No More Learning

We
have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing
and perennial fountain of natural waters. It has been a fashion of
late years to say that both Byron and Scott have gone by; I fancy it
is a case of “not lost, but gone before. Among the men satirized


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LORD BYRON
2937
in the Bards) was Wordsworth. Years after, Byron met him at a
dinner, and on his return told his wife that the one feeling he had
for him from the beginning to the end of the visit was reverence. ”
Yet he never ceased to gird at him in his satires. The truth is,
that consistency was never to be expected in Byron. Besides, he
inherited none of the qualities needed for an orderly and noble life.
He came of a wild and turbulent race.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, the sixth of the name, was born in
London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, April
19th, 1824. His father, John Byron, a captain in the Guards, was a
heartless profligate with no redeeming traits of character. He eloped
with Amelia D'Arcy, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and after
her divorce from her husband married her and treated her like a
brute. One daughter of this union was Augusta, Byron's half-
sister, who married Colonel Leigh, and who was the good angel of
the poet, and the friend of Lady Byron until there was a rupture of
their relations in 1830 on a matter of business. A year after the
death of his first wife, John Byron entrapped and married Catherine
Gordon of Gicht, - a Scotch heiress, very proud of her descent from
James I. of Scotland, — whose estate he speedily squandered. In less
than two years after the birth of George, John Byron ran away from
his wife and his creditors, and died in France.
Mrs. Byron was a wholly undisciplined and weak woman, proud
of her descent, wayward and hysterical. She ruined the child, whom
she alternately petted and abused. She interfered with his educa-
tion and fixed him in all his bad tendencies. He never learned
anything until he was sent away from her, to Harrow. He was pas-
sionate, sullen, defiant of authority, but very amenable to kindness;
and with a different mother his nobler qualities, generosity, sense of.
justice, hatred of hypocrisy, and craving for friendship would have
been developed, and the story of his life would be very different
from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the
careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and
loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad
temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him
from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embit-
tered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet
was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, and the evil was
aggravated by surgical attempts to straighten the limb. His sensi-
tiveness was increased by unfeeling references to it. His mother
used to call him “a lame brat,” and his pride received an incurable
wound in the heartless remark of Mary Chaworth, «Do you think I
could care for that lame boy? ”Byron was two years her junior,
but his love for her was the purest passion of his life, and it has the


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LORD BYRON
sincerest expression in the famous Dream. Byron's lameness, and
his morbid fear of growing obese, which led him all his life into
reckless experiments in diet, were permanent causes of his discon-
tent and eccentricity. / In 1798, by the death of its incumbent, Byron
became the heir of Newstead Abbey and the sixth Lord Byron He
had great pride in the possession of this crumbling and ruinous old
pile. After its partial repair he occupied it with his mother, and
from time to time in his stormy life; but in 1818 it was sold for
£90,000, which mostly went to pay debts and mortgages. Almost all
the influences about Byron's early youth were such as to foster his
worst traits, and lead to those eccentricities of conduct and temper
which came at times close to insanity. But there was one exception,
his nurse Mary Gray, to whom he owed his intimate knowledge of
the Bible, and for whom he always retained a sincere affection. It
is worth noting also, as an indication of his nature, that he always
had the love of his servants.
A satisfactory outline of Byron's life and work is found in Mr.
John Nichol's (Byron' in the English Men of Letters) series. Owing
to his undisciplined home life, he was a backward boy in scholarship.
In 1805 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he resided
irregularly for three years, reading much in a desultory manner, but
paying slight attention to the classics and mathematics; so that it
was a surprise that he was able to take his degree. But he had
keen powers of observation and a phenomenal memory. Notwith-
standing his infirmity he was distinguished in many athletic sports,
he was fond of animals and such uncomfortable pets as bears and
monkeys, and led generally an irregular life. The only fruit of this
period in literature was the Hours of Idleness,' which did not
promise much, and would be of little importance notwithstanding
many verses of great lyric skill, had it not been for the slashing
criticism on it, imputed to Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review,
which provoked the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. ' This
witty outburst had instant success with the public.
In 1809 Byron came of age, and went abroad on a two-years' pil-
grimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein
to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the lands of the sun,"
and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems.
He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,- a handsome,
willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native
land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world
was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his
diablerie, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return in 1811
and the publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of Childe Harold. ?
All London was at his feet. He had already made his first speech


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LORD BYRON
2939
)
in the House of Lords espousing the Liberal side. The second
speech was in favor of Catholic emancipation. The fresh and novel
poem, which Byron himself had not at first thought worth offering
a publisher, fell in with the humor and moral state of the town. It
was then that he made the oft-quoted remark, “I awoke one morning
and found myself famous. ” The poem gave new impetus to the
stories of his romantic life, and London seemed to idolize him as
much for his follies and his liaisons as for his genius. He plunged
into all the dissipation of the city. But this period from 181 to 1815
was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succes-
sion he gave to the press poems and romances, — The Giaour,' (The
Bride of Abydos,' «The Corsair,) Lara,' the Hebrew Melodies,' (The
Siege of Corinth,' and Parisina. ' Some of the Hebrew Melodies
are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives,
full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portrait-
ures of female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody,
but melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they
still impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of
versification, and their frequent beauty.
Sated with varied dissipation, worn out with the flighty adora-
tion of Lady Caroline Lamb, and urged by his friends to marry and
settle down, Byron married (January 20, 1815) Anne Isabella, daughter
of Sir Ralph Milbanke. He liked but did not love her; and she was
no doubt fascinated by the reputation of the most famous man in
Europe, and perhaps indulged the philanthropic hope that she could
reform the literary Corsair. On the oth of December was born
Augusta Ada, the daughter whom Byron celebrates in his verse and
to whom he was always tenderly attached. On the 15th of January,
five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home with the
child to pay a visit to her family, dispatching to her husband a play-
fully tender letter. Shortly after, he was informed by her father and
by herself that she did not intend ever to return to him. It is use-
less to enter into the controversy as to the cause of this separation.
In the light of the latest revelations, the better opinion seems to be
that it was a hopeless incongruity that might have been predicted
from the characters of the two. It seems that Lady Byron was not
quite so amiable as she was supposed to be, and in her later years she
was subject to hallucinations. Byron, it must be admitted, was an
impossible husband for any woman, most of all for any woman who
cared for the social conventions. This affair brought down upon
Byron a storm of public indignation which drove him from England.
The society which had petted him and excused his vagaries and vio-
lations of all decency, now turned upon him with rage and made
the idol responsible for the foolishness of his worshipers. To the


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LORD BYRON
end of his life, neither society nor the critics ever forgave him, and
did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular
cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the free-
dom of speculation in such masterly works as Cain? brought upon
him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England
his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This
vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George
III. , and to expose mercilessly in Don Juan' the hypocrisy of Eng-
·lish life.
On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron left England, never to return.
And then opened the most brilliant period of his literary career.
Instead of being crushed by the situation, Byron's warlike spirit
responded to it with defiance, and his suffering and his anger in-
voked the highest qualities of his extraordinary genius. His career
in Italy was as wild and dissipated as ever. Strange to say, the
best influence in his irregular life was the Countess Guiccioli, who
persuaded him at one time to lay aside the composition of Don
Juan,' and in whose society he was drawn into ardent sympathy
with the Italian liberals. For the cause of Italian unity he did
much when it was in its darkest period, and his name is properly
linked in this great achievement with those of Mazzini and Cavour.
It was in Switzerland, before Byron settled in Venice, that he met
Shelley, with whom he was thereafter to be on terms of closest inti-
macy. Each had a mutual regard for the genius of the other, but
Shelley placed Byron far above himself. It was while sojourning
near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union
with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs. Clairmont, who became
William Godwin's second wife. The result of this intimacy was a
natural daughter, Allegra, for whose maintenance and education
Byron provided, and whose early death was severely felt by him.
Byron's life in Italy from 1816 to 1823 continued to be a romance
of exciting and dubious adventure. Many details of it are given in
Byron's letters,— his prose is always as vigorous as his poetry, and
as self-revealing, - and it was no doubt recorded in his famous
Diary, which was intrusted to his friend Tom Moore, and was burned
after Byron's death. Byron's own frankness about himself, his love
of mystification, his impulsiveness in writing anything that entered
his brain at the moment, and his habit of boasting about his wicked-
ness, which always went to the extent of making himself out worse
than he was, stands in the way of getting a clear narration of his
life and conduct. But he was always an interesting and commanding
and perplexing personality, and the writings about him by his inti-
mates are as various as the moods he indulged in. The bright light
of inquiry always shone upon him, for Byron was the most brilliant,


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LORD BYRON
2941
the most famous, the most detested, the most worshiped, and the
most criticized and condemned man in Europe.
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


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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,


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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. ”


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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.


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LORD BYRON
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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


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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.


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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!


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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.


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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 ?


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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!