"But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire,
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre."
Thus do the three chief feelings expressed in this beautiful
poem--solitariness, melancholy, and love of freedom--gradually become
one greater feeling; the mind of the poet widens and deepens with each
canto. Wordsworth had identified his Ego with England; Scott and Moore
had given the feelings of Scotland and Ireland expression in their
poetry; but Byron's Ego represents universal humanity; its sorrows
and hopes are those of all mankind. After this Ego has, in manly,
energetic style, withdrawn into itself and lived for a time absorbed
in its solitary grief, that grief widens into compassion for all the
sufferings and sorrows of humanity; the hard, selfish crust of the
Ego is broken, and there issues forth the ardent love of liberty, to
encompass and to elevate the poet's whole generation. Now his mind is
attuned to worship, and he cries:--
"Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains . . . .
. . . . . . . . . come and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer."
[1] _Childe Harold_, iii. 114.