No More Learning

It was in this period that he produced the works that by their
innate vigor and power placed him in the front rank of English
poets. A complete list of them cannot be given in this brief notice.
The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold' attained a height
that the first two cantos had not prepared the world to expect.
Cain' was perhaps the culmination of his power. The lyrics and
occasional poems of this time add to his fame because they exhibit
his infinite variety. Critics point out the carelessness of his verse,
- and there is an air of haste in much of it; they deny his origi-
nality and give the sources of his inspiration, — but he had Shake-
speare's faculty of transforming all things to his own will; and they
deny him the contribution of thought to the ideas of the world.
This criticism must stand against the fact of his almost unequaled
power to move the world and make it feel and think. The Conti-
nental critics did not accuse him of want of substance. What did he.
not do for Spain, for Italy, for Greece! No interpretation of their
splendid past, of their hope for the future, no musings over the
names of other civilizations, no sympathy with national pride, hoe
ever so satisfied the traveling and reading world in these lands, as
Byron's. The public is not so good a judge of what poetry should
be, as the trained critics; but it is a judge of power, of what is
stirring and entertaining: and so it comes to pass that Byron's work
is read when much poetry, more finished but wanting certain vital
qualities, is neglected. I believe it is a fact that Byron is more
quoted than any English poet except Pope since Shakespeare, and
that he is better known to the world at large than any except the
Master. But whether this is so or not, he is more read now at the
close of this century than he was in its third quarter.
“The Dream' and 'Darkness are poems that will never lose their
value so long as men love and are capable of feeling terror. Man-
fred,' 'Mazeppa, Heaven and Earth,' The Prisoner of Chillon,
and the satire of the Vision of Judgment maintain their promi-
nence; and it seems certain that many of the lyrics, like “The Isles
of Greece) and the Maid of Athens,' will never pall upon any gen-
eration of readers, and the lyrics will probably outlast the others in
general favor. Byron wrote many dramas, but they are not acting
plays. He lacked the dramatic instinct, and it is safe to say that
his plays, except in certain passages, add little to his great reputa-
tion.
In the opinion of many critics, Byron's genius was more fully
displayed in 'Don Juan) than in Childe Harold. Byron was Don
Juan, mocking, satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all


## p. 2942 (#516) ###########################################

2942
LORD BYRON
conventional opinion. The ease, the grace, the diablerie of the poem
are indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a
microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of
thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most
wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended
by its satire of English hypocrisy had no difficulty in deciding that
it was not fit for English readers. I wonder what would be the
judgment of it if it were a recovered classic disassociated from the
personality of any writer.
Byron was an aristocrat, and sometimes exhibited a silly regard
for his rank; but he was a democrat in all the impulses of his
nature. His early feeling was that as a peer he condescended to
authorship, and for a time he would take no pay for what he wrote.
But later, when he needed money, he was keen at a bargain for his
poetry. He was extravagant in his living, generous to his friends
and to the popular causes he espoused, and cared nothing for money
except the pleasure of spending it. It was while he was living at
Ravenna that he became involved in the intrigues for Italian inde-
pendence. He threw himself, his fortune and his time, into it. The
time has come, he said, when a man must do something — writing
was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of the Carbonari;
he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation; his
political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and leader-
ship. When that dream faded under the reality of the armies
of despotism, his thoughts turned to Greece. Partly his restless
nature, partly love of adventure carried him there; but once in the
enterprise, he gave his soul to it with a boldness, a perseverance, a
good sense, a patriotic fervor that earn for him the title of a hero
in a good cause. His European name was a tower of strength to the
Greek patriots. He mastered the situation with a statesman's skill
and with the perception of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of
campaigning, and waited in patience to bring some order to the
wrangling factions. If his life had been spared, it is possible that
the Greeks then might have thrown off the Turkish yoke; but he
succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by the exposure of a
frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at Missolonghi in
his thirty-seventh year. He was adored by the Greeks, and his
death was a national calamity. This last appearance of Lord Byron
shows that he was capable of as great things in action as in the
realm of literature. It was the tragic end of the stormy career of a
genius whose life was as full of contradictions as his character.
It was not only in Greece that Byron's death was profoundly felt,
but in all Europe, which was under the spell of his genius. Mrs.
Anne Thackeray Ritchie, in her charming recollections of Tennyson,


## p. 2943 (#517) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2943
says: «One day the news came to the village — the dire news which
spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that
Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. Byron was
dead! I thought the whole world was at an end, he once said,
speaking of those bygone days. I thought everything was over and
finished for every one — that nothing else mattered. I remember I
walked out alone and carved “Byron is dead” into the sandstone. ) ”
Chus. Dukly Namer
MAID OF ATHENS
M
AID of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ. *
agopo
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
mon
Zon
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul :
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζώη μου, σας αγαπώ.
* Zoë mou, sas agapo : «My life, I love you. ”


## p. 2944 (#518) ###########################################

2944
LORD BYRON
TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC SONG
I
ENTER thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidée,
Each morning where Flora reposes,
For surely I see her in thee.
O Lovely! thus low I implore thee,
Receive this fond truth from my tongue,
Which utters its song to adore thee,
Yet trembles for what it has sung:
As the branch, at the bidding of Nature,
Adds fragrance and fruit to the tree,
Through her eyes, through her every feature,
Shines the soul of the young Haidée.
But the loveliest garden grows hateful
When love has abandoned the bowers;
Bring me hemlock — since mine is ungrateful,
That herb is more fragrant than flowers.
The poison, when poured from the chalice,
Will deeply embitter the bowl;
But when drunk to escape from thy malice,
The draught shall be sweet to my soul.
Too cruel! in vain I implore thee
My heart from these horrors to save:
Will naught to my bosom restore thee?
Then open the gates of the grave.
As the chief who to combat advances
Secure of his conquest before,
Thus thou, with those eyes for thy lances,
Hast pierced through my heart to its core.
Ah, tell me, my soul, must I perish
By pangs which a smile would dispel ?
Would the hope, which thou once bad'st me cherish,
For torture repay me too well ?
Now sad is the garden of roses,
Beloved but false Haidée !
There Flora all withered reposes,
And mourns o'er thine absence with me.


## p. 2945 (#519) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2945
GREECE
From The Giaour)
H*
E who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled, -
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)-
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And – but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appalls the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon —
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,
A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling passed away!
Spark of that flame - perchance of heavenly birth —
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth!
Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
v—185


## p. 2946 (#520) ###########################################

2946
LORD BYRON
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free -
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough -no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.


## p. 2947 (#521) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2947
THE HELLESPONT AND TROY
From The Bride of Abydos)
T"
He winds are high on Helle's wave;
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret torch was blazing high, .
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go:
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the light of love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
« Ye waves, divide not lovers long! ” –
That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true.
The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,
The desert of old Priam's pride,
The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All — save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!
Oh! yet — for there my steps have been;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore;
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne
Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,
To trace again those fields of yore,
Believing every hillock green
Contains no fabled hero's ashes,
And that around the undoubted scene
Thine own broad Hellespont” still dashes, -
Be long my lot! and cold were he
Who there could gaze denying thee!


## p. 2948 (#522) ###########################################

2948
LORD BYRON
GREECE AND HER HEROES
From «The Siege of Corinth)
Thr
HEY 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 gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain:
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still, and theirs !
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
From Don Juan
TH
He isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phæbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
The Scian * and the Teiant muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ Islands of the Blest. ”
The mountains look on Marathon -
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
* Homer.
| Anacreon.


## p. 2949 (#523) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2949
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;- all were his!
He counted them at break of day -
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they ? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face:
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush - for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blest ?
Must we but blush ? - Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!
What, silent still ? and silent all ?
Ah, no; -- the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, “Let one living head,
But one, arise we come, we come! »
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain - in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ?


## p. 2950 (#524) ###########################################

2950
LORD BYRON
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one ?
You have the letters Cadmus gave –
Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these:
It made Anacreon's song divine;
He served — but served Polycrates.
A tyrant: but our masters then
Were still at least our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind !
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore:
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the Franks –
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade:
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marble steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swan-like, let me sing and die!
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine -
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!


## p. 2951 (#525) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2951
GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage )
AN
NCIENT of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that
were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away — is this the whole ?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate ?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait-
Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain ?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carl can lord it o'er thy land:
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.
Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame.


## p. 2952 (#526) ###########################################

2952
LORD BYRON
When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a State;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendor renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ?
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now.
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh « Alas! »
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild,
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mold,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold


## p. 2953 (#527) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2953
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
TO ROME
From <Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
O
ROME! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferings ? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day –
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago:
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness ?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!
The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride:
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep, Barbarian monarchs ride.
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:-
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, “Here was, or is,” where all is doubly night?
The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;


## p. 2954 (#528) ###########################################

2954
LORD BYRON
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap
Our hands, and cry “Eureka! it is clear - »
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas, the lofty city! and alas,
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside — decay.
Alas for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
THE COLISEUM
From <Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
RCHES on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus's genial laws,


## p. 2955 (#529) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2955
And such the imperial pleasure. - Wherefore not ?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms on battle-plains or listed spot ?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him — he is gone,
(won.
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who
his eyes
He heard it, but he heeded not
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother - he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday:
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged ? -- Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!
A ruin - yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared ?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,—
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot —'tis on their dust ye tread.


## p. 2956 (#530) ###########################################

2956
LORD BYRON
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
AT THE STORMING OF ROME BY THE CONSTABLE OF BOURBON, 1527
From (The Deformed Transformed
'T'S
Is the morn, but dim and dark.
Whither flies the silent lark?
Whither shrinks the clouded sun ?
Is the day indeed begun?
Nature's eye is melancholy
O'er the city high and holy:
But without there is a din
Should arouse the saints within,
And revive the heroic ashes
Round which yellow Tiber dashes.
O ye seven hills! awaken,
Ere your very base be shaken!
Hearken to the steady stamp!
Mars is in their every tramp!
Not a step is out of tune,
As the tides obey the moon!
On they march, though to self-slaughter,
Regular as rolling water,
Whose high waves o'ersweep the border
Of huge moles, but keep their order,
Breaking only rank by rank.
Hearken to the armor's clank!
Look down o'er each frowning warrior,
How he glares upon the barrier:
Look on each step of each ladder,
As the stripes that streak an adder.
Look upon the bristling wall,
Manned without an interval!
Round and round, and tier on tier,
Cannon's black mouth, shining spear,
Lit match, bell-mouthed musquetoon,
Gaping to be murderous soon —
All the warlike gear of old,
Mixed with what we now behold,
In this strife 'twixt old and new,
Gather like a locust's crew.
Shade of Remus! 'tis a time
Awful as thy brother's crime!


## p. 2957 (#531) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2957
Christians war against Christ's shrine:
Must its lot be like to thine ?
Near - and near — and nearer still,
As the earthquake saps the hill,
First with trembling, hollow motion,
Like a scarce-awakened ocean,
Then with stronger shock and louder,
Till the rocks are crushed to powder,-.
Onward sweeps the rolling host!
Heroes of the immortal boast!
Mighty chiefs! eternal shadows!
First flowers of the bloody meadows
Which encompass Rome, the mother
Of a people without brother!
Will you sleep when nations' quarrels
Plow the root up of your laurels?
Ye who wept o'er Carthage burning,
Weep not strike! for Rome is mourning!
Onward sweep the varied nations!
Famine long hath dealt their rations.
To the wall, with hate and hunger,
Numerous as wolves, and stronger,
On they sweep.
O glorious city!
Must thou be a theme for pity ?
Fight like your first sire, each Roman!
Alaric was a gentle foeman,
Matched with Bourbon's black banditti.
Rouse thee, thou eternal city!
Rouse thee! Rather give the torch
With thine own hand to thy porch,
Than behold such hosts pollute
Your worst dwelling with their foot.
Ah! behold yon bleeding spectre!
Ilion's children find no Hector;
Priam's offspring loved their brother;
Rome's great sire forgot his mother,
When he slew his gallant twin,
With inexpiable sin.
See the giant shadow stride
O'er the ramparts high and wide!
When the first o'erleapt thy wall,
Its foundation mourned his fall.


## p. 2958 (#532) ###########################################

2958
LORD BYRON
Now, though towering like a Babel,
Who to stop his steps are able ?
Stalking o'er thy highest dome,
Remus claims his vengeance, Rome!
Now they reach thee in their anger;
Fire and smoke and hellish clangor
Are around thee, thou world's wonder!
Death is in thy walls and under.
Now the meeting steel first clashes,
Downward then the ladder crashes,
With its iron load all gleaming,
Lying at its foot blaspheming.
Up again! for every warrior
Slain, another climbs the barrier.
Thicker grows the strife; thy ditches
Europe's mingling gore enriches.
Rome! although thy wall may perish,
Such manure thy fields will cherish,
Making gay the harvest-home;
But thy hearths! alas, O Rome! -
Yet be Rome amidst thine anguish,
Fight as thou wast wont to vanquish!
Yet once more, ye old Penates,
Let not your quenched hearths be Atè's!
Yet again, ye shadowy heroes,
Yield not to these stranger Neros!
Though the son who slew his mother
Shed Rome's blood, he was your brother:
'Twas the Roman curbed the Roman;
Brennus was a baffled foeman.
Yet again, ye saints and martyrs,
Rise! for yours are holier charters!
Mighty gods of temples falling,
Yet in ruin still appalling,
Mightier founders of those altars
True and Christian -strike the assaulters!
Tiber! Tiber! let thy torrent
Show even nature's self abhorrent.
Let each breathing heart dilated
Turn, as doth the lion baited:
Rome be crushed to one wide tomb,
But be still the Roman's Rome!


## p. 2959 (#533) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2959
VENICE
From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
I
STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand;
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand :
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O'er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles !
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers :
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear :
Those days are gone but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy !
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway:
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away -
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
The beings of the mind are not of clay:
Essentially immortal, they create


## p. 2960 (#534) ###########################################

2960
LORD BYRON
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
ODE TO VENICE
I
O
VENICE! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do? - anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers — as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home-
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
Oh, agony! that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas — and to the busy hum
Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,


## p. 2961 (#535) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2961
When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay:
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away,
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring — albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek:
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him — and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round — and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness — and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.
II
There is no hope for nations! — Search the page
Of many thousand years the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us naught, or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air:
For 'tis our nature strikes us down; the beasts
Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order — they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return ?
A heritage of servitude and woes,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot plowshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
VI-186


## p. 2962 (#536) ###########################################

2962
LORD BYRON
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits who, despite of all,
And worse than all — the sudden crimes engendered
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered
Gushing from Freedom's fountains, when the crowd,
Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plowed
The sand; or if there sprung the yellow grain,
'Twas not for them,- their necks were too much bowed,
And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain ;-
Yes! the few spirits who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations — fair when free -
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
III
Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom — godlike Triad! — how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench her spirit; in her fate
All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled. With the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship; even her crimes
Were of the softer order — born of Love.
She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead,
But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank


## p. 2963 (#537) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2963
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And called the kingdom of a conquering foe,
But knows what all — and, most of all, we — - know,
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!
IV
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe:
Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for and
Bequeathed — a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic! She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earned with blood. Still, still forever,
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving as a sick man in his sleep,'
Three paces, and then faltering:- better be
Where the extinguished Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
Than stagnate in our marsh, — or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!


## p. 2964 (#538) ###########################################

2964
LORD BYRON
THE EAST
From "The Bride of Abydos)
K
Now ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime ?
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,
Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gül in her bloom;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute:
Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye;
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine ?
'Tis the clime of the East! 'tis the land of the Sun!
Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?
Oh! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell
Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell.
ORIENTAL ROYALTY
From Don Juan
H*
E HAD fifty daughters and four dozen sons,
Of whom all such as came of age were stowed
The former in a palace, where like nuns
They lived till some Bashaw was sent abroad,
When she whose turn it was, was wed at once,
Sometimes at six years old — though this seems odd,
'Tis true: the reason is, that the Bashaw
Must make a present to his sire-in-law.
His sons were kept in prison, till they grew
Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne,-
One or the other, but which of the two
Could yet be known unto the Fates alone:
Meantime the education they went through
Was princely, as the proofs have always shown;
So that the heir-apparent still was found
No less deserving to be hanged than crowned.


## p. 2965 (#539) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2965
A GRECIAN SUNSET
From The Curse of Minerva)
Low sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
SAlong Morea's hills the setting sun :
Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light:
O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows.
On cold Ægina's rock and Idra's isle
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering, loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep.
On such an eve his palest beam he cast,
When, Athens! here thy Wisest looked his last.
How watched thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murdered sage's latest day!
Not yet-not yet — Sol pauses on the hill -
The precious hour of parting lingers still:
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes;
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seemed to pour,
The land where Phæbus never frowned before:
But ere he sank below Cithæron's head,
The cup of woe was quaffed — the spirit Aled;
The soul of him who scorned to fear or fly-
Who lived and died as none can live or die.
But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The queen of night asserts her silent reign.
No murky vapor, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, nor girds her glowing form.
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
Where the white column greets her grateful ray,


## p. 2966 (#540) ###########################################

2966
LORD BYRON
And, bright around with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret;
The groves of olive scattered dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus pours his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And, dun and sombre 'mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus's fane yon solitary palm,-
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye,
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.
Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long array of sapphire and of gold,
Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown where gentler ocean deigns to smile.
AN ITALIAN SUNSET
From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage )
T'*
-a sea
HE moon is up, and yet it is not night-
Sunset divides the sky with her
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be,
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
Where the Day joins the past Eternity;
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest!
A single star is at her side, and reigns
With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaimed her order:- gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,
Filled with the face of heaven, which from afar
Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,


## p. 2967 (#541) ###########################################

LORD BYRON
2957
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse:
And now they change; a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new color as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till —'tis gone — and all is gray.
TWILIGHT
From Don Juan
T'
OUR tale. — The feast was over, the slaves gone,
The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;
The Arab lore and poet's song were done,
And every sound of revelry expired;
The lady and her lover, left alone,
The rosy food of twilight sky admired; –
Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!
Ave Maria! blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer.
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!
Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty Dove –
What though 'tis but a pictured image strike ?
That painting is no idol — 'tis too like.
Some kindly casuists are pleased to say,
In nameless print, that I have no devotion;
But set those persons down with me to pray,
And you shall see who has the properest notion
Of getting into heaven the shortest way:
My altars are the mountains and the ocean,


## p. 2968 (#542) ###########################################

2968
LORD BYRON
Earth, air, stars all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced and will receive the soul.
Sweet hour of twilight! - in the solitude
Of that pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er
To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,-
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!
The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,
Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And vesper bells that rose the boughs along:
The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,
His hell-dogs and their chase, and the fair throng
Which learned from this example not to fly
From a true lover — shadowed my mind's eye.
O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things:
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.