5. It is that settled, ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore; What Exile from himself can flee?1 To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life-the demon Thought. 7. Yet others rapt in pleasure seem, And taste of all that I forsake; Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, Whate'er betides, I've known the worst. What is that worst? Nay do not ask— Smile on-nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there.3 LXXXV. Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu! Who may forget how well thy walls have stood? 1 ["What Exile from himself can flee? To other zones, howe'er remote, Still, still pursuing clings to me The blight of life-the demon Thought."-MS.] 2" Written January 25, 1810."-MS.] In place of this song, which was written at Athens, January 25, 1810, and which contains, as Moore says, "some of the dreariest touches of sadness that ever Byron's pen let fall," we find, in the first draught of the Canto, the following:- 1. Oh never talk again to me Of northern climes and British ladies; It has not been your lot to see, Like me, the fovely girl of Cadiz. Although her eye be not of blue, Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, How far its own expressive hue The languid azure eye surpasses! 2. Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole The fire, that through those silken lashes In darkest glances seems to roll, From eyes that cannot hide their flashes: And as along her bosom steal In lengthen'd flow her raven tresses, You'd swear each clustering lock could feel, And curl'd to give her neck caresses. 3. Our English maids are long to woo, For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is, The Spanish maid is no coquette, Alike she knows not to dissemble. 5. The Spanish girl that meets your love When thronging foemen menace Spain, She dares the deed and shares the danger; When all were changing thou alone wert true, And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude, Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye; A traitor only fell beneath the feud :* None hugg'd a conqueror's chain, save fallen Chivalry! Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom who were never free; A Kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, Fond of a land which gave them naught but life, War, war is still the cry, "War even to the knife !""5 LXXXVII. Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, So may he make each cursed oppressor bleed, And should her lover press the plain, 6. And when, beneath the evening star, Of Christian knight or Moorish hero, To chant the sweet and hallow'd vesper;— 7. In each her charms the heart must move May match the dark-eyed Girl of Cadiz. 4 Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1809. 5"War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza. [In his proclamation, also, he stated, that, should the French commit any robberies, devastations, and murders, no quarter should be given them. The dogs by whom he was beset, he said, scarcely left him time to clean his sword from their blood, but they still found their grave at Saragoza. All his addresses were in the same spirit. "His language," says Mr. Southey, "had the high tone, and something of the inflation of Spanish romance, suiting the character of those to whom it was directed." See History of the Peninsular War, vol. iii. p. 152.} The Canto, in the original MS., closes with the following stanzas:- Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go! hie ye hence to Paternoster Row Are they not written in the Book of Carr,* Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar; All these are coop'd within one Quarto's brink, This borrow, steal,-don't buy,--and tell us what you think. Porphyry said, that the prophecies of Daniel were written after their completion, and such may be my fate here; but it requires no second sight to forefell a tome; the first glimpse of the knight was enough. [In a letter written from Gibraltar, August 6, 1809, to his friend Hodson, Lord Byron says “I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz; and, like Swift's barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black and white."] There may you read, with spectacles on eyes, How many troops y-cross'd the laughing main There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John! Thus poesy the way to grandeur paves Who would not such diplomatists prefer? But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves, Leave Legates to their house, and armies to their graves. Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made, Certes, fit teacher to command, because His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes; On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst. 1 The Honorable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who der of a fever at Coimbra, (May 14, 1811.) I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of Libe. In the short space of one month, I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being wherable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction:-Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Canes Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College. Camond-e, were he not too much above all praise of me. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater bonrs, against the ablest candidates, than those of any grad GL record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established *The "Needy Knife-grinder," in the Anti-jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.) And thou, my friend!'-since unavailing wo Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain-Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low, Pride might forbid, e'en Friendship to complain : But thus unlaurell'd to descend in vain, By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain, While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest! What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest? XCII. Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most!a Dear to a heart where naught was left so dear! Though to my hopeless days forever lost, In dreams deny me not to see thee here! And Morn in secret shall renew the tear Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose. XCIII. Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage: Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doom'd to go: Lands that contain the monuments of Eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quell'd.3 his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved tum too well to envy his superiority-This and the folowing stanza were added in August, 1811. In one of his schoolboy poems, entitled "Childish Recollections," Lord Byron has thus drawn the portrait of young Wingfield.- "Alonzo! best and dearest of my friends, Thy name ennobles him who thus commends: If hope anticipates the words of truth, All, all that brothers abonid be, but the name,” Matthews, the idol of Lord Byron at com age, windrowned, while bathing in the Can, on the 24 of Aut The lowing passage of a Letter from New Mattolus frend werg, e Davies, writes Lichte.y after **** ་*་ press of strong at eve apo ms too Davies: sobie eine Nange over the an lies a corpse LTDENSES CLøsf my e in a ditch. What en I say ort from him the day before yemer y can spare a moment, 25 COME Sows to te Matthews's last letter was eriten eta be was noA In a who was we all shrink before im H You done Ts very eses iz Beloved the tor *— A*, 1- Dec. 2010."-*; CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE SECOND. I. COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven!-but thou, alas! But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow, That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow. II. Ancient of days! august Athena 2 where, that were: First in the race that led to Glory's goal, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. 1 Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege.-[On the highest part of Lycabettus, as Chandler was informed by an eye-witness, the Venetians, in 1687, placed four mortars and six pieces of cannon, when they battered the Acropolis. One of the bombs was fatal to some of the sculpture on the west front of the Parthenon." In 1667," says Mr. Hobhouse, "every antiquity of which there is now any trace in the Acropolis, was in a tolerable state of preservation. This great temple might, at that period, be called entire ;-having been previously a Christian church, it was then a mosque, the most beautiful in the world. At present, only twenty-nine of the Doric columns, some of which no longer support their entablatures, and part of the left wall of the cell, reinain standing. Those of the north side, the angular ones excepted, have all fallen. The portion yet standing, cannot fail to fill the mind of the indifferent spectator with sentiments of astonishment and awe; and the same reflections arise upon the sight even of the enormous masses of marble ruins which are spread upon the area of the temple. Such scattered fragments will soon constitute the sole remains of the Temple of Minerva."] 2 We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valor to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of peity intrigue and perpetual disturb ance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest ; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, III. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come-but molest not you defenceless urn: Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield-religions take their turn: "Twas Jove's-'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.3 IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and wo? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. V. Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound; Far on the solitary shore he sleeps: He fell, and falling nations mourn'd around; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps Where demi-gods appear'd, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scatter'd heaps : Is that a temple where a God may dwell? Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell! had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrifice. But "Man, proud man, Dress'd in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven [In the original MS. we find the following note to this and the five following stanzas, which had been prepared for publication, but was afterwards withdrawn, "from a fear," says the poet, "that it might be considered rather as an attack, than a defence of religion:"-" In this age of bigotry, when the puritan and priest have changed places, and the wretched Catholic is visited with the sins of his fathers," even unto generations far beyond the pale of the commandment, the cast of opinion in these stanzas will, doubtless, meet with many a contemptuous anathema But let it be remembered, that the spirit they breathe is desponding, not sneering, skepticism; that he who has seen the Greek and Moslem superstitions contending for mastery over the former shrines of Polytheism-who has left in his own, Pharisees, thanking God that they are not like publicans and sinners,' and Spaniards in theirs, abhorring the heretics, who have holpen them in their need,-will be not a little bewildered, and begin to think, that as only one of them can be right, they may, most of them, be wrong. With regard to morals, and the effect of religion on mankind, it appears, from all historical testimony, to have had less effect in making them love their neighbors, than inducing that cordial Christian abhorrence between sectaries and schismatics. The Turks and Quakers are the most tolerant: if an Infidel pays his heratch to the former, he may pray how, when, and where he pleases; and the mild tenets, and devout demeanor of the latter, inake their lives the truest commentary on the Sermon on the Mount."] 4 ["Still wilt thou harp."-MS.] 5 It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honor of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c., and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. VI. Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall, The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul: And Passion's host, that never brook'd control: Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? VII. Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath his pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best ; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron: There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome rest. VIII. Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore; How sweet it were in concert to adore With those who made our mortal labors light! To hear each voice we fear'd to hear no more! Behold each mighty shade reveal'd to sight, The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right!! IX. There, thou!-whose love and life together fled, For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!? In the original MS., for this magnificent stanza, we find what follows: "Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I Look not for life, where life may never be; I am no sneerer at thy phantasy: Thou pitiest me,-alas! I envy thee, Thou bold discoverer in an unknown sea, Of happy isles and happier tenants there; I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee; Sull dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where, But lor'st too well to bid thine erring brother share."] Lord Byron wrote this stanza at Newstead, in October, 111. on hearing of the death of his Cambridge friend, young Eddlestone: "making," he says, "the sixth, within four mouths, of friends and relations that I have lost between May and the end of August." See post, Hours of Idleness, "The Cornelian."] 1["The thought and the expression," says Professor Clarke, in a letter to Lord Byron, "are here so truly Petrarch's, that I would ask you whether you ever read,― X. Here let me sit upon this massy stone, The marble column's yet unshaken base; Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav'rite throne: Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place. It may not be nor ev'n can Fancy's eye Restore what Time hath labor'd to deface. Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh; Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by. XI. But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane On high, where Pallas linger'd, loath to flee The latest relic of her ancient reign; The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be! England! I joy no child he was of thine: Thy free-born men should spare what once was free; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine." XII. But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast, To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared: Cold as the crags upon his native coast," His mind as barren and his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, Aught to displace Athena's poor remains: Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains. XIII. What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy in Athena's tears? Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears; The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land: Yes, she, whose gen'rous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a harpy's hand, Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.* 4 The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: originally there were one hundred and fifty. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon. 5 See Appendix to this Canto, [A,] for a note too long to be placed here. The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. ["Cold and accursed as his native coast."-MS.] 7 I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines:"When the last of the metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, Telos-I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar. 8 * [After stanza xiii. the original MS. has the following:"Come, then, ye classic Thanes of each degree, Dark Hamilton and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Oh! better were it ye had never been, Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight, The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen, House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight, Than ye should bear one stone from wrong'd Athena's site. XIV. Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appall'd What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more, XIX. White is the glassy deck, without a stain, Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before. From law, however stern, which tends their strength XV. Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee, Cursed be the hour when from their isle they roved, to nerve." XX. Blow! swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale! And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes The flapping sail haul'd down to halt for logs like abhorr'd! XVI. But where is Harold? shall I then forget No loved-one now in feign'd lament could rave; And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes. XVII. He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea Has view'd at times, I ween, a full fair sight; When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be, The white sail set, the gallant frigate tight; Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right, The glorious main expanding o'er the bow, The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight, The dullest sailer wearing bravely now, So gayly curl the waves before each dashing prow. XVIII. And oh, the little warlike world within! The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy," The hoarse command, the busy humming din, When, at a word, the tops are mann'd on high: Hark, to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry! While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides; Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by, Strains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides, And well the docile crew that skilful urchin guides. these! XXI. The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand; Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove. XXII. Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore; From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down. XXIII. "Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end: The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.3 Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy! [boy? Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without a flaw."] 1 According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.-See Chandler. 2 To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action. ["From Discipline's stern law," &c.-MS.] ["Plies the brisk instrument that sailor's love."-MS.] 6 ["Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal, в And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend.”— MS.] ["Ah! happy years! I would I were once more a boy." -MS.] |