Thou, whose true name the world doth yet not know,
Mysterious spirit, mortal, angel, fiend,
Whate’er thou art, oh! Byron, still I love
Thy concerts’ savage harmony, ev’n as
I love the noise of thunder and of winds
Commingling in the storm with torrents’ voice!
Night is thy dwelling, horror thy domain;
The eagle, king of deserts, thus doth scorn
The lowly plain; he seeks, like thee, steep rocks
By winter whitened, by the lightning riven;
Shores strewn with fragments of the fatal wreck,
Or fields all blackened with the gore of carnage:
And whilst the bird that plaintive sings its griefs
’Mid flow’rets, builds its nest on bank of streams,
Of Athos he the summits fearful scales,
Suspends his eyre o’er the abyss, and there,
Surrounded by still palpitating limbs,
By rocks with bloody banquets ever foul,
Soothed by the screaming anguish of his prey,
And rocked by tempests, slumbers in his joy.
Thou, Byron, like this brigand of the air,
In cries of woe dost sweetest music find.
Thy scene is evil, and thy victim man.
Like Satan, thou hast measured the abyss,
And plunging down, far, far from day and God,
Hast bid to hope farewell for evermore!
Like him, now reigning in the realms of gloom,
Thy dauntless genius swells funereal strains;
It triumphs; and thy voice in hellish tone
Sings hymns of glory to the god of evil.
But why against thy destiny contend?
’Gainst fate what may rebellious reason do?
It hath but (like the eye) a bounded scope.
Beyond it nor thy eye nor reason strain;
There all escapes us; all is dark, unknown.
Within this circle God hath marked thy place.
How? why? who knows?—From His Almighty hands
The world and human beings he hath dropped,
As in our fields he spread around the dust,
Or sowed the atmosphere with might or light.
He knows; enough; the universe is his,
And we can only claim the present day.
Our crime is to be man and wish to know:
To serve and know not is our being’s law.
Byron, this truth is hard, and long I strove
Against it; but why turn away from truth?
With God, thy title is to be his work;
To feel, t’adore thy slavery divine;
In th’universal order to unite,
Weak atom as thou art, to his designs
Thy own free will; by his intelligence
To have been conceived, and by thy life alone
To glorify him—such, such is thy lot!
Ah! rather kiss the yoke that thou wouldst break;
Descend from thy usurped rank of god;
All, in its place, is well, is good, is great;
In His regard, who made immensity,
The worm is worth a world; they cost the same!
This law, thou say’st, revolts thy sense of right;
It strikes thee merely as a strange caprice;
A snare where reason trips at every step—
Let us confess and judge it not, great bard!
Like thine, my mind with darkness is replete,
And not for me it is to explain the world:
Let Him who made, explain the universe.
The more I sound the abyss, the more, alas!
I lose myself amid its viewless depths.
Grief, here below, to grief is ever linked,
Day follows day, and pain succeeds to pain.
In nature bounded, infinite in wish,
Man is a fallen god rememb’ring Heaven:
Whether that, disinherited of all
His pristine glory, he doth still preserve
The mem’ry of his former destinies,
Or that the vastness of his wishes gives
A distant presage of his future greatness—
Imperfect at his birth, or fallen since—
The great, the awful mystery is man.
Within the senses’ prison chained on earth,
A slave, he feels a heart for freedom born,
And wretched, to felicity aspires.
He strives to sound the world; his eye is weak;—
He yearns to love; whate’er he loves is frail.
All mortals unto Eden’s exile bear
A sad resemblance—when his outraged God
Had banished him from that celestial realm,
Scanning the fatal limits with a look,
He sat him, weeping, near the barred gates,
He heard within the blest abode afar,
The sigh harmonious of eternal love,
Sweet strains of happiness, the choral song
Of angels sounding God’s triumphant praise;
And tearing then his soul from heav’n, his eye
Fell back affrighted on his dismal lot.
Woe, woe to him who from his exile here
Hath heard the concerts of an envied world!
When Nature once ideal nectar tastes,
She loathes the cup Reality presents.
Into the possible, in dreams she leaps;
(The real is cramped; the possible, immense;)
The soul with all her wishes there doth take
Her sojourn, where forever she may drink
From crystal springs of knowledge and of love,
And where, in streams of beauty and of light,
Man, ever thirsty, slakes his thirst.
And thus, with Syren visions charming sleep
On waking, scarce she knows herself again.
Such was thy fate, and such my destiny!
I too the poisoned cup did drain; like thine
My eyes were opened, seeing not; in vain
I sought the enigma of the universe;
I questioned nature for its cause; I asked
Each creature why created; down the abyss,
The bottomless abyss, I plunged my look;
From the atom to the sun, I all explored;
Anticipated time, its stream did mount;
Now passing over seas to hear the words
That drop from wisdom’s oracles; but found
The world to pride is ever a sealed book!
Now, to divine the world inanimate.
To nature’s bosom flying with my soul,
I thought to find a meaning in her voice.
I read the laws by which the heav’ns revolve.
My guide great Newton, through their shining paths.
Of crumbled empires o’er the dust I mused;
Rome saw me ’mid her sacred tombs descend;
Of holiest manes disturbing the repose;
The dust of heroes in my hands I weighed,
Asking their senseless ashes to restore
That immortality each mortal seeks.
What say I? hanging o’er the bed of death,
I sought it even in expiring eyes;
On summits darkened by eternal clouds,
On billows tortured by eternal storms,
I called; I braved the shock of elements.
Like to the sybil in her rage divine,
I fancied nature in those fearful scenes
Some portion of her secrets might reveal:
I loved to plunge amid those horrors dread.
But vainly in her calm and in her rage
This mighty secret hunting, everywhere
I saw a God, and understood him not.
I saw both good and ill, without design,
As if by chance, escaping from his hands;
I saw on all sides evil, where there might
Have been the best of good, and too infirm
To know and comprehend him, I blasphemed;
But breaking ’gainst that heav’n of brass, my voice
Had not the honor to e’en anger fate.
One day, however, that by mis’ry wrung,
I wearied heaven with my fierce complaint,
A light descended from on high, that filled
My bosom with its radiance, and inspired
My lips to bless what madly they had cursed.
I yielded, grateful, to the influence,
And from my lyre the hymn of reason poured.
“Glory to thee, now and for evermore,
Eternal understanding, will supreme!
To thee, whose presence space doth recognise!
To thee, whose bright existence every morn
Announceth! Thy creative breath hath stooped
To me, and he who was not hath appeared
Before thy majesty! I knew thy voice
Ere I had known myself, and at its sound
Up to the gates of being I did rush.
Behold me! nothingness doth here presume
To hail thee at its coming into life.
Behold me! but what am I? what my name?
A thinking atom—who may dare to hope
Between us two the distance e’er to scan!
I, who in thee my brief existence breathe,
Myself unknown and fashioned at thy will,
What ow’st thou, Lord, to me, were I not born?
Before or after, naught—hail end supreme!
Who drew all from himself, to himself owes all.
Enjoy, great artist, of thy hands the work.
I live thy sov’reign orders to fulfil.
Dispose, ordain, control, in time, in space;
My day and sphere, for thy own glory mark;
My being, without question or complaint,
In silence hasten to assume its place.
* * * * * * *
Glory to thee! annihilate me, strike!
One cry, one cry alone shall reach thy ear—
Glory to thee, now, and for evermore!”
* * * * *