sin and shame she knew, 370
That some one was to die--but who?
She had forgotten:--did she breathe?
Could this be still the earth beneath,
The sky above, and men around;
Or were they fiends who now so frowned
On one, before whose eyes each eye
Till then had smiled in sympathy?
All was confused and undefined
To her all-jarred and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears: 380
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream;
For so it seemed on her to break:
Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!
XV.
The Convent bells are ringing,
But mournfully and slow;
In the grey square turret swinging,
With a deep sound, to and fro.
Heavily to the heart they go! 390
Hark! the hymn is singing--
The song for the dead below,
Or the living who shortly shall be so!
For a departed being's soul[rc]
The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:[426]
He is near his mortal goal;
Kneeling at the Friar's knee,
Sad to hear, and piteous to see--
Kneeling on the bare cold ground.
With the block before and the guards around; 400
And the headsman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true
Since he set its edge anew:[427]
While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father!
XVI.
It is a lovely hour as yet
Before the summer sun shall set,
Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray; 410
And his evening beams are shed
Full on Hugo's fated head,
As his last confession pouring
To the monk, his doom deploring
In penitential holiness,
He bends to hear his accents bless
With absolution such as may
Wipe our mortal stains away.
That high sun on his head did glisten
As he there did bow and listen, 420
And the rings of chestnut hair
Curled half down his neck so bare;
But brighter still the beam was thrown
Upon the axe which near him shone
With a clear and ghastly glitter----
Oh! that parting hour was bitter!
Even the stern stood chilled with awe:
Dark the crime, and just the law--
Yet they shuddered as they saw.
XVII.
The parting prayers are said and over 430
Of that false son, and daring lover!
His beads and sins are all recounted,[rd]
His hours to their last minute mounted;
His mantling cloak before was stripped,
His bright brown locks must now be clipped;
'Tis done--all closely are they shorn;
The vest which till this moment worn--
The scarf which Parisina gave--
Must not adorn him to the grave.
Even that must now be thrown aside, 440
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied;
But no--that last indignity
Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.
All feelings seemingly subdued,
In deep disdain were half renewed,
When headsman's hands prepared to bind
Those eyes which would not brook such blind,
As if they dared not look on death.
"No--yours my forfeit blood and breath;
These hands are chained, but let me die 450
At least with an unshackled eye--
Strike:"--and as the word he said,
Upon the block he bowed his head;
These the last accents Hugo spoke:
"Strike"--and flashing fell the stroke--
Rolled the head--and, gushing, sunk
Back the stained and heaving trunk,
In the dust, which each deep vein
Slaked with its ensanguined rain;
His eyes and lips a moment quiver, 460
Convulsed and quick--then fix for ever.
He died, as erring man should die,
Without display, without parade;
Meekly had he bowed and prayed,
As not disdaining priestly aid,
Nor desperate of all hope on high.
And while before the Prior kneeling,
His heart was weaned from earthly feeling;
His wrathful Sire--his Paramour--
What were they in such an hour? 470
No more reproach,--no more despair,--
No thought but Heaven,--no word but prayer--
Save the few which from him broke,
When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke,
He claimed to die with eyes unbound,
His sole adieu to those around.
XVIII.
Still as the lips that closed in death,
Each gazer's bosom held his breath:
But yet, afar, from man to man,
A cold electric[428] shiver ran, 480
As down the deadly blow descended
On him whose life and love thus ended;
And, with a hushing sound compressed,
A sigh shrunk back on every breast;
But no more thrilling noise rose there,[re]
Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock,
Save one:--what cleaves the silent air
So madly shrill, so passing wild?
That, as a mother's o'er her child, 490
Done to death by sudden blow,
To the sky these accents go,
Like a soul's in endless woe.
Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,
That horrid voice ascends to heaven,
And every eye is turned thereon;
But sound and sight alike are gone!
It was a woman's shriek--and ne'er
In madlier accents rose despair;
And those who heard it, as it past, 500
In mercy wished it were the last.
XIX.
Hugo is fallen; and, from that hour,
No more in palace, hall, or bower,
Was Parisina heard or seen:
Her name--as if she ne'er had been--
Was banished from each lip and ear,
Like words of wantonness or fear;
And from Prince Azo's voice, by none
Was mention heard of wife or son;
No tomb--no memory had they; 510
Theirs was unconsecrated clay--
At least the Knight's who died that day.
But Parisina's fate lies hid
Like dust beneath the coffin lid:
Whether in convent she abode,
And won to heaven her dreary road,
By blighted and remorseful years
Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears;
Or if she fell by bowl or steel,
For that dark love she dared to feel: 520
Or if, upon the moment smote,
She died by tortures less remote,
Like him she saw upon the block
With heart that shared the headsman's shock,
In quickened brokenness that came,
In pity o'er her shattered frame,
None knew--and none can ever know:
But whatsoe'er its end below,
Her life began and closed in woe!
XX.
And Azo found another bride, 530
And goodly sons grew by his side;
But none so lovely and so brave
As him who withered in the grave;[429]
Or if they were--on his cold eye
Their growth but glanced unheeded by,
Or noticed with a smothered sigh.
But never tear his cheek descended,
And never smile his brow unbended;
And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought
The intersected lines of thought; 540
Those furrows which the burning share
Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;
Scars of the lacerating mind
Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.[430]
He was past all mirth or woe:
Nothing more remained below
But sleepless nights and heavy days,
A mind all dead to scorn or praise,
A heart which shunned itself--and yet
That would not yield, nor could forget, 550
Which, when it least appeared to melt,
Intensely thought--intensely felt:
The deepest ice which ever froze
Can only o'er the surface close;
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows, and cannot cease to flow.[431]
Still was his sealed-up bosom haunted[rf]
By thoughts which Nature hath implanted;
Too deeply rooted thence to vanish,
Howe'er our stifled tears we banish; 560
When struggling as they rise to start,
We check those waters of the heart,
They are not dried--those tears unshed
But flow back to the fountain head,
And resting in their spring more pure,
For ever in its depth endure,
Unseen--unwept--but uncongealed,
And cherished most where least revealed.
With inward starts of feeling left,
To throb o'er those of life bereft, 570
Without the power to fill again
The desert gap which made his pain;
Without the hope to meet them where
United souls shall gladness share;
With all the consciousness that he
Had only passed a just decree;[rg]
That they had wrought their doom of ill;
Yet Azo's age was wretched still.
The tainted branches of the tree,
If lopped with care, a strength may give, 580
By which the rest shall bloom and live
All greenly fresh and wildly free:
But if the lightning, in its wrath,
The waving boughs with fury scathe,
The massy trunk the ruin feels,
And never more a leaf reveals.
FOOTNOTES:
[411] {503} ["Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated; but the castle
still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were
beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon."--_Vide_ Advertisement to
_Lament of Tasso_.]
[412] {505} "This turned out a calamitous year for the people of
Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their
sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the
exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other,
have given the following relation of it,--from which, however, are
rejected many details, and especially the narrative of Bandelli, who
wrote a century afterwards, and who does not accord with the
contemporary historians.
"By the above-mentioned Stella dell' Assassino, the Marquis, in the year
1405, had a son called Ugo, a beautiful and ingenuous youth. Parisina
Malatesta, second wife of Niccolo, like the generality of step-mothers,
treated him with little kindness, to the infinite regret of the Marquis,
who regarded him with fond partiality. One day she asked leave of her
husband to undertake a certain journey, to which he consented, but upon
condition that Ugo should bear her company; for he hoped by these means
to induce her, in the end, to lay aside the obstinate aversion which she
had conceived against him. And indeed his intent was accomplished but
too well, since, during the journey, she not only divested herself of
all her hatred, but fell into the opposite extreme. After their return,
the Marquis had no longer any occasion to renew his former reproofs. It
happened one day that a servant of the Marquis, named Zoese, or, as some
call him, Giorgio, passing before the apartments of Parisina, saw going
out from them one of her chamber-maids, all terrified and in tears.
Asking the reason, she told him that her mistress, for some slight
offence, had been beating her; and, giving vent to her rage, she added,
that she could easily be revenged, if she chose to make known the
criminal familiarity which subsisted between Parisina and her step-son.
The servant took note of the words, and related them to his master. He
was astounded thereat, but, scarcely believing his ears, he assured
himself of the fact, alas! too clearly, on the 18th of May, by looking
through a hole made in the ceiling of his wife's chamber. Instantly he
broke into a furious rage, and arrested both of them, together with
Aldobrandino Rangoni, of Modena, her gentleman, and also, as some say,
two of the women of her chamber, as abettors of this sinful act. He
ordered them to be brought to a hasty trial, desiring the judges to
pronounce sentence, in the accustomed forms, upon the culprits. This
sentence was death. Some there were that bestirred themselves in favour
of the delinquents, and, amongst others, Ugoccion Contrario, who was
all-powerful with Niccolo, and also his aged and much deserving minister
Alberto dal Sale. Both of these, their tears flowing down their cheeks,
and upon their knees, implored him for mercy; adducing whatever reasons
they could suggest for sparing the offenders, besides those motives of
honour and decency which might persuade him to conceal from the public
so scandalous a deed. But his rage made him inflexible, and, on the
instant, he commanded that the sentence should be put in execution.
"It was, then, in the prisons of the castle, and exactly in those
frightful dungeons which are seen at this day beneath the chamber called
the Aurora, at the foot of the Lion's tower, at the top of the street
Giovecca, that on the night of the 21st of May were beheaded, first,
Ugo, and afterwards Parisina. Zoese, he that accused her, conducted the
latter under his arm to the place of punishment. She, all along, fancied
that she was to be thrown into a pit, and asked at every step, whether
she was yet come to the spot? She was told that her punishment was the
axe. She enquired what was become of Ugo, and received for answer, that
he was already dead; at which, sighing grievously, she exclaimed, 'Now,
then, I wish not myself to live;' and, being come to the block, she
stripped herself, with her own hands, of all her ornaments, and,
wrapping a cloth round her head, submitted to the fatal stroke, which
terminated the cruel scene. The same was done with Rangoni, who,
together with the others, according to two calendars in the library of
St. Francesco, was buried in the cemetery of that convent. Nothing else
is known respecting the women.
"The Marquis kept watch the whole of that dreadful night, and, as he was
walking backwards and forwards, enquired of the captain of the castle if
Ugo was dead yet? who answered him, Yes. He then gave himself up to the
most desperate lamentations, exclaiming, 'Oh! that I too were dead,
since I have been hurried on to resolve thus against my own Ugo!' And
then gnawing with his teeth a cane which he had in his hand, he passed
the rest of the night in sighs and in tears, calling frequently upon his
own dear Ugo. On the following day, calling to mind that it would be
necessary to make public his justification, seeing that the transaction
could not be kept secret, he ordered the narrative to be drawn out upon
paper, and sent it to all the courts of Italy.
"On receiving this advice, the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, gave
orders, but without publishing his reasons, that stop should be put to
the preparations for a tournament, which, under the auspices of the
Marquis, and at the expense of the city of Padua, was about to take
place, in the square of St. Mark, in order to celebrate his advancement
to the ducal chair.
"The Marquis, in addition to what he had already done, from some
unaccountable burst of vengeance, commanded that as many of the married
women as were well known to him to be faithless, like his Parisina,
should, like her, be beheaded. Amongst others, Barberina, or, as some
call her, Laodamia Romei, wife of the court judge, underwent this
sentence, at the usual place of execution; that is to say, in the
quarter of St. Giacomo, opposite the present fortress, beyond St.
Paul's. It cannot be told how strange appeared this proceeding in a
prince, who, considering his own disposition, should, as it seemed, have
been in such cases most indulgent. Some, however, there were who did not
fail to commend him." [_Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara_, Raccolte da
Antonio Frizzi, 1793, iii. 408-410. See, too, _Celebri Famiglie
Italiane_, by Conte Pompeo Litta, 1832, Fasc. xxvi. Part III. vol. ii.]
[413] {507} [The revise of _Parisina_ is endorsed in Murray's
handwriting, "Given to me by Lord Byron at his house, Saturday, January
13, 1816."]
[414] The lines contained in this section were printed as set to music
some time since, but belonged to the poem where they now appear; the
greater part of which was composed prior to _Lara_, and other
compositions since published. [Note to _Siege, etc._, First Edition,
1816.]
[qy]
_Francisca walks in the shadow of night_,
_But it is not to gaze on the heavenly light_--
_But if she sits in her garden bower_,
_'Tis not for the sake of its blowing flower_.--
[_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]
[qz] {508} _There winds a step_----.--[_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]
[415] {509} [Leigh Hunt, in his _Autobiography_ (1860, p. 252), says, "I
had the pleasure of supplying my friendly critic, Lord Byron, with a
point for his _Parisina_ (the incident of the heroine talking in her
sleep)."
Putting Lady Macbeth out of the question, the situation may be traced to
a passage in Henry Mackenzie's _Julia de Roubigné_ (1777, ii. 101:
"Montauban to Segarva," Letter xxxv.):--
"I was last night abroad at supper; Julia was a-bed before my
return. I found her lute lying on the table, and a music-book open
by it. I could perceive the marks of tears shed on the paper, and
the air was such as might encourage their falling. Sleep, however,
had overcome her sadness, and she did not awake when I opened the
curtain to look on her. When I had stood some moments, I heard her
sigh strongly through her sleep, and presently she muttered some
words, I know not of what import. I had sometimes heard her do so
before, without regarding it much; but there was something that
roused my attention now. I listened; she sighed again, and again
spoke a few broken words. At last I heard her plainly pronounce the
name Savillon two or three times, and each time it was accompanied
with sighs so deep that her heart seemed bursting as it heaved
then."]
[ra] {511} ----_Medora's_----.--[Copy erased.]
[416] [Compare _Christabel_, Part II. lines 408, 409--
"Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth."]
[417] {513} [Compare the famous eulogy of Marie Antoinette, in Burke's
_Reflections on the Revolution in France, in a Letter intended to have
been sent to a Gentleman in Paris_, London, 1790, pp. 112, 113--
"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of
France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles.... Little did I dream
... that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her in
a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of
cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from
their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with
insult."]
[rb] {514} _As tear by tear rose gathering still_.--[Revise.]
[418] [Lines 175-182, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added to
the Copy.]
[419] {516} [The meaning is plain, but the construction is involved. The
contrast is between the blood of foes, which Hugo has shed for Azo, and
Hugo's own blood, which Azo is about to shed on the scaffold. But this
is one of Byron's incurious infelicities.]
[420] {517} Haught--haughty. "Away, _haught_ man, thou art insulting
me."--Shakespeare [_Richard II._, act iv. sc. i, line 254--"No lord of
thine, thou haught insulting man."]
[421] {518} [Lines 304, 305, and lines 310-317 are not in the Copy. They
were inserted by Byron in the Revise.]
[422] [A writer in the _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p.
151) holds this couplet up to derision. "Too" is a weak ending, and,
orally at least, ambiguous.]
[423] ["I sent for _Marmion_, ... because it occurred to me there might
be a resemblance between part of _Parisina_ and a similar scene in Canto
2d. of _Marmion_. I fear there is, though I never thought of it before,
and could hardly wish to imitate that which is inimitable.... I had
completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which, in fact, leads to
a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon
me not very comfortably."--Letter to Murray, February 3, 1816
(_Letters_, 1899, iii. 260). The scene in _Marmion_ is the one where
Constance de Beverley appears before the conclave--
"Her look composed, and steady eye,
Bespoke a matchless constancy;
And there she stood so calm and pale,
That, but her breathing did not fail,
And motion slight of eye and head,
And of her bosom, warranted
That neither sense nor pulse she lacks,
You must have thought a form of wax,
Wrought to the very life, was there--
So still she was, so pale, so fair."
Canto II. stanza xxi. lines 5-14.]
[424] {519} ["I admire the fabrication of the 'big Tear,' which is very
fine--much larger, by the way, than Shakespeare's."--Letter of John
Murray to Lord Byron (_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 354).]
[425] [Compare _Christabel_, Part I. line 253--"A sight to dream of, not
to tell!"]
[rc] {521} _For a departing beings soul_.--[Copy.]
[426] [For the peculiar use of "knoll" as a verb, compare _Childe
Harold_, Canto III. stanza xcvi. line 5; and _Werner_, act iii. sc. 3.]
[427] {522} [Lines 401-404, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added
to the Copy.]
[rd] {523} _His latest beads and sins are counted_.--[Copy.]
[428] {524} [For the use of "electric" as a metaphor, compare
Coleridge's _Songs of the Pixies_, v. lines 59, 60--
"The electric flash, that from the melting eye
Darts the fond question and the soft reply."]
[re] _But no more thrilling voice rose there_.--[Copy.]
[429] {526} [Here, again, Byron is _super grammaticam_. The comparison
is between Hugo and "goodly sons," not between Hugo and "bride" in the
preceding line.]
[430] [Lines 539-544 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the
Revise.]
[431] {527} [Lines 551-556 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the
Revise.]
[rf] _Ah, still unwelcomely was haunted_.--[Copy.]
[rg] _Had only sealed a just decree_.--[Copy.]
POEMS OF THE SEPARATION.
INTRODUCTION TO _POEMS OF THE SEPARATION._
The two poems, _Fare Thee Well_ (March 17) and _A Sketch_ (March 29,
1816), which have hitherto been entitled _Domestic Pieces_, or _Poems on
His Own Circumstances_, I have ventured to rename _Poems of the
Separation_. Of secondary importance as poems or works of art, they
stand out by themselves as marking and helping to make the critical
epoch in the life and reputation of the poet. It is to be observed that
there was an interval of twelve days between the date of _Fare Thee
Well_ and _A Sketch_; that the composition of the latter belongs to a
later episode in the separation drama; and that for some reasons
connected with the proceedings between the parties, a pathetic if not
uncritical resignation had given place to the extremity of
exasperation--to hatred and fury and revenge. It follows that either
poem, in respect of composition and of publication, must be judged on
its own merits. Contemporary critics, while they were all but unanimous
in holding up _A Sketch_ to unqualified reprobation, were divided with
regard to the good taste and good faith of _Fare Thee Well_. Moore
intimates that at first, and, indeed, for some years after the
separation, he was strongly inclined to condemn the _Fare Thee Well_ as
a histrionic performance--"a showy effusion of sentiment;" but that on
reading the account of all the circumstances in Byron's _Memoranda_, he
was impressed by the reality of the "swell of tender recollections,
under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study,
these stanzas were produced--the tears, as he said, falling fast over
the paper as he wrote them" (_Life_, p. 302).
With whatever purpose, or under whatever emotion the lines were written,
Byron did not keep them to himself. They were shown to Murray, and
copies were sent to "the initiated." "I have just received," writes
Murray, "the enclosed letter from Mrs. Maria Graham [1785-1842, _née_
Dundas, authoress and traveller, afterwards Lady Callcott], to whom I
had sent the verses. It will show you that you are thought of in the
remotest corners, and furnishes me with an excuse for repeating that I
shall not forget you. God bless your Lordship. Fare _Thee_ Well" [MSS.
M.].
But it does not appear that they were printed in their final shape (the
proof of a first draft, consisting of thirteen stanzas, is dated March
18, 1816) till the second copy of verses were set up in type with a view
to private distribution (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 279). Even then there
was no thought of publication on the part of Byron or of Murray, and, as
a matter of fact, though _Fare Thee Well_ was included in the "Poems" of
1816, it was not till both poems had appeared in over twenty pirated
editions that _A Sketch_ was allowed to appear in vol. iii. of the
Collected Works of 1819. Unquestionably Byron intended that the
"initiated," whether foes or sympathizers, should know that he had not
taken his dismissal in silence; but it is far from certain that he
connived at the appearance of either copy of verses in the public press.
It is impossible to acquit him of the charge of appealing to a limited
circle of specially chosen witnesses and advocates in a matter which lay
between himself and his wife, but the aggravated offence of rushing into
print may well be attributed to "the injudicious zeal of a friend," or
the "malice prepense" of an enemy. If he had hoped that the verses would
slip into a newspaper, as it were, _malgré lui_, he would surely have
taken care that the seed fell on good ground under the favouring
influence of Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_, or Leigh Hunt of the
_Examiner_. As it turned out, the first paper which possessed or
ventured to publish a copy of the "domestic pieces" was the _Champion_,
a Tory paper, then under the editorship of John Scott (1783-1821), a man
of talent and of probity, but, as Mr. Lang puts it (_Life and Letters_
of John Gibson Lockhart, 1897, i. 256), "Scotch, and a professed
moralist." The date of publication was Sunday, April 14, and it is to
be noted that the _Ode from the French_ ("We do not curse thee,
Waterloo") had been published in the _Morning Chronicle_ on March 15,
and that on the preceding Sunday, April 7, the brilliant but unpatriotic
apostrophe to the _Star of the Legion of Honour_ had appeared in the
_Examiner_. "We notice it [this strain of his Lordship's harp]," writes
the editor, "because we think it would not be doing justice to the
merits of such political tenets, if they were not coupled with their
corresponding practice in regard to moral and domestic obligations.
There is generally a due proportion kept in 'the music of men's lives.'
... Of many of the _facts_ of this distressing case we are not ignorant;
but God knows they are not for a newspaper. Fortunately they fall within
very general knowledge, in London at least; if they had not they would
never have found their way to us. But there is a respect due to certain
wrongs and sufferings that would be outraged by uncovering them." It was
all very mysterious, very terrible; but what wonder that the laureate of
the ex-emperor, the contemner of the Bourbons, the pæanist of the "star
of the brave," "the rainbow of the free," should make good his political
heresy by personal depravity--by unmanly vice, unmanly whining, unmanly
vituperation?
Wordsworth, to whom Scott forwarded the _Champion_ of April 14, "outdid"
the journalist in virtuous fury: "Let me say only one word of Lord B.
The man is insane. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less
indignation than pity. The latter copy is the Billingsgate of Bedlam.
... You yourself seem to labour under some delusion as to the merits of
Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the _Fare Well_, with
far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution
contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface me,' etc. Can worse doggerel
than such a stanza be written? One verse is commendable: 'All my madness
none can know.'" The criticism, as criticism, confutes itself, and is
worth quoting solely because it displays the feeling of a sane and
honourable man towards a member of the "opposition," who had tripped and
fallen, and now lay within reach of his lash (see _Life of William
Wordsworth_, 1889, ii. 267, etc.).
It was not only, as Macaulay put it, that Byron was "singled out as an
expiatory sacrifice" by the British public in a periodical fit of
morality, but, as the extent and the limitations of the attack reveal,
occasion was taken by political adversaries to inflict punishment for an
outrage on popular sentiment.
The _Champion_ had been the first to give tongue, and the other
journals, on the plea that the mischief was out, one after the other
took up the cry. On Monday, April 15, the _Sun_ printed _Fare Thee
Well_, and on Tuesday, April 16, followed with _A Sketch_. On the same
day the _Morning Chronicle_, protesting that "the poems were not written
for the public eye, but as having been inserted in a Sunday paper,"
printed both sets of verses; the _Morning Post_, with an ugly hint that
"the noble Lord gives us verses, when he dare not give us
circumstances," restricted itself to _Fare Thee Well_; while the
_Times_, in a leading paragraph, feigned to regard "the two
extraordinary copies of verses ... the whining stanzas of _Fare Thee
Well_, and the low malignity and miserable doggerel of the companion
_Sketch_," as "an injurious fabrication." On Thursday, the 18th, the
_Courier_, though declining to insert _A Sketch_, deals temperately and
sympathetically with the _Fare Thee Well_, and quotes the testimony of a
"fair correspondent" (? Madame de Staël), that if "her husband had bade
her such a farewell she could not have avoided running into his arms,
and being reconciled immediately--'Je n'aurois pu m'y tenir un
instant';" and on the same day the _Times_, having learnt to its
"extreme astonishment and regret," that both poems were indeed Lord
Byron's, maintained that the noble author had "degraded literature, and
abused the privileges of rank, by converting them into weapons of
vengeance against an inferior and a female." On Friday, the 19th, the
_Star_ printed both poems, and the _Morning Post_ inserted a criticism,
which had already appeared in the _Courier_ of the preceding day. On
Saturday, the 20th, the _Courier_ found itself compelled, in the
interests of its readers, to print both poems. On Sunday, the 21st, the
octave of the original issue, the _Examiner_ devoted a long article to
an apology for Byron, and a fierce rejoinder to the _Champion_; and on
the same day the _Independent Whig_ and the _Sunday News_, which
favoured the "opposition," printed both poems, with prefatory notices
more or less favourable to the writer; whereas the Tory _Antigallican
Monitor_, which also printed both poems, added the significant remark
that "if everything said of Lord Byron be true, it would appear that the
Whigs were not altogether so immaculate as they themselves would wish
the world to suppose."
The testimony of the press is instructive from two points of view. In
the first place, it tends to show that the controversy was conducted on
party lines; and, secondly, that the editor of the _Champion_ was in
some degree responsible for the wide diffusion and lasting publicity of
the scandal. The separation of Lord and Lady Byron must, in any case,
have been more than a nine days' wonder, but if the circulation of the
"pamphlet" had been strictly confined to the "initiated," the excitement
and interest of the general public would have smouldered and died out
for lack of material.
In his second letter on Bowles, dated March 25, 1821 (_Observations upon
Observations_, _Life_, 1892, p. 705), Byron alludes to the publication
of these poems in the _Champion_, and comments on the behaviour of the
editor, who had recently (February 16, 1821) been killed in a duel. He
does not minimize the wrong, but he pays a fine and generous tribute to
the courage and worth of his assailant. "Poor Scott is now no more ...he
died like a brave man, and he lived an able one," etc. It may be added
that Byron was an anonymous subscriber to a fund raised by Sir James
Mackintosh, Murray, and others, for "the helpless family of a man of
virtue and ability" (_London Magazine_, April, 1821, vol. iii. p. 359).
For chronological reasons, and in accordance with the precedent of the
edition of 1832, a third poem, _Stanzas to Augusta_, has been included
in this group.
POEMS OF THE SEPARATION
FARE THEE WELL.[432]
"Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth:
And Constancy lives in realms above;
And Life is thorny; and youth is vain:
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain;
* * * * *
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining--
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been."
Coleridge's Christabel.[rh]
Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare _thee well:_
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee[ri]
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee[rj]
Which thou ne'er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou would'st at last discover
'Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee--[433]
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe:
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not--
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thine own its life retaineth--
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;[rk]
And the undying thought which paineth[rl]
Is--that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow[rm]
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live--but every morrow[rn]
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou would'st solace gather--
When our child's first accents flow--
Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!"
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee--
When her lip to thine is pressed--
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee--
Think of him thy love _had_ blessed!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more may'st see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble[ro]
With a pulse yet true to me.
All my faults perchance thou knowest--
All my madness--none can know;[rp]
All my hopes--where'er thou goest--
Wither--yet with _thee_ they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride--which not a world could bow--[rq]
Bows to thee--by thee forsaken,[rr]
Even my soul forsakes me now.
But 'tis done--all words are idle--
Words from me are vainer still;[rs]
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well! thus disunited--[rt]
Torn from every nearer tie--
Seared in heart--and lone--and blighted--
More than this I scarce can die.
[First draft, _March_ 18, 1816.
First printed as published, April 4, 1816.]
A SKETCH.[ru][434]
"Honest--honest Iago!
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."
Shakespeare.
Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;[rv]
Next--for some gracious service unexpressed,
And from its wages only to be guessed--
Raised from the toilet to the table,--where
Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,
She dines from off the plate she lately washed.
Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
The genial confidante, and general spy-- 10
Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess--
An only infant's earliest governess![rw]
She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.
An adept next in penmanship she grows,
As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
What she had made the pupil of her art,
None know--but that high Soul secured the heart,[rx]
And panted for the truth it could not hear,
With longing breast and undeluded ear. 20
Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,[ry]
Which Flattery fooled not, Baseness could not blind,
Deceit infect not, near Contagion soil,
Indulgence weaken, nor Example spoil,[rz]
Nor mastered Science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
Nor Genius swell, nor Beauty render vain,
Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain,[sa]
Nor Fortune change, Pride raise, nor Passion bow,
Nor Virtue teach austerity--till now. 30
Serenely purest of her sex that live,[sb]
But wanting one sweet weakness--to forgive;
Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend,
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
But to the theme, now laid aside too long,
The baleful burthen of this honest song,[sc]
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before. 40
If mothers--none know why--before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
If early habits--those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--[sd]
Have given her power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;[se]
If like a snake she steal within your walls,
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,
And leave the venom there she did not find; 50
What marvel that this hag of hatred works[sf]
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,
While mingling truth with falsehood--sneers with smiles--
A thread of candour with a web of wiles;[sg]
A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming; 60
A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--
A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.[sh]
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale--[si]
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face)-- 70
Look on her features! and behold her mind[sj]
As in a mirror of itself defined:
Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged--
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
Yet true to "Nature's journeymen,"[435] who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade--
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.[sk]
Oh! wretch without a tear--without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-- 80
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crushed affections light[436]
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black--as thy will or others would create: 90
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
Look on thine earthly victims--and despair!
Down to the dust!--and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.[sl]
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear-- 100
Thy name--thy human name--to every eye
The climax of all scorn should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers--
And festering[437] in the infamy of years.[sm]
[First draft, _March_ 29, 1816.
First printed as published, April 4, 1816.]
STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.[438]
When all around grew drear and dark,[sn]
And reason half withheld her ray--
And Hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;
In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deemed too kind,
The weak despair--the cold depart;
When Fortune changed--and Love fled far,[so]
And Hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star[sp]
Which rose and set not to the last.[sq]
Oh! blest be thine unbroken light!
That watched me as a Seraph's eye,
And stood between me and the night,
For ever shining sweetly nigh.
And when the cloud upon us came,[sr]
Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray--[ss]
Then purer spread its gentle flame,[st]
And dashed the darkness all away.
Still may thy Spirit dwell on mine,[su]
And teach it what to brave or brook--
There's more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world's defied rebuke.
Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree,[sv]
That still unbroke, though gently bent,
Still waves with fond fidelity
Its boughs above a monument.
The winds might rend--the skies might pour,
But there thou wert--and still wouldst be
Devoted in the stormiest hour
To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.
But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;
For Heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind--and thee the most of all.
Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken--thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel--but will not move;
Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.
And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fixed in thee:--
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert--ev'n to me.
[First published, _Poems_, 1816.]
FOOTNOTES:
[432] {537} ["He there (Byron, in his _Memoranda_) described, and in a
manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender
recollections, under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing
in the study, these stanzas were produced,--the tears, as he said,
falling fast over the paper as he wrote them."--_Life_, p. 302.
It must have been a fair and _complete_ copy that Moore saw (see _Life_,
p. 302, note 3). There are no tear-marks on this (the first draft, sold
at Sotheby's, April 11, 1885) draft, which must be the _first_, for it
is incomplete, and every line (almost) tortured with alterations.
"Fare Thee Well!" was printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, April 21,
1816, at the end of an article (by L. H.) entitled "Distressing
Circumstances in High Life." The text there has two readings different
from that of the pamphlet, viz.--
_Examiner:_ "Than the soft one which embraced me."
Pamphlet: "Than the one which once embraced me."
_Examiner:_ "Yet the thoughts we cannot bridle."
Pamphlet: "But," etc.
--_MS. Notes taken by the late J. Dykes Campbell at Sotheby's, April 18,
1890, and re-transcribed for Mr. Murray, June 15, 1894._
A final proof, dated April 7, 1816, was endorsed by Murray, "Correct 50
copies as early as you can to-morrow."]
[rh] The motto was prefixed in _Poems_, 1816.
[ri] {538} _Thou my breast laid bare before thee_.--[MS. erased.]
[rj] _Not a thought is pondering on thee_.--[MS, erased.]
[433] [Lines 13-20 do not appear in an early copy dated March 18, 1816.
They were added on the margin of a proof dated April 4, 1816.]
[rk] {539} Net result of many alterations.
[rl] _And the lasting thought_----.--[MS. erased.]
[rm] ----_of deadlier sorrow_.--[MS. erased.]
[rn] _Every future night and morrow_.--[MS. erased.]
[ro] _Still thy heart_----.--[MS. erased.]
[rp] _All my follies_----.--[MS. erased.]
[rq] ----_which not the world could bow_.--[MS.]
[rr] _Falls at once_----.--[MS. erased.]
[rs] {540} _Tears and sighs are idler still_.--[MS. erased.]
[rt] _Fare thee well--thus lone and blighted_.--[MS. erased.]
[ru] _A Sketch from Life._--[MS. M.]
[434] ["I send you my last night's dream, and request to have 50 copies
(for private distribution) struck off. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at
them; they are from life."--Letter to Murray, March 30, 1816.
"The original MS. of Lord Byron's Satire, 'A Sketch from Private Life,'
written by his Lordship, 30th March, 1816. Given by his Lordship to me
on going abroad after his separation from Lady Byron, John Hanson. To be
carefully preserved." (This MS. omits lines 19-20, 35-36, 55-56, 65-70,
77-78, 85-92.)
A copy entitled, "A sketch from private Life," dated March 30, 1816, is
in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting. The corrections and additions are in
Byron's handwriting.
A proof dated April 2, 1816, is endorsed by Murray, "Correct with most
particular care and print off 50 copies, and keep standing."]
[rv] _Promoted thence to comb_----[MS. M. erased.]
[rw] ----_early governess_.--[MS. M.]
[rx] ----_but that pure spirit saved her heart_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[ry] _Vain was each effort_----.--[MS. M.]
[rz]
_Much Learning madden--when with scarce a peer_
_She soared through science with a bright career_--
_Nor talents swell_----.--[MS. M.]
[sa] ----_bigotry prevoke_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[sb] _Serenely purest of the things that live_.--[MS. M.]
[sc] {542} _The trusty burthen of my honest song_.--[MS. M.]
[sd] _At times the highest_----.--[MS. M.]
[se] ----_of her evil will_.--[MS. M.]
[sf]
_What marvel that this mistress demon works_
/ _wheresoe'er she lurks_.--[MS. M.]
_Eternal evil_ {
\ _when she latent works_.--[Copy.]
[sg] _A gloss of candour of a web of wiles_.--[MS. M.]
[sh] {543} Lines 65-68 were added April 2, 1816.
[si] The parenthesis was added April 2, 1816.
[sj] _Look on her body_----.--[MS. M.]
[435] [See _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2, line 31.]
[sk] _Where all that gaze upon her droop or die_.--[MS. altered April 2,
1816.]
[436] Lines 85-91 were added April 2, 1816, on a page endorsed,
"Quick--quick--quick--quick."
[sl] {544} ----_in thy poisoned clay_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[437] ["I doubt about 'weltering' but the dictionary should decide--look
at it. We say 'weltering in blood'--but do they not also use 'weltering
in the wind' 'weltering on a gibbet'?--there is no dictionary, so look
or ask. In the meantime, I have put 'festering,' which perhaps in any
case is the best word of the two.--P.S. Be quick. Shakespeare has it
often and I do not think it too strong for the figure in this
thing."--Letter to Murray, April 2.]
[sm] _And weltering in the infamy of years_.--[MS. M.]
[438] [His sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh.--These stanzas--the
parting tribute to her whose tenderness had been his sole consolation in
the crisis of domestic misery--were, we believe, the last verses written
by Lord Byron in England. In a note to Mr. Rogers, dated April 16
[1816], he says, "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow;
we shall not meet again for some time at all events--_if ever!_ and
under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you and Mr.
Sheridan, for being unable to wait upon him this evening."--Note to
Edition of 1832, x. 193.
A fair copy, broken up into stanzas, is endorsed by Murray, "Given to me
(and I believe composed by Ld. B.), Friday, April 12, 1816."]
[sn] ----_grew waste and dark_.--[MS. M.]
[so] {545} _When Friendship shook_----.--[MS. M.]
[sp] _Thine was the solitary star_.--[MS. M.]
[sq] _Which rose above me to the last_.--[MS. M.]
[sr]
_And when the cloud between us came_.--[MS. M.]
_And when the cloud upon me came_.--[Copy C. H.]
[ss] _Which would have closed on that last ray_.--[MS. M.]
[st] _Then stiller stood the gentle Flame_.--[MS. M.]
[su] _Still may thy Spirit sit on mine_.--[MS. M.]
[sv] {546}
_And thou wast as a lovely Tree_
_Whose branch unbroke but gently bent_
_Still waved with fond Fidelity_.--[Copy C. H.]
END OF VOL. III.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.