He wandered on along the beach, 440

Till within the range of a carbine's reach

Of the leaguered wall; but they saw him not,

Or how could he 'scape from the hostile shot?[pk]

Did traitors lurk in the Christians' hold?

Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts waxed cold?

I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall[pl]

There flashed no fire, and there hissed no ball,

Though he stood beneath the bastion's frown,

That flanked the seaward gate of the town;

Though he heard the sound, and could almost tell 450

The sullen words of the sentinel,

As his measured step on the stone below

Clanked, as he paced it to and fro;

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall

Hold o'er the dead their Carnival,[356]

Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;

And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,[357] 460

As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew dull,

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;

So well had they broken a lingering fast

With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand,

The foremost of these were the best of his band:

Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,[358]

All the rest was shaven and bare. 470

The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,

The hair was tangled round his jaw:

But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,

There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,

Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;

But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,

Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

XVII.

Alp turned him from the sickening sight:

Never had shaken his nerves in fight; 480

But he better could brook to behold the dying,

Deep in the tide of their warm blood lying,[pm][359]

Scorched with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,

Than the perishing dead who are past all pain.[pn][360]

There is something of pride in the perilous hour,

Whate'er be the shape in which Death may lower;

For Fame is there to say who bleeds,

And Honour's eye on daring deeds![361]

But when all is past, it is humbling to tread[po]

O'er the weltering field of the tombless dead,[362] 490

And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air,

Beasts of the forest, all gathering there;

All regarding man as their prey,

All rejoicing in his decay.[pp]

XVIII.

There is a temple in ruin stands,

Fashioned by long forgotten hands;

Two or three columns, and many a stone,

Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown!

Out upon Time! it will leave no more

Of the things to come than the things before![pq][363] 500

Out upon Time! who for ever will leave

But enough of the past for the future to grieve

O'er that which hath been, and o'er that which must be:

What we have seen, our sons shall see;

Remnants of things that have passed away,

Fragments of stone, reared by creatures of clay![pr]

XIX.

He sate him down at a pillar's base,[364]

And passed his hand athwart his face;

Like one in dreary musing mood,

Declining was his attitude; 510

His head was drooping on his breast,

Fevered, throbbing, and oppressed;

And o'er his brow, so downward bent,

Oft his beating fingers went,

Hurriedly, as you may see

Your own run over the ivory key,

Ere the measured tone is taken

By the chords you would awaken.

There he sate all heavily,

As he heard the night-wind sigh. 520

Was it the wind through some hollow stone,[ps]

Sent that soft and tender moan?[365]

He lifted his head, and he looked on the sea,

But it was unrippled as glass may be;

He looked on the long grass--it waved not a blade;

How was that gentle sound conveyed?

He looked to the banners--each flag lay still,

So did the leaves on Cithæron's hill,

And he felt not a breath come over his cheek;

What did that sudden sound bespeak? 530

He turned to the left--is he sure of sight?

There sate a lady, youthful and bright![pt][366]

XX.

He started up with more of fear

Than if an arméd foe were near.

"God of my fathers! what is here?

Who art thou? and wherefore sent

So near a hostile armament?"

His trembling hands refused to sign

The cross he deemed no more divine:

He had resumed it in that hour,[pu] 540

But Conscience wrung away the power.

He gazed, he saw; he knew the face

Of beauty, and the form of grace;

It was Francesca by his side,

The maid who might have been his bride![pv]

The rose was yet upon her cheek,

But mellowed with a tenderer streak:

Where was the play of her soft lips fled?

Gone was the smile that enlivened their red.

The Ocean's calm within their view,[pw] 550

Beside her eye had less of blue;

But like that cold wave it stood still,

And its glance, though clear, was chill.[367]

Around her form a thin robe twining,

Nought concealed her bosom shining;

Through the parting of her hair,

Floating darkly downward there,

Her rounded arm showed white and bare:

And ere yet she made reply,

Once she raised her hand on high; 560

It was so wan, and transparent of hue,

You might have seen the moon shine through.

XXI.

"I come from my rest to him I love best,

That I may be happy, and he may be blessed.

I have passed the guards, the gate, the wall;

Sought thee in safety through foes and all.

'Tis said the lion will turn and flee[368]

From a maid in the pride of her purity;

And the Power on high, that can shield the good

Thus from the tyrant of the wood, 570

Hath extended its mercy to guard me as well

From the hands of the leaguering Infidel.

I come--and if I come in vain,

Never, oh never, we meet again!

Thou hast done a fearful deed

In falling away from thy fathers' creed:

But dash that turban to earth, and sign

The sign of the cross, and for ever be mine;

Wring the black drop from thy heart,

And to-morrow unites us no more to part." 580

"And where should our bridal couch be spread?

In the midst of the dying and the dead?

For to-morrow we give to the slaughter and flame

The sons and the shrines of the Christian name.

None, save thou and thine, I've sworn,

Shall be left upon the morn:

But thee will I bear to a lovely spot,

Where our hands shall be joined, and our sorrow forgot.

There thou yet shall be my bride,

When once again I've quelled the pride 590

Of Venice; and her hated race

Have felt the arm they would debase

Scourge, with a whip of scorpions, those

Whom Vice and Envy made my foes."

Upon his hand she laid her own--

Light was the touch, but it thrilled to the bone,

And shot a chillness to his heart,[px]

Which fixed him beyond the power to start.

Though slight was that grasp so mortal cold,

He could not loose him from its hold; 600

But never did clasp of one so dear

Strike on the pulse with such feeling of fear,

As those thin fingers, long and white,

Froze through his blood by their touch that night.

The feverish glow of his brow was gone,

And his heart sank so still that it felt like stone,

As he looked on the face, and beheld its hue,[py]

So deeply changed from what he knew:

Fair but faint--without the ray

Of mind, that made each feature play 610

Like sparkling waves on a sunny day;

And her motionless lips lay still as death,

And her words came forth without her breath,

And there rose not a heave o'er her bosom's swell,[pz]

And there seemed not a pulse in her veins to dwell.

Though her eye shone out, yet the lids were fixed,[369]

And the glance that it gave was wild and unmixed

With aught of change, as the eyes may seem

Of the restless who walk in a troubled dream;

Like the figures on arras, that gloomily glare, 620

Stirred by the breath of the wintry air[qa]

So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light,[qb]

Lifeless, but life-like, and awful to sight;

As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down

From the shadowy wall where their images frown;

Fearfully flitting to and fro,

As the gusts on the tapestry come and go.[370]

"If not for love of me be given

Thus much, then, for the love of Heaven,--

Again I say--that turban tear 630

From off thy faithless brow, and swear

Thine injured country's sons to spare,

Or thou art lost; and never shalt see--

Not earth--that's past--but Heaven or me.

If this thou dost accord, albeit

A heavy doom' tis thine to meet,

That doom shall half absolve thy sin,

And Mercy's gate may receive thee within:[371]

But pause one moment more, and take

The curse of Him thou didst forsake; 640

And look once more to Heaven, and see

Its love for ever shut from thee.

There is a light cloud by the moon--[372]

'Tis passing, and will pass full soon--

If, by the time its vapoury sail

Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil,

Thy heart within thee is not changed,

Then God and man are both avenged;

Dark will thy doom be, darker still

Thine immortality of ill." 650

Alp looked to heaven, and saw on high

The sign she spake of in the sky;

But his heart was swollen, and turned aside,

By deep interminable pride.[qc]

This first false passion of his breast

Rolled like a torrent o'er the rest.

_He_ sue for mercy! _He_ dismayed

By wild words of a timid maid!

_He_, wronged by Venice, vow to save

Her sons, devoted to the grave! 660

No--though that cloud were thunder's worst,

And charged to crush him--let it burst!

He looked upon it earnestly,

Without an accent of reply;

He watched it passing; it is flown:

Full on his eye the clear moon shone,

And thus he spake--"Whate'er my fate,

I am no changeling--'tis too late:

The reed in storms may bow and quiver,

Then rise again; the tree must shiver. 670

What Venice made me, I must be,

Her foe in all, save love to thee:

But thou art safe: oh, fly with me!"

He turned, but she is gone!

Nothing is there but the column stone.

Hath she sunk in the earth, or melted in air?

He saw not--he knew not--but nothing is there.

XXII.

The night is past, and shines the sun

As if that morn were a jocund one.[373]

Lightly and brightly breaks away 680

The Morning from her mantle grey,[374]

And the Noon will look on a sultry day.[375]

Hark to the trump, and the drum,

And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn,

And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're borne,

And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum,

And the clash, and the shout, "They come! they come!"

The horsetails[376] are plucked from the ground, and the sword

From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word.

Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, 690

Strike your tents, and throng to the van;

Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,[377]

That the fugitive may flee in vain,

When he breaks from the town; and none escape,

Agéd or young, in the Christian shape;

While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,

Bloodstain the breach through which they pass.[378]

The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;

Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;

White is the foam of their champ on the bit; 700

The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;

The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,

And crush the wall they have crumbled before:[379]

Forms in his phalanx each Janizar;

Alp at their head; his right arm is bare,

So is the blade of his scimitar;

The Khan and the Pachas are all at their post;

The Vizier himself at the head of the host.

When the culverin's signal is fired, then on;

Leave not in Corinth a living one-- 710

A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,

A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.

God and the prophet--Alla Hu![380]

Up to the skies with that wild halloo!

"There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;

And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?

He who first downs with the red cross may crave[381]

His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!"

Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless Vizier;[382]

The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, 720

And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:--

Silence--hark to the signal--fire!

XXIII.

As the wolves, that headlong go

On the stately buffalo,

Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,

And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore,

He tramples on earth, or tosses on high

The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die

Thus against the wall they went,

Thus the first were backward bent;[383] 730

Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,

Strewed the earth like broken glass,[qd]

Shivered by the shot, that tore

The ground whereon they moved no more:

Even as they fell, in files they lay,

Like the mower's grass at the close of day,[qe]

When his work is done on the levelled plain;

Such was the fall of the foremost slain.[384]

XXIV.

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,

From the cliffs invading dash 740

Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow,

Till white and thundering down they go,

Like the avalanche's snow

On the Alpine vales below;

Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,

Corinth's sons were downward borne

By the long and oft renewed

Charge of the Moslem multitude.

In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,

Heaped by the host of the Infidel, 750

Hand to hand, and foot to foot:

Nothing there, save Death, was mute;[385]

Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry

For quarter, or for victory,

Mingle there with the volleying thunder,

Which makes the distant cities wonder

How the sounding battle goes,

If with them, or for their foes;

If they must mourn, or may rejoice

In that annihilating voice, 760

Which pierces the deep hills through and through

With an echo dread and new:

You might have heard it, on that day,

O'er Salamis and Megara;

(We have heard the hearers say,)[qf]

Even unto Piræus' bay.

XXV.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,

Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;[386]

But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,

And all but the after carnage done. 770

Shriller shrieks now mingling come

From within the plundered dome:

Hark to the haste of flying feet,

That splash in the blood of the slippery street;

But here and there, where 'vantage ground

Against the foe may still be found,

Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,

Make a pause, and turn again--

With banded backs against the wall,

Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780

There stood an old man[387]--his hairs were white,

But his veteran arm was full of might:

So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,

The dead before him, on that day,

In a semicircle lay;

Still he combated unwounded,

Though retreating, unsurrounded.

Many a scar of former fight

Lurked[388] beneath his corslet bright;

But of every wound his body bore, 790

Each and all had been ta'en before:

Though agéd, he was so iron of limb,

Few of our youth could cope with him,

And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,

Outnumbered his thin hairs[389] of silver grey.

From right to left his sabre swept:

Many an Othman mother wept

Sons that were unborn, when dipped[390]

His weapon first in Moslem gore,

Ere his years could count a score. 800

Of all he might have been the sire[391]

Who fell that day beneath his ire:

For, sonless left long years ago,

His wrath made many a childless foe;

And since the day, when in the strait[392]

His only boy had met his fate,

His parent's iron hand did doom

More than a human hecatomb.[393]

If shades by carnage be appeased,

Patroclus' spirit less was pleased 810

Than his, Minotti's son, who died

Where Asia's bounds and ours divide.

Buried he lay, where thousands before

For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore;

What of them is left, to tell

Where they lie, and how they fell?

Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves;

But they live in the verse that immortally saves.[394]

XXVI.

Hark to the Allah shout![395] a band

Of the Mussulman bravest and best is at hand; 820

Their leader's nervous arm is bare,

Swifter to smite, and never to spare--

Unclothed to the shoulder it waves them on;

Thus in the fight is he ever known:

Others a gaudier garb may show,

To tempt the spoil of the greedy foe;

Many a hand's on a richer hilt,

But none on a steel more ruddily gilt;

Many a loftier turban may wear,--

Alp is but known by the white arm bare; 830

Look through the thick of the fight,'tis there!

There is not a standard on that shore

So well advanced the ranks before;

There is not a banner in Moslem war

Will lure the Delhis half so far;

It glances like a falling star!

Where'er that mighty arm is seen,

The bravest be, or late have been;[396]

There the craven cries for quarter

Vainly to the vengeful Tartar; 840

Or the hero, silent lying,

Scorns to yield a groan in dying;

Mustering his last feeble blow

'Gainst the nearest levelled foe,

Though faint beneath the mutual wound,

Grappling on the gory ground.

XXVII.

Still the old man stood erect.

And Alp's career a moment checked.

"Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take,

For thine own, thy daughter's sake." 850

"Never, Renegado, never!

Though the life of thy gift would last for ever."[qg]

"Francesca!--Oh, my promised bride![qh]

Must she too perish by thy pride!"

"She is safe."--"Where? where?"--"In Heaven;

From whence thy traitor soul is driven--

Far from thee, and undefiled."

Grimly then Minotti smiled,

As he saw Alp staggering bow

Before his words, as with a blow. 860

"Oh God! when died she?"--"Yesternight--

Nor weep I for her spirit's flight:

None of my pure race shall be

Slaves to Mahomet and thee--

Come on!"--That challenge is in vain--

Alp's already with the slain!

While Minotti's words were wreaking

More revenge in bitter speaking

Than his falchion's point had found,

Had the time allowed to wound, 870

From within the neighbouring porch

Of a long defended church,

Where the last and desperate few

Would the failing fight renew,

The sharp shot dashed Alp to the ground;

Ere an eye could view the wound

That crashed through the brain of the infidel,

Round he spun, and down he fell;

A flash like fire within his eyes

Blazed, as he bent no more to rise, 880

And then eternal darkness sunk

Through all the palpitating trunk;[qi]

Nought of life left, save a quivering

Where his limbs were slightly shivering:

They turned him on his back; his breast

And brow were stained with gore and dust,

And through his lips the life-blood oozed,

From its deep veins lately loosed;

But in his pulse there was no throb,

Nor on his lips one dying sob; 890

Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath[qj]

Heralded his way to death:

Ere his very thought could pray,

Unaneled he passed away,

Without a hope from Mercy's aid,--

To the last a Renegade.[397]

XXVIII.

Fearfully the yell arose

Of his followers, and his foes;

These in joy, in fury those:[qk]

Then again in conflict mixing,[ql] 900

Clashing swords, and spears transfixing,

Interchanged the blow and thrust,

Hurling warriors in the dust.

Street by street, and foot by foot,

Still Minotti dares dispute

The latest portion of the land

Left beneath his high command;

With him, aiding heart and hand,

The remnant of his gallant band.

Still the church is tenable, 910

Whence issued late the fated ball

That half avenged the city's fall,

When Alp, her fierce assailant, fell:

Thither bending sternly back,

They leave before a bloody track;

And, with their faces to the foe,

Dealing wounds with every blow,[398]

The chief, and his retreating train,

Join to those within the fane;

There they yet may breathe awhile, 920

Sheltered by the massy pile.

XXIX.

Brief breathing-time! the turbaned host,

With added ranks and raging boast,

Press onwards with such strength and heat,

Their numbers balk their own retreat;

For narrow the way that led to the spot

Where still the Christians yielded not;

And the foremost, if fearful, may vainly try

Through the massy column to turn and fly;

They perforce must do or die. 930

They die; but ere their eyes could close,

Avengers o'er their bodies rose;

Fresh and furious, fast they fill

The ranks unthinned, though slaughtered still;

And faint the weary Christians wax

Before the still renewed attacks:

And now the Othmans gain the gate;

Still resists its iron weight,

And still, all deadly aimed and hot,

From every crevice comes the shot; 940

From every shattered window pour

The volleys of the sulphurous shower:

But the portal wavering grows and weak--

The iron yields, the hinges creak--

It bends--it falls--and all is o'er;

Lost Corinth may resist no more!

XXX.

Darkly, sternly, and all alone,

Minotti stood o'er the altar stone:

Madonna's face upon him shone,[399]

Painted in heavenly hues above, 950

With eyes of light and looks of love;

And placed upon that holy shrine

To fix our thoughts on things divine,

When pictured there, we kneeling see

Her, and the boy-God on her knee,

Smiling sweetly on each prayer

To Heaven, as if to waft it there.

Still she smiled; even now she smiles,

Though slaughter streams along her aisles:

Minotti lifted his agéd eye, 960

And made the sign of a cross with a sigh,

Then seized a torch which blazed thereby;

And still he stood, while with steel and flame,

Inward and onward the Mussulman came.

XXXI.

The vaults beneath the mosaic stone[qm]

Contained the dead of ages gone;

Their names were on the graven floor,

But now illegible with gore;[qn]

The carvéd crests, and curious hues

The varied marble's veins diffuse, 970

Were smeared, and slippery--stained, and strown

With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown:

There were dead above, and the dead below

Lay cold in many a coffined row;

You might see them piled in sable state,

By a pale light through a gloomy grate;

But War had entered their dark caves,[qo]

And stored along the vaulted graves

Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread

In masses by the fleshless dead: 980

Here, throughout the siege, had been

The Christians' chiefest magazine;

To these a late formed train now led,

Minotti's last and stern resource

Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.

XXXII.

The foe came on, and few remain

To strive, and those must strive in vain:

For lack of further lives, to slake

The thirst of vengeance now awake,

With barbarous blows they gash the dead, 990

And lop the already lifeless head,

And fell the statues from their niche,

And spoil the shrines of offerings rich,

And from each other's rude hands wrest

The silver vessels Saints had blessed.

To the high altar on they go;

Oh, but it made a glorious show![400]

On its table still behold

The cup of consecrated gold;

Massy and deep, a glittering prize, 1000

Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes:

That morn it held the holy wine,[qp]

Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,

Which his worshippers drank at the break of day,[qq]

To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray.

Still a few drops within it lay;

And round the sacred table glow

Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,

From the purest metal cast;

A spoil--the richest, and the last. 1010

XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretched

To grasp the spoil he almost reached

When old Minotti's hand

Touched with the torch the train--

'Tis fired![401]

Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,

The turbaned victors, the Christian band,

All that of living or dead remain,

Hurled on high with the shivered fane,

In one wild roar expired![402] 1020

The shattered town--the walls thrown down--

The waves a moment backward bent--

The hills that shake, although unrent,[qr]

As if an Earthquake passed--

The thousand shapeless things all driven

In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,

By that tremendous blast--

Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er

On that too long afflicted shore:[403]

Up to the sky like rockets go 1030

All that mingled there below:

Many a tall and goodly man,

Scorched and shrivelled to a span,

When he fell to earth again

Like a cinder strewed the plain:

Down the ashes shower like rain;

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

Some fell on the shore, but, far away,

Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040

Christian or Moslem, which be they?

Let their mothers see and say![qs]

When in cradled rest they lay,

And each nursing mother smiled

On the sweet sleep of her child,

Little deemed she such a day

Would rend those tender limbs away.[404]

Not the matrons that them bore

Could discern their offspring more;[405]

That one moment left no trace 1050

More of human form or face

Save a scattered scalp or bone:

And down came blazing rafters, strown

Around, and many a falling stone,[qt]

Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blackened there and reeking lay.

All the living things that heard

The deadly earth-shock disappeared:

The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,

And howling left the unburied dead;[qu][406] 1060

The camels from their keepers broke;

The distant steer forsook the yoke--

The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,

And burst his girth, and tore his rein;

The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,

Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;[407]

The wolves yelled on the caverned hill

Where Echo rolled in thunder still;[qv]

The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,[qw][408]

Bayed from afar complainingly, 1070

With a mixed and mournful sound,[qx]

Like crying babe, and beaten hound:[409]

With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,

The eagle left his rocky nest,

And mounted nearer to the sun,

The clouds beneath him seemed so dun;

Their smoke assailed his startled beak,

And made him higher soar and shriek--

Thus was Corinth lost and won![410]

FOOTNOTES:

[330] "With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss, and Thunder."

[331] {447} Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in

the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains his

government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-11; and,

in the course of journeying through the country from my first arrival in

1809, I crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the

Morea, over the mountains; or in the other direction, when passing from

the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. Both the routes are picturesque

and beautiful, though very different: that by sea has more sameness; but

the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it,

presents many attractive views of the islands Salamis, Ægina, Poros,

etc., and the coast of the Continent.

["Independently of the suitableness of such an event to the power of

Lord Byron's genius, the Fall of Corinth afforded local attractions, by

the intimate knowledge which the poet had of the place and surrounding

objects.... Thus furnished with that topographical information which

could not be well obtained from books and maps, he was admirably

qualified to depict the various operations and progress of the

siege."--_Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord

Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222.]

[332] {449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy

of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the

First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to

Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as

an opening to the _Siege of Corinth_. I had forgotten them, and am not

sure that they had not better be left out now;--on that you and your

Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale,"

October 23rd. First published in _Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 638,

they were included among the _Occasional Poems_ in the edition of 1831,

and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]

[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death

instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an

old ballad (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. 53)--

"Upon the sixteen hunder year

Of God, and fifty-three,

From Christ was born, that bought us dear,

As writings testifie," etc.

See "The Life and Age of Man" (_Burns' Selected Poems_, ed. by J. L.

Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]

[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives

that travellers be!"--_Letters_, 1898, i. 233.]

[335] {450} [For "capote," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza

lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 132,

181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (_Letters_,

1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of

war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak),

and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]

[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who

followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head

of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

[nz] {451} _But those winged days_----.--[MS.]

[337] [Compare Kingsley's _Last Buccaneer_--

"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main--

To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]

[oa] _The kindly few who love my lay_.--[MS.]

[338] [The MS. is dated J^y (January) 31, 1815. Lady Byron's copy is

dated November 2, 1815.]

[ob] _Many a year, and many an age_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[oc] _A marvel from her Moslem bands_.--[MS. G.]

[339] {452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes

in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power

in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on

the story, and that Akenside had the same design (_Works_ of Alexander

Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]

[od] _Or could the dead be raised again_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oe]

----_through yon clear skies_

_Than tower-capt Acropolis_.--[MS. G.]

[of] _Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]_

[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]

[og]

_The turbaned crowd of dusky hue_

_Whose march Morea's fields may rue_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they

dwell in tents.

[342] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 639 (_vide ante_, p. 116)--"The

deathshot hissing from afar."]

[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how

"Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith

Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed

(Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave

Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He

conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf

Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His

epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan

élevée jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en

poussière."--Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l'Empire Othoman_, i.

13-15.]

[oh] _But now an exile_----.--[MS. G.]

[344] {455} ["The _Lions' Mouths_, under the arcade at the summit of the

Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no

doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal

for the public welfare."--_Sketches from Venetian History_, 1832, ii.

380.]

[oi] _To waste its future_----.--[MS. G.]

[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the

charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to

Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one

campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the

battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary,

endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August

16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and

some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus

serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of

Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded

presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was

a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his

expense."

[For his letter to Prince Eugene, "Eh bien! la guerre va décider entre

nous," etc., and for an account of his death, see Hammer-Purgstall,

_Historie de l'Empire Othoman_, xiii. 300, 312.]

[oj] {456} _And death-like rolled_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ok] _Like comets in convulsion riven_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ol]

_Impervious to the powerless sun_,

_Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew_.--

[MS. G. erased.]

[om] {457} _In midnight courtship to Italian maid_.--[MS. G.]

[346] {458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of

Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks

by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for

the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was

begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]

[on] _By Buda's wall to Danube's side_.--[MS. G.]

[oo] _Pisani held_----.--[MS. G.]

[op] _Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[347] {459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an

equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see _Childe Harold_, Canto

II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

[oq] _By stepping o'er_----.--[MS. G.]

[348] ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight.

Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., _Poetical

Works_, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]

[or] _Bespangled with her isles_----.--[MS. G.]

[349] ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in _The Pleasures of

Hope_, Part II.--

"The seraph eye shall count the starry train,

Like distant isles embosomed on the main."

And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xi.

lines 14, 15--

"The studded archipelago,

O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."

For other "star-similes," see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza

lxxxviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]

[os]

_And take a dark unmeasured tone._--[MS. G.]

_And make a melancholy moan_,

_To mortal voice and ear unknown._--[MS. G. erased.]

[350] {461} [Compare Scott's _Marmion_, III. xvi. 4--

"And that strange Palmer's boding say,

That fell so ominous and drear."]

[ot]

----_by fancy framed_,

_Which rings a deep, internal knell_,

_A visionary passing-bell._--[MS. G. erased.]

[ou] _The thoughts tumultuously roll._--[MS. G.]

[ov] {462} _To triumph o'er_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ow]

_They but provide, he fells the prey._--[MS. G.]

_As lions o'er the jackal sway_

_By springing dauntless on the prey;_

_They follow on, and yelling press_

_To gorge the fragments of success._--[MS. G. erased.]

[351] [Lines 329-331 are inserted in the copy. They are in Byron's

handwriting. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 1,

_seq._--"_That's_ an appropriate simile, _that jackal_."]

[ox] {463}

_He vainly turned from side to side_,

_And each reposing posture tried_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oy] _Beyond a rougher_----.--[MS. G.]

[oz] ----_to sigh for day_.--[MS. G.]

[pa] {464}

_Of Liakura--his unmelting snow_

_Bright and eternal_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[352] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 566 (_vide ante_, p. 113)--

"For where is he that hath beheld

The peak of Liakura unveiled?"

The reference is to the almost perpetual "cap" of mist on Parnassus

(Mount Likeri or Liakura), which lies some thirty miles to the

north-west of Corinth.]

[pb] {465} _Her spirit spoke in deathless song_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pc] _And in this night_----.--[MS. G.]

[pd] _He felt how little and how dim_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pe] _Who led the band_----.--[MS. G.]

[353] [Compare _The Giaour_, lines 103, _seq._ (_vide ante_, p.

91)--"Clime of the unforgotten brave!" etc.]

[pf] {466} _Their memory hallowed every fountain_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pg] Here follows, in the MS.--

_Immortal--boundless--undecayed--_

_Their souls the very soil pervade_.--

[_In the Copy the lines are erased_.]

[ph] _Where Freedom loveliest may be won_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[354] The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible

tides in the Mediterranean.

[pi] _So that fiercest of waves_----.--[MS. G.]

[pj] {467} _A little space of light grey sand_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[355] [Compare _The Island_, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12--

"A narrow segment of the yellow sand

On one side forms the outline of a strand."]

[pk]

_Or would not waste on a single head_

_The ball on numbers better sped_.--[MS. G. erased]

[pl] _I know not in faith_----.--[MS. G.]

[356] [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the

editor of _The Works of Lord Byron_, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, "Lord

Byron gave Mr. Gifford _carte blanche_ to strike out or alter anything

at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is

somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention

whatever to the august "reader's" suggestions and strictures. The sheets

on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but

pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were

made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of

an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January

2, 1817.]

[357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the

wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by

the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between

the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's

_Travels_ [_in Albania_, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those

of some refractory Janizaries.

[358] This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet

will draw them into Paradise by it.

[pm] {469} _Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying_.--[MS. G.

Copy.]

[359] ["Than the mangled corpse in its own blood lying."--Gifford.]

[pn] _Than the rotting dead_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[360] [Strike out--

"Scorch'd with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,

Than the perishing dead who are past all pain."

What is a "perishing dead"?--Gifford.]

[361] [Lines 487, 488 are inserted in the copy in Byron's handwriting.]

[po] _And when all_----.--[MS. G.]

[362] ["O'er the weltering _limbs_ of the tombless dead."--Gifford.]

[pp]

_All that liveth on man will prey_,

_All rejoicing in his decay,_

or,

_Nature rejoicing in his decay_.

_All that can kindle dismay and disgust_

_Follow his frame from the bier to the dust._--[MS. G. erased.]

[pq] {470}

----_it hath left no more_

_Of the mightiest things that have gone before_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[363] [Omit this couplet.--Gifford.]

[pr] After this follows in the MS. erased--

_Monuments that the coming age_

_Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage_--

_Till Ruin makes the relics scarce_,

_Then Learning acts her solemn farce_,

_And, roaming through the marble waste_,

_Prates of beauty, art, and taste_.

XIX.

_That Temple was more in the midst of the plain_--

or,

_What of that shrine did yet remain_

_Lay to his left more in midst of the plain_.--[MS. G.]

[364] [From this all is beautiful to--"He saw not--he knew not--but

nothing is there."--Gifford. For "pillar's base," compare _Childe

Harold_, Canto II. stanza x. line 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 105.]

[ps] {471} _Is it the wind that through the stone._ or,----_o'er the

heavy stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[365] I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance

in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr.

Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were

written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful

poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very

recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is

convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea

undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed

above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer

delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite

of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.

[The lines in _Christabel_, Part the First, 43-52, 57, 58, are these--

"The night is chill; the forest bare;

Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air

To move away the ringlet curl

From the lovely lady's cheek--

There is not wind enough to twirl

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

" ... What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a silken robe of white."

Byron (_vide ante_, p. 443), in a letter to Coleridge, dated October 27,

1815, had already expressly guarded himself against a charge of

plagiarism, by explaining that lines 521-532 of stanza xix. were written

before he heard Walter Scott repeat _Christabel_ in the preceding June.

Now, as Byron himself perceived, perhaps for the first time, when he had

the MS. of _Christabel_ before him, the coincidence in language and

style between the two passages is unquestionable; and, as he hoped and

expected that Coleridge's fragment, when completed, would issue from the

press, he was anxious to avoid even the semblance of pilfering, and went

so far as to suggest that the passage should be cancelled. Neither in

the private letter nor the published note does Byron attempt to deny or

explain away the coincidence, but pleads that his lines were written

before he had heard Coleridge's poem recited, and that he had not been

guilty of a "wilful plagiarism." There is no difficulty in accepting his

statement. Long before the summer of 1815 _Christabel_ "had a pretty

general circulation in the literary world" (Medwin, _Conversations_,

1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other

passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of

_Christabel_ had sounded in his ears, he may (as Kölbing points out)

have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey,

or of Scott himself.

Compare _Thalaba the Destroyer_, v. 20 (1838, iv. 187)--

"What sound is borne on the wind?

Is it the storm that shakes

The thousand oaks of the forest?

* * * * *

Is it the river's roar

Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.

Or compare _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, I. xii. 5. _seq._ (1812, p.

24)--

"And now she sits in secret bower

In old Lord David's western tower,

And listens to a heavy sound,

That moans the mossy turrets round.

Is it the roar of Teviot's tide,

That chafes against the scaur's red side?

Is it the wind that swings the oaks?

Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.

Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the

_Siege of Corinth_, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and

fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced

to his notice.]

[pt] {473}_There sate a lady young and bright_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[366] [Contemporary critics fell foul of these lines for various

reasons. The _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p. 151)

remarks that "the following couplet [i.e. lines 531, 532] reminds us of

the _persiflage_ of Lewis or the pathos of a vulgar ballad;" while the

_Dublin Examiner_ (May, 1816, vol. i. p. 19) directs a double charge

against the founders of the schism and their proselyte: "If the

Cumberland _Lakers_ were not well known to be personages of the most

pious and saintly temperament, we would really have serious

apprehensions lest our noble Poet should come to any harm in consequence

of the envy which the two following lines and a great many others

through the poems, might excite by their successful rivalship of some of

the finest effects of babyism that these Gentlemen can boast."]

[pu] _He would have made it_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pv] _She who would_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pw] {474} _The ocean spread before their view_.--[Copy.]

[367] ["And its _thrilling_ glance, etc."--Gifford.]

[368] [Warton (_Observations en the Fairy Queen_, 1807, ii. 131),

commenting on Spenser's famous description of "Una and the Lion" (_Faëry

Queene_, Book I. canto iii. stanzas 5, 6, 7), quotes the following

passage from _Seven Champions of Christendom_: "Now, Sabra, I have by

this sufficiently proved thy true virginitie: for it is the nature of a

lion, be he never so furious, not to harme the unspotted virgin, but

humbly to lay his bristled head upon a maiden's lap."

Byron, according to Leigh Hunt (_Lord Byron and some of his

Contemporaries_, 1828, i. 77), could not "see anything" in Spenser, and

was not familiar with the _Fairy Queen_; but he may have had in mind

Scott's allusion to Spenser's Una--

"Harpers have sung and poets told

That he, in fury uncontrolled,

The shaggy monarch of the wood,

Before a virgin, fair and good,

Hath pacified his savage mood."

_Marmion_, Canto II. stanza vii. line 3, _seq_.

(See Kölbing's note to _Siege of Corinth_, 1893, pp. 110-112.)]

[px] {476}

_She laid her fingers on his hand_,

_Its coldness thrilled through every bone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[py] _As he looked on her face_----.--[MS. G.]

[pz] ----_on her bosom's swell_.--[MS. G. erased. Copy.]

[369] [Compare Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 1, line 30--

"You see, her eyes are open,

Aye, but their sense is shut."

Compare, too, _Christabel_, Conclusion to Part the First (lines 292,

293)--

"With open eyes (ah, woe is me!)

Asleep, and dreaming fearfully."]

[qa] {477}

_Like a picture, that magic had charmed from its frame_,

_Lifeless but life-like, and ever the same_.

or, _Like a picture come forth from its canvas and frame_.--

[MS. G. erased.]

[qb]

_And seen_----.--[MS. G.]

----_its fleecy mail_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[370] [In the summer of 1803, Byron, then turned fifteen, though offered

a bed at Annesley, used at first to return every night to Newstead;

alleging that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths,

which he fancied "had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and

would come down from their frames to haunt him." Moore thinks this

passage may have been suggested by the recollection (_Life_, p. 27).

Compare _Lara_, Canto I. stanza xi. line 1, _seq_. (_vide ante_, p. 331,

note 1).]

[371] [Compare Southey's _Roderick_, Canto XXI. (ed. 1838, ix. 195)--

" ... and till the grave

Open, the gate of mercy is not closed."]

[372] {478} I have been told that the idea expressed in this and the

five following lines has been admired by those whose approbation is

valuable. I am glad of it; but it is not original--at least not mine; it

may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English

version of "Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to

which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a

renewal of gratification.--[The following is the passage: "'Deluded

prince!' said the Genius, addressing the Caliph ... 'This moment is the

last, of grace, allowed thee: ... give back Nouronihar to her father,

who still retains a few sparks of life: destroy thy tower, with all its

abominations: drive Carathis from thy councils: be just to thy subjects:

respect the ministers of the Prophet: compensate for thy impieties by an

exemplary life; and, instead of squandering thy days in voluptuous

indulgence, lament thy crimes on the sepulchres of thy ancestors. Thou

beholdest the clouds that obscure the sun: at the instant he recovers

his splendour, if thy heart be not changed, the time of mercy assigned

thee will be past for ever.'"

"Vathek, depressed with fear, was on the point of prostrating himself at

the feet of the shepherd ... but, his pride prevailing ... he said,

'Whoever thou art, withhold thy useless admonitions.... If what I have

done be so criminal ... there remains not for me a moment of grace. I

have traversed a sea of blood to acquire a power which will make thy

equals tremble; deem not that I shall retire when in view of the port;

or that I will relinquish her who is dearer to me than either my life or

thy mercy. Let the sun appear! let him illumine my career! it matters

not where it may end!' On uttering these words ... Vathek ... commanded

that his horses should be forced back to the road.

"There was no difficulty in obeying these orders; for the attraction had

ceased; the sun shone forth in all his glory, and the shepherd vanished

with a lamentable scream" (ed. 1786, pp. 183-185).]

[qc] {479} _By rooted and unhallowed pride_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[373] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]

[374] {480} [Compare--"While the still morn went out with sandals grey."

_Lycidas_, line 187.]

[375] [Strike out--"And the Noon will look on a sultry day."--Gifford.]

[376] The horsetails, fixed upon a lance, a pacha's standard.

["When the vizir appears in public, three _thoughs_, or horse-tails,

fastened to a long staff, with a large gold ball at top, is borne before

him."--_Moeurs des Ottomans_, par A. L. Castellan (Translated, 1821),

iv. 7.

Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II., "Albanian War-Song," stanza 10, line

2; and _Bride of Abydos_, line 714 (_vide ante_, p. 189).]

[377] [Compare--"Send out moe horses, skirr the country round."

_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, line 35.]

[378] [Omit--

"While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,

Bloodstain the breach through which they pass."

--Gifford.]

[379] ["And crush the wall they have _shaken_ before."--Gifford.]

[380] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 734 (_vide ante_, p. 120)--"At solemn

sound of 'Alla Hu!'" And _Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanza viii.]

[381] ["He who first _downs_ with the red cross may crave," etc. What

vulgarism is this!--"He who _lowers_,--or _plucks down_,"

etc.--Gifford.]

[382] [The historian, George Finlay, who met and frequently conversed

with Byron at Mesalonghi, with a view to illustrating "Lord Byron's

_Siege of Corinth_," subjoins in a note the full text of "the summons

sent by the grand vizier, and the answer." (See Finlay's _Greece under

Othoman and Venetian Domination_, 1856, p. 266, note 1; and, for the

original authority, see Brue's _Journal de la Campagne_, ... _en_ 1715,

Paris, 1871, p. 18.)]

[383] {482}

["Thus against the wall they _bent_,

Thus the first were backward _sent_."

--Gifford.]

[qd] _With such volley yields like glass_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qe] _Like the mowers ridge_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[384] ["Such was the fall of the foremost train."--Gifford.]

[385] {483} [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, Part I. sc. 2 ("Song of

the Soldiers")--

"Our shout shall grow gladder,

And death only be mute."]

[qf] _I have heard_----.--[MS. G.]

[386] [Compare _Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 2, line 55--

"If he do bleed,

I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal."]

[387] {484} ["There stood a man," etc.--Gifford.]

[388] ["_Lurked_"--a bad word--say "_was hid_."--Gifford.]

[389] ["Outnumbered his hairs," etc.--Gifford.]

[390] ["Sons that were unborn, when _he_ dipped."--Gifford.]

[391] {485} [Bravo!--this is better than King Priam's fifty

sons.--Gifford.]

[392] In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the

Venetians and Turks.

[393] [There can be no such thing; but the whole of this is poor, and

spun out.--Gifford. The solecism, if such it be, was repeated in _Marino

Faliero_, act iii. sc. I, line 38.]

[394] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxix. lines 5-8

(_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 125)--

"Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save?...

If life eternal may await the lyre."]

[395] ["Hark to the Alia Hu!" etc.--Gifford.]

[396] {486} [Gifford has erased lines 839-847.]

[qg] _Though the life of thy giving would last for ever_.--[MS. G.

Copy.]

[qh] _Where's Francesca?--my promised bride!_--[MS. G. Copy.]

[qi] {488} Here follows in _MS. G._--

_Twice and once he roll'd a space_,

_Then lead-like lay upon his face_.

[qj] _Sigh, nor sign, nor parting word_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[397] [The Spanish "renegado" and the Anglicized "renegade" were

favourite terms of reprobation with politicians and others at the

beginning of the century. When Southey's _Wat Tyler_ was reprinted in

1817, William Smith, the Member for Norwich, denounced the Laureate as a

"renegado," an attack which Coleridge did his best to parry by

contributing articles to the _Courier_ on "Apostasy and Renegadoism"

(Letter to Murray, March 26, 1817, _Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i.

306). Byron himself, in _Don Juan_ ("Dedication," stanza i. line 5),

hails Southey as "My Epic Renegade!" Compare, too, stanza xiv. of

"_Lines addressed to a Noble Lord_ (His Lordship will know why), By one

of the small Fry of the Lakes" (i.e. Miss Barker, the "Bhow Begum" of

Southey's _Doctor_)--

"And our Ponds shall better please thee,

Than those now dishonoured seas,

With their shores and Cyclades

Stocked with Pachas, Seraskiers,

Slaves and turbaned Buccaneers;

Sensual Mussulmans atrocious,

Renegadoes more ferocious," etc.]

[qk] {489} _These in rage, in triumph those_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ql] _Then again in fury mixing_.--[MS. G.]

[398] ["Dealing _death_ with every blow."--Gifford.]

[399] {490} [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lxi. lines 1,

_seq._--

"But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,

The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,

With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round ...

But even the faintest relics of a shrine

Of any worship wake some thoughts divine."]

[qm]

/ _chequered_ \

----_beneath the_ { } _stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

\ _inlaid_ /

[qn] _But now half-blotted_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qo] _But War must make the most of means_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[400] {492} ["Oh, but it made a glorious show!!!" Gifford erases the

line, and adds these marks of exclamation.]

[qp] ----_the sacrament wine_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qq] _Which the Christians partook at the break of the day_.--[MS. G.

Copy.]

[401] {493} [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act v. sc. 1 (s.f.)--

"_Myr._ Art thou ready?

_Sard._ As the torch in thy grasp.

(_Myrrha fires the pile._)

_Myr._ 'Tis fired! I come."]

[402] [A critic in the _Eclectic Review_ (vol. v. N.S., 1816, p. 273),

commenting on the "obvious carelessness" of these lines, remarks, "We

know not how 'all that of dead remained' could _expire_ in that wild

roar." To apply the word "expire" to inanimate objects is, no doubt, an

archaism, but Byron might have quoted Dryden as an authority, "The

ponderous ball expires."]

[qr] _The hills as by an earthquake bent_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[403] {494} [Strike out from "Up to the sky," etc., to "All blackened

there and reeking lay." Despicable stuff.--Gifford.]

[qs] _Who can see or who shall say?_--[MS. G. erased.]

[404] [Lines 1043-1047 are not in the Copy or MS. G., but were included

in the text of the First Edition.]

[405] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto II. stanza cii. line 1, _seq._--

"Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done

Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to

Such things a mother had not known her son

Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew."

Compare, too, _The Island_, Canto I. section ix. lines 13, 14.]

[qt] {495} _And crashed each mass of stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qu]

_And left their food the unburied dead_.--[Copy.]

_And left their food the untasted dead_.--[MS. G.]

_And howling left_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[406] [Omit the next six lines.--Gifford.]

[407] ["I have heard hyænas and jackalls in the ruins of Asia; and

bull-frogs in the marshes; besides wolves and angry

Mussulmans."--_Journal_, November 23, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 340.]

[qv] _Where Echo rolled in horror still_.--[MS. G.]

[qw] _The frightened jackal's shrill sharp cry_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[408] I believe I have taken a poetical licence to transplant the jackal

from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the

ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and

follow armies. [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line 6;

and _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2.]

[qx] _Mixed and mournful as the sound_.--[MS. G.]

[409] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]

[410] [With lines 1058-1079, compare Southey's _Roderick_ (Canto XVIII.,

ed. 1838, ix. 169)--

"Far and wide the thundering shout,

Rolling among reduplicating rocks,

Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales.

The wild ass starting in the forest glade

Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf

Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake;

The sluggish bear, awakened in his den,

Roused up and answered with a sullen growl,

Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar scared,

The brooding eagle from her nest took wing."

A sentence in a letter to Moore, dated January 10, 1815 (_Letters_,

1899, iii. 168), "_I_ have tried the rascals (i.e. the public) with my

Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. Nobody but S....y has done any

thing worth a slice of bookseller's pudding, and _he_ has not luck

enough to be found out in doing a good thing," implies that Byron had

read and admired Southey's _Roderick_--an inference which is curiously

confirmed by a memorandum in Murray's handwriting: "When Southey's poem,

_Don Roderick_ (_sic_), was published, Lord Byron sent in the middle of

the night to ask John Murray if he had heard any opinion of it, for he

thought it one of the finest poems he had ever read." The resemblance

between the two passages, which is pointed out by Professor Kölbing, is

too close to be wholly unconscious, but Byron's expansion of Southey's

lines hardly amounts to a plagiarism.]

PARISINA.

INTRODUCTION TO _PARISINA_.

_Parisina_, which had been begun before the _Siege of Corinth_, was

transcribed by Lady Byron, and sent to the publisher at the beginning of

December, 1815. Murray confessed that he had been alarmed by some hints

which Byron had dropped as to the plot of the narrative, but was

reassured when he traced "the delicate hand that transcribed it." He

could not say enough of this "Pearl" of great price. "It is very

interesting, pathetic, beautiful--do you know I would almost say moral"

(_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 353). Ward, to whom the MS. of

_Parisina_ was shown, and Isaac D'Israeli, who heard it read aloud by

Murray, were enthusiastic as to its merits; and Gifford, who had mingled

censure with praise in his critical appreciation of the _Siege_,

declared that the author "had never surpassed _Parisina_."

The last and shortest of the six narrative poems composed and published

in the four years (the first years of manhood and of fame, the only

years of manhood passed at home in England) which elapsed between the

appearance of the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ and the third,

_Parisina_ has, perhaps, never yet received its due. At the time of its

appearance it shared the odium which was provoked by the publication of

_Fare Thee Well_ and _A Sketch_, and before there was time to reconsider

the new volume on its own merits, the new canto of _Childe Harold_,

followed almost immediately by the _Prisoner of Chillon_ and its

brilliant and noticeable companion poems, usurped the attention of

friend and foe. Contemporary critics (with the exception of the

_Monthly_ and _Critical_ Reviews) fell foul of the subject-matter of the

poem--the guilty passion of a bastard son for his father's wife. "It

was too disgusting to be rendered pleasing by any display of genius"

(_European Magazine_); "The story of _Parisina_ includes adultery not to

be named" (_Literary Panorama_); while the _Eclectic_, on grounds of

taste rather than of morals, gave judgment that "the subject of the tale

was purely unpleasing"--"the impression left simply painful."

Byron, no doubt, for better or worse, was in advance of his age, in the

pursuit of art for art's sake, and in his indifference, not to

morality--the _dénouement_ of the story is severely moral--but to the

moral edification of his readers. The tale was chosen because it is a

tale of love and guilt and woe, and the poet, unconcerned with any other

issue, sets the tale to an enchanting melody. It does not occur to him

to condone or to reprobate the loves of Hugo and Parisina, and in

detailing the issue leaves the actors to their fate. It was this

aloofness from ethical considerations which perturbed and irritated the

"canters," as Byron called them--the children and champions of the

anti-revolution. The modern reader, without being attracted or repelled

by the _motif_ of the story, will take pleasure in the sustained energy

and sure beauty of the poetic strain. Byron may have gone to the

"nakedness of history" for his facts, but he clothed them in singing

robes of a delicate and shining texture.

to

SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES, ESQ.

the following poem

Is Inscribed,

by one who has long admired his talents

and valued his friendship.

_January_ 22, 1816.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following poem is grounded on a circumstance mentioned in Gibbon's

"Antiquities of the House of Brunswick." I am aware, that in modern

times, the delicacy or fastidiousness of the reader may deem such

subjects unfit for the purposes of poetry. The Greek dramatists, and

some of the best of our old English writers, were of a different

opinion: as Alfieri and Schiller have also been, more recently, upon the

Continent. The following extract will explain the facts on which the

story is founded. The name of _Azo_ is substituted for Nicholas, as more

metrical.--[B.]

"Under the reign of Nicholas III. [A.D. 1425] Ferrara was polluted with

a domestic tragedy. By the testimony of a maid, and his own observation,

the Marquis of Este discovered the incestuous loves of his wife

Parisina, and Hugo his bastard son, a beautiful and valiant youth. They

were beheaded in the castle by the sentence of a father and husband, who

published his shame, and survived their execution.[411] He was

unfortunate, if they were guilty: if they were innocent, he was still

more unfortunate; nor is there any possible situation in which I can

sincerely approve the last act of the justice of a parent."--Gibbon's

_Miscellaneous Works_, vol. iii. p. 470.--[Ed. 1837, p. 830.]

PARISINA.[412]

I.

It is the hour when from the boughs[413]

The nightingale's high note is heard;

It is the hour when lovers' vows

Seem sweet in every whispered word;

And gentle winds, and waters near,

Make music to the lonely ear.

Each flower the dews have lightly wet,

And in the sky the stars are met,

And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue, 10

And in the heaven that clear obscure,

So softly dark, and darkly pure,

Which follows the decline of day,

As twilight melts beneath the moon away.[414]

II.

But it is not to list to the waterfall[qy]

That Parisina leaves her hall,

And it is not to gaze on the heavenly light

That the Lady walks in the shadow of night;

And if she sits in Este's bower,

'Tis not for the sake of its full-blown flower; 20

She listens--but not for the nightingale--

Though her ear expects as soft a tale.

There glides a step through the foliage thick,[qz]

And her cheek grows pale, and her heart beats quick.

There whispers a voice through the rustling leaves,

And her blush returns, and her bosom heaves:

A moment more--and they shall meet--

'Tis past--her Lover's at her feet.

III.

And what unto them is the world beside,

With all its change of time and tide? 30

Its living things--its earth and sky--

Are nothing to their mind and eye.

And heedless as the dead are they

Of aught around, above, beneath;

As if all else had passed away,

They only for each other breathe;

Their very sighs are full of joy

So deep, that did it not decay,

That happy madness would destroy

The hearts which feel its fiery sway: 40

Of guilt, of peril, do they deem

In that tumultuous tender dream?

Who that have felt that passion's power,

Or paused, or feared in such an hour?

Or thought how brief such moments last?

But yet--they are already past!

Alas! we must awake before

We know such vision comes no more.

IV.

With many a lingering look they leave

The spot of guilty gladness past: 50

And though they hope, and vow, they grieve,

As if that parting were the last.

The frequent sigh--the long embrace--

The lip that there would cling for ever,

While gleams on Parisina's face

The Heaven she fears will not forgive her,

As if each calmly conscious star

Beheld her frailty from afar--

The frequent sigh, the long embrace,

Yet binds them to their trysting-place. 60

But it must come, and they must part

In fearful heaviness of heart,

With all the deep and shuddering chill

Which follows fast the deeds of ill.

V.

And Hugo is gone to his lonely bed,

To covet there another's bride;

But she must lay her conscious head

A husband's trusting heart beside.

But fevered in her sleep she seems,

And red her cheek with troubled dreams, 70

And mutters she in her unrest

A name she dare not breathe by day,[415]

And clasps her Lord unto the breast

Which pants for one away:

And he to that embrace awakes,

And, happy in the thought, mistakes

That dreaming sigh, and warm caress,

For such as he was wont to bless;

And could in very fondness weep

O'er her who loves him even in sleep. 80

VI.

He clasped her sleeping to his heart,

And listened to each broken word:

He hears--Why doth Prince Azo start,

As if the Archangel's voice he heard?

And well he may--a deeper doom

Could scarcely thunder o'er his tomb,

When he shall wake to sleep no more,

And stand the eternal throne before.

And well he may--his earthly peace

Upon that sound is doomed to cease. 90

That sleeping whisper of a name

Bespeaks her guilt and Azo's shame.

And whose that name? that o'er his pillow

Sounds fearful as the breaking billow,

Which rolls the plank upon the shore,

And dashes on the pointed rock

The wretch who sinks to rise no more,--

So came upon his soul the shock.

And whose that name?--'tis Hugo's,--his--

In sooth he had not deemed of this!-- 100

'Tis Hugo's,--he, the child of one

He loved--his own all-evil son--

The offspring of his wayward youth,

When he betrayed Bianca's truth,[ra][416]

The maid whose folly could confide

In him who made her not his bride.

VII.

He plucked his poniard in its sheath,

But sheathed it ere the point was bare;

Howe'er unworthy now to breathe,

He could not slay a thing so fair-- 110

At least, not smiling--sleeping--there--

Nay, more:--he did not wake her then,

But gazed upon her with a glance

Which, had she roused her from her trance,

Had frozen her sense to sleep again;

And o'er his brow the burning lamp

Gleamed on the dew-drops big and damp.

She spake no more--but still she slumbered--

While, in his thought, her days are numbered.

VIII.

And with the morn he sought and found, 120

In many a tale from those around,

The proof of all he feared to know,

Their present guilt--his future woe;

The long-conniving damsels seek

To save themselves, and would transfer

The guilt--the shame--the doom--to her:

Concealment is no more--they speak

All circumstance which may compel

Full credence to the tale they tell:

And Azo's tortured heart and ear 130

Have nothing more to feel or hear.

IX.

He was not one who brooked delay:

Within the chamber of his state,

The Chief of Este's ancient sway

Upon his throne of judgement sate;

His nobles and his guards are there,--

Before him is the sinful pair;

Both young,--and _one_ how passing fair!

With swordless belt, and fettered hand,

Oh, Christ! that thus a son should stand 140

Before a father's face!

Yet thus must Hugo meet his sire,

And hear the sentence of his ire,

The tale of his disgrace!

And yet he seems not overcome,

Although, as yet, his voice be dumb.

X.

And still,--and pale--and silently

Did Parisina wait her doom;

How changed since last her speaking eye

Glanced gladness round the glittering room, 150

Where high-born men were proud to wait--

Where Beauty watched to imitate

Her gentle voice--her lovely mien--

And gather from her air and gait

The graces of its Queen:

Then,--had her eye in sorrow wept,

A thousand warriors forth had leapt,

A thousand swords had sheathless shone,

And made her quarrel all their own.[417]

Now,--what is she? and what are they? 160

Can she command, or these obey?

All silent and unheeding now,

With downcast eyes and knitting brow,

And folded arms, and freezing air,

And lips that scarce their scorn forbear,

Her knights, her dames, her court--is there:

And he--the chosen one, whose lance

Had yet been couched before her glance,

Who--were his arm a moment free--

Had died or gained her liberty; 170

The minion of his father's bride,--

He, too, is fettered by her side;

Nor sees her swoln and full eye swim

Less for her own despair than him:

Those lids--o'er which the violet vein

Wandering, leaves a tender stain,

Shining through the smoothest white

That e'er did softest kiss invite--

Now seemed with hot and livid glow

To press, not shade, the orbs below; 180

Which glance so heavily, and fill,

As tear on tear grows gathering still[rb][418]

XI.

And he for her had also wept,

But for the eyes that on him gazed:

His sorrow, if he felt it, slept;

Stern and erect his brow was raised.

Whate'er the grief his soul avowed,

He would not shrink before the crowd;

But yet he dared not look on her;

Remembrance of the hours that were-- 190

His guilt--his love--his present state--

His father's wrath, all good men's hate--

His earthly, his eternal fate--

And hers,--oh, hers! he dared not throw

One look upon that death-like brow!

Else had his rising heart betrayed

Remorse for all the wreck it made.

XII.

And Azo spake:--"But yesterday

I gloried in a wife and son;

That dream this morning passed away; 200

Ere day declines, I shall have none.

My life must linger on alone;

Well,--let that pass,--there breathes not one

Who would not do as I have done:

Those ties are broken--not by me;

Let that too pass;--the doom's prepared!

Hugo, the priest awaits on thee,

And then--thy crime's reward!

Away! address thy prayers to Heaven.

Before its evening stars are met, 210

Learn if thou there canst be forgiven:

Its mercy may absolve thee yet.

But here, upon the earth beneath,

There is no spot where thou and I

Together for an hour could breathe:

Farewell! I will not see thee die--

But thou, frail thing! shall view his head--

Away! I cannot speak the rest:

Go! woman of the wanton breast;

Not I, but thou his blood dost shed: 220

Go! if that sight thou canst outlive,

And joy thee in the life I give."

XIII.

And here stern Azo hid his face--

For on his brow the swelling vein

Throbbed as if back upon his brain

The hot blood ebbed and flowed again;

And therefore bowed he for a space,

And passed his shaking hand along

His eye, to veil it from the throng;

While Hugo raised his chainéd hands, 230

And for a brief delay demands

His father's ear: the silent sire

Forbids not what his words require.

"It is not that I dread the death--

For thou hast seen me by thy side

All redly through the battle ride,

And that--not once a useless brand--

Thy slaves have wrested from my hand

Hath shed more blood in cause of thine,

Than e'er can stain the axe of mine:[419] 240

Thou gav'st, and may'st resume my breath,

A gift for which I thank thee not;

Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot,

Her slighted love and ruined name,

Her offspring's heritage of shame;

But she is in the grave, where he,

Her son--thy rival--soon shall be.

Her broken heart--my severed head--

Shall witness for thee from the dead

How trusty and how tender were 250

Thy youthful love--paternal care.

'Tis true that I have done thee wrong--

But wrong for wrong:--this,--deemed thy bride,

The other victim of thy pride,--

Thou know'st for me was destined long;

Thou saw'st, and coveted'st her charms;

And with thy very crime--my birth,--

Thou taunted'st me--as little worth;

A match ignoble for her arms;

Because, forsooth, I could not claim 260

The lawful heirship of thy name,

Nor sit on Este's lineal throne;

Yet, were a few short summers mine,

My name should more than Este's shine

With honours all my own.

I had a sword--and have a breast

That should have won as haught[420] a crest

As ever waved along the line

Of all these sovereign sires of thine.

Not always knightly spurs are worn 270

The brightest by the better born;

And mine have lanced my courser's flank

Before proud chiefs of princely rank,

When charging to the cheering cry

Of 'Este and of Victory!'

I will not plead the cause of crime,

Nor sue thee to redeem from time

A few brief hours or days that must

At length roll o'er my reckless dust;--

Such maddening moments as my past, 280

They could not, and they did not, last;--

Albeit my birth and name be base,

And thy nobility of race

Disdained to deck a thing like me--

Yet in my lineaments they trace

Some features of my father's face,

And in my spirit--all of thee.

From thee this tamelessness of heart--

From thee--nay, wherefore dost thou start?---

From thee in all their vigour came 290

My arm of strength, my soul of flame--

Thou didst not give me life alone,

But all that made me more thine own.

See what thy guilty love hath done!

Repaid thee with too like a son!

I am no bastard in my soul,

For that, like thine, abhorred control;

And for my breath, that hasty boon

Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,

I valued it no more than thou, 300

When rose thy casque above thy brow,

And we, all side by side, have striven,

And o'er the dead our coursers driven:

The past is nothing--and at last

The future can but be the past;[421]

Yet would I that I then had died:

For though thou work'dst my mother's ill,

And made thy own my destined bride,

I feel thou art my father still:

And harsh as sounds thy hard decree, 310

'Tis not unjust, although from thee.

Begot in sin, to die in shame,

My life begun and ends the same:

As erred the sire, so erred the son,

And thou must punish both in one.

My crime seems worst to human view,

But God must judge between us too!"[422]

XIV.

He ceased--and stood with folded arms,

On which the circling fetters sounded;

And not an ear but felt as wounded, 320

Of all the chiefs that there were ranked,

When those dull chains in meeting clanked:

Till Parisina's fatal charms[423]

Again attracted every eye--

Would she thus hear him doomed to die!

She stood, I said, all pale and still,

The living cause of Hugo's ill:

Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide,

Not once had turned to either side--

Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 330

Or shade the glance o'er which they rose,

But round their orbs of deepest blue

The circling white dilated grew--

And there with glassy gaze she stood

As ice were in her curdled blood;

But every now and then a tear[424]

So large and slowly gathered slid

From the long dark fringe of that fair lid,

It was a thing to see, not hear![425]

And those who saw, it did surprise, 340

Such drops could fall from human eyes.

To speak she thought--the imperfect note

Was choked within her swelling throat,

Yet seemed in that low hollow groan

Her whole heart gushing in the tone.

It ceased--again she thought to speak,

Then burst her voice in one long shriek,

And to the earth she fell like stone

Or statue from its base o'erthrown,

More like a thing that ne'er had life,-- 350

A monument of Azo's wife,--

Than her, that living guilty thing,

Whose every passion was a sting,

Which urged to guilt, but could not bear

That guilt's detection and despair.

But yet she lived--and all too soon

Recovered from that death-like swoon--

But scarce to reason--every sense

Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;

And each frail fibre of her brain 360

(As bowstrings, when relaxed by rain,

The erring arrow launch aside)

Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide--

The past a blank, the future black,

With glimpses of a dreary track,

Like lightning on the desert path,

When midnight storms are mustering wrath.

She feared--she felt that something ill

Lay on her soul, so deep and chill;

That there was sin and shame she knew, 370

That some one was to die--but who?

She had forgotten:--did she breathe?

Could this be still the earth beneath,

The sky above, and men around;

Or were they fiends who now so frowned

On one, before whose eyes each eye

Till then had smiled in sympathy?

All was confused and undefined

To her all-jarred and wandering mind;

A chaos of wild hopes and fears: 380

And now in laughter, now in tears,

But madly still in each extreme,

She strove with that convulsive dream;

For so it seemed on her to break:

Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!

XV.

The Convent bells are ringing,

But mournfully and slow;

In the grey square turret swinging,

With a deep sound, to and fro.

Heavily to the heart they go! 390

Hark! the hymn is singing--

The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so!

For a departed being's soul[rc]

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:[426]

He is near his mortal goal;

Kneeling at the Friar's knee,

Sad to hear, and piteous to see--

Kneeling on the bare cold ground.

With the block before and the guards around; 400

And the headsman with his bare arm ready,

That the blow may be both swift and steady,

Feels if the axe be sharp and true

Since he set its edge anew:[427]

While the crowd in a speechless circle gather

To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father!

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet

Before the summer sun shall set,

Which rose upon that heavy day,

And mock'd it with his steadiest ray; 410

And his evening beams are shed

Full on Hugo's fated head,

As his last confession pouring

To the monk, his doom deploring

In penitential holiness,

He bends to hear his accents bless

With absolution such as may

Wipe our mortal stains away.

That high sun on his head did glisten

As he there did bow and listen, 420

And the rings of chestnut hair

Curled half down his neck so bare;

But brighter still the beam was thrown

Upon the axe which near him shone

With a clear and ghastly glitter----

Oh! that parting hour was bitter!

Even the stern stood chilled with awe:

Dark the crime, and just the law--

Yet they shuddered as they saw.

XVII.

The parting prayers are said and over 430

Of that false son, and daring lover!

His beads and sins are all recounted,[rd]

His hours to their last minute mounted;

His mantling cloak before was stripped,

His bright brown locks must now be clipped;

'Tis done--all closely are they shorn;

The vest which till this moment worn--

The scarf which Parisina gave--

Must not adorn him to the grave.

Even that must now be thrown aside, 440

And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied;

But no--that last indignity

Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.

All feelings seemingly subdued,

In deep disdain were half renewed,

When headsman's hands prepared to bind

Those eyes which would not brook such blind,

As if they dared not look on death.

"No--yours my forfeit blood and breath;

These hands are chained, but let me die 450

At least with an unshackled eye--

Strike:"--and as the word he said,

Upon the block he bowed his head;

These the last accents Hugo spoke:

"Strike"--and flashing fell the stroke--

Rolled the head--and, gushing, sunk

Back the stained and heaving trunk,

In the dust, which each deep vein

Slaked with its ensanguined rain;

His eyes and lips a moment quiver, 460

Convulsed and quick--then fix for ever.

He died, as erring man should die,

Without display, without parade;

Meekly had he bowed and prayed,

As not disdaining priestly aid,

Nor desperate of all hope on high.

And while before the Prior kneeling,

His heart was weaned from earthly feeling;

His wrathful Sire--his Paramour--

What were they in such an hour? 470

No more reproach,--no more despair,--

No thought but Heaven,--no word but prayer--

Save the few which from him broke,

When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke,

He claimed to die with eyes unbound,

His sole adieu to those around.

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death,

Each gazer's bosom held his breath:

But yet, afar, from man to man,

A cold electric[428] shiver ran, 480

As down the deadly blow descended

On him whose life and love thus ended;

And, with a hushing sound compressed,

A sigh shrunk back on every breast;

But no more thrilling noise rose there,[re]

Beyond the blow that to the block

Pierced through with forced and sullen shock,

Save one:--what cleaves the silent air

So madly shrill, so passing wild?

That, as a mother's o'er her child, 490

Done to death by sudden blow,

To the sky these accents go,

Like a soul's in endless woe.

Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,

That horrid voice ascends to heaven,

And every eye is turned thereon;

But sound and sight alike are gone!

It was a woman's shriek--and ne'er

In madlier accents rose despair;

And those who heard it, as it past, 500

In mercy wished it were the last.

XIX.

Hugo is fallen; and, from that hour,

No more in palace, hall, or bower,

Was Parisina heard or seen:

Her name--as if she ne'er had been--

Was banished from each lip and ear,

Like words of wantonness or fear;

And from Prince Azo's voice, by none

Was mention heard of wife or son;

No tomb--no memory had they; 510

Theirs was unconsecrated clay--

At least the Knight's who died that day.

But Parisina's fate lies hid

Like dust beneath the coffin lid:

Whether in convent she abode,

And won to heaven her dreary road,

By blighted and remorseful years

Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears;

Or if she fell by bowl or steel,

For that dark love she dared to feel: 520

Or if, upon the moment smote,

She died by tortures less remote,

Like him she saw upon the block

With heart that shared the headsman's shock,

In quickened brokenness that came,

In pity o'er her shattered frame,

None knew--and none can ever know:

But whatsoe'er its end below,

Her life began and closed in woe!

XX.

And Azo found another bride, 530

And goodly sons grew by his side;

But none so lovely and so brave

As him who withered in the grave;[429]

Or if they were--on his cold eye

Their growth but glanced unheeded by,

Or noticed with a smothered sigh.

But never tear his cheek descended,

And never smile his brow unbended;

And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought

The intersected lines of thought; 540

Those furrows which the burning share

Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;

Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.[430]

He was past all mirth or woe:

Nothing more remained below

But sleepless nights and heavy days,

A mind all dead to scorn or praise,

A heart which shunned itself--and yet

That would not yield, nor could forget, 550

Which, when it least appeared to melt,

Intensely thought--intensely felt:

The deepest ice which ever froze

Can only o'er the surface close;

The living stream lies quick below,

And flows, and cannot cease to flow.[431]

Still was his sealed-up bosom haunted[rf]

By thoughts which Nature hath implanted;

Too deeply rooted thence to vanish,

Howe'er our stifled tears we banish; 560

When struggling as they rise to start,

We check those waters of the heart,

They are not dried--those tears unshed

But flow back to the fountain head,

And resting in their spring more pure,

For ever in its depth endure,

Unseen--unwept--but uncongealed,

And cherished most where least revealed.

With inward starts of feeling left,

To throb o'er those of life bereft, 570

Without the power to fill again

The desert gap which made his pain;

Without the hope to meet them where

United souls shall gladness share;

With all the consciousness that he

Had only passed a just decree;[rg]

That they had wrought their doom of ill;

Yet Azo's age was wretched still.

The tainted branches of the tree,

If lopped with care, a strength may give, 580

By which the rest shall bloom and live

All greenly fresh and wildly free:

But if the lightning, in its wrath,

The waving boughs with fury scathe,

The massy trunk the ruin feels,

And never more a leaf reveals.

FOOTNOTES:

[411] {503} ["Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated; but the castle

still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were

beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon."--_Vide_ Advertisement to

_Lament of Tasso_.]

[412] {505} "This turned out a calamitous year for the people of

Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their

sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the

exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other,

have given the following relation of it,--from which, however, are

rejected many details, and especially the narrative of Bandelli, who

wrote a century afterwards, and who does not accord with the

contemporary historians.

"By the above-mentioned Stella dell' Assassino, the Marquis, in the year

1405, had a son called Ugo, a beautiful and ingenuous youth. Parisina

Malatesta, second wife of Niccolo, like the generality of step-mothers,

treated him with little kindness, to the infinite regret of the Marquis,

who regarded him with fond partiality. One day she asked leave of her

husband to undertake a certain journey, to which he consented, but upon

condition that Ugo should bear her company; for he hoped by these means

to induce her, in the end, to lay aside the obstinate aversion which she

had conceived against him. And indeed his intent was accomplished but

too well, since, during the journey, she not only divested herself of

all her hatred, but fell into the opposite extreme. After their return,

the Marquis had no longer any occasion to renew his former reproofs. It

happened one day that a servant of the Marquis, named Zoese, or, as some

call him, Giorgio, passing before the apartments of Parisina, saw going

out from them one of her chamber-maids, all terrified and in tears.

Asking the reason, she told him that her mistress, for some slight

offence, had been beating her; and, giving vent to her rage, she added,

that she could easily be revenged, if she chose to make known the

criminal familiarity which subsisted between Parisina and her step-son.

The servant took note of the words, and related them to his master. He

was astounded thereat, but, scarcely believing his ears, he assured

himself of the fact, alas! too clearly, on the 18th of May, by looking

through a hole made in the ceiling of his wife's chamber. Instantly he

broke into a furious rage, and arrested both of them, together with

Aldobrandino Rangoni, of Modena, her gentleman, and also, as some say,

two of the women of her chamber, as abettors of this sinful act. He

ordered them to be brought to a hasty trial, desiring the judges to

pronounce sentence, in the accustomed forms, upon the culprits. This

sentence was death. Some there were that bestirred themselves in favour

of the delinquents, and, amongst others, Ugoccion Contrario, who was

all-powerful with Niccolo, and also his aged and much deserving minister

Alberto dal Sale. Both of these, their tears flowing down their cheeks,

and upon their knees, implored him for mercy; adducing whatever reasons

they could suggest for sparing the offenders, besides those motives of

honour and decency which might persuade him to conceal from the public

so scandalous a deed. But his rage made him inflexible, and, on the

instant, he commanded that the sentence should be put in execution.

"It was, then, in the prisons of the castle, and exactly in those

frightful dungeons which are seen at this day beneath the chamber called

the Aurora, at the foot of the Lion's tower, at the top of the street

Giovecca, that on the night of the 21st of May were beheaded, first,

Ugo, and afterwards Parisina. Zoese, he that accused her, conducted the

latter under his arm to the place of punishment. She, all along, fancied

that she was to be thrown into a pit, and asked at every step, whether

she was yet come to the spot? She was told that her punishment was the

axe. She enquired what was become of Ugo, and received for answer, that

he was already dead; at which, sighing grievously, she exclaimed, 'Now,

then, I wish not myself to live;' and, being come to the block, she

stripped herself, with her own hands, of all her ornaments, and,

wrapping a cloth round her head, submitted to the fatal stroke, which

terminated the cruel scene. The same was done with Rangoni, who,

together with the others, according to two calendars in the library of

St. Francesco, was buried in the cemetery of that convent. Nothing else

is known respecting the women.

"The Marquis kept watch the whole of that dreadful night, and, as he was

walking backwards and forwards, enquired of the captain of the castle if

Ugo was dead yet? who answered him, Yes. He then gave himself up to the

most desperate lamentations, exclaiming, 'Oh! that I too were dead,

since I have been hurried on to resolve thus against my own Ugo!' And

then gnawing with his teeth a cane which he had in his hand, he passed

the rest of the night in sighs and in tears, calling frequently upon his

own dear Ugo. On the following day, calling to mind that it would be

necessary to make public his justification, seeing that the transaction

could not be kept secret, he ordered the narrative to be drawn out upon

paper, and sent it to all the courts of Italy.

"On receiving this advice, the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, gave

orders, but without publishing his reasons, that stop should be put to

the preparations for a tournament, which, under the auspices of the

Marquis, and at the expense of the city of Padua, was about to take

place, in the square of St. Mark, in order to celebrate his advancement

to the ducal chair.

"The Marquis, in addition to what he had already done, from some

unaccountable burst of vengeance, commanded that as many of the married

women as were well known to him to be faithless, like his Parisina,

should, like her, be beheaded. Amongst others, Barberina, or, as some

call her, Laodamia Romei, wife of the court judge, underwent this

sentence, at the usual place of execution; that is to say, in the

quarter of St. Giacomo, opposite the present fortress, beyond St.

Paul's. It cannot be told how strange appeared this proceeding in a

prince, who, considering his own disposition, should, as it seemed, have

been in such cases most indulgent. Some, however, there were who did not

fail to commend him." [_Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara_, Raccolte da

Antonio Frizzi, 1793, iii. 408-410. See, too, _Celebri Famiglie

Italiane_, by Conte Pompeo Litta, 1832, Fasc. xxvi. Part III. vol. ii.]

[413] {507} [The revise of _Parisina_ is endorsed in Murray's

handwriting, "Given to me by Lord Byron at his house, Saturday, January

13, 1816."]

[414] The lines contained in this section were printed as set to music

some time since, but belonged to the poem where they now appear; the

greater part of which was composed prior to _Lara_, and other

compositions since published. [Note to _Siege, etc._, First Edition,

1816.]

[qy]

_Francisca walks in the shadow of night_,

_But it is not to gaze on the heavenly light_--

_But if she sits in her garden bower_,

_'Tis not for the sake of its blowing flower_.--

[_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]

[qz] {508} _There winds a step_----.--[_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]

[415] {509} [Leigh Hunt, in his _Autobiography_ (1860, p. 252), says, "I

had the pleasure of supplying my friendly critic, Lord Byron, with a

point for his _Parisina_ (the incident of the heroine talking in her

sleep)."

Putting Lady Macbeth out of the question, the situation may be traced to

a passage in Henry Mackenzie's _Julia de Roubigné_ (1777, ii. 101:

"Montauban to Segarva," Letter xxxv.):--

"I was last night abroad at supper; Julia was a-bed before my

return. I found her lute lying on the table, and a music-book open

by it. I could perceive the marks of tears shed on the paper, and

the air was such as might encourage their falling. Sleep, however,

had overcome her sadness, and she did not awake when I opened the

curtain to look on her. When I had stood some moments, I heard her

sigh strongly through her sleep, and presently she muttered some

words, I know not of what import. I had sometimes heard her do so

before, without regarding it much; but there was something that

roused my attention now. I listened; she sighed again, and again

spoke a few broken words. At last I heard her plainly pronounce the

name Savillon two or three times, and each time it was accompanied

with sighs so deep that her heart seemed bursting as it heaved

then."]

[ra] {511} ----_Medora's_----.--[Copy erased.]

[416] [Compare _Christabel_, Part II. lines 408, 409--

"Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth."]

[417] {513} [Compare the famous eulogy of Marie Antoinette, in Burke's

_Reflections on the Revolution in France, in a Letter intended to have

been sent to a Gentleman in Paris_, London, 1790, pp. 112, 113--

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of

France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles.... Little did I dream

... that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her in

a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of

cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from

their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with

insult."]

[rb] {514} _As tear by tear rose gathering still_.--[Revise.]

[418] [Lines 175-182, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added to

the Copy.]

[419] {516} [The meaning is plain, but the construction is involved. The

contrast is between the blood of foes, which Hugo has shed for Azo, and

Hugo's own blood, which Azo is about to shed on the scaffold. But this

is one of Byron's incurious infelicities.]

[420] {517} Haught--haughty. "Away, _haught_ man, thou art insulting

me."--Shakespeare [_Richard II._, act iv. sc. i, line 254--"No lord of

thine, thou haught insulting man."]

[421] {518} [Lines 304, 305, and lines 310-317 are not in the Copy. They

were inserted by Byron in the Revise.]

[422] [A writer in the _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p.

151) holds this couplet up to derision. "Too" is a weak ending, and,

orally at least, ambiguous.]

[423] ["I sent for _Marmion_, ... because it occurred to me there might

be a resemblance between part of _Parisina_ and a similar scene in Canto

2d. of _Marmion_. I fear there is, though I never thought of it before,

and could hardly wish to imitate that which is inimitable.... I had

completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which, in fact, leads to

a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon

me not very comfortably."--Letter to Murray, February 3, 1816

(_Letters_, 1899, iii. 260). The scene in _Marmion_ is the one where

Constance de Beverley appears before the conclave--

"Her look composed, and steady eye,

Bespoke a matchless constancy;

And there she stood so calm and pale,

That, but her breathing did not fail,

And motion slight of eye and head,

And of her bosom, warranted

That neither sense nor pulse she lacks,

You must have thought a form of wax,

Wrought to the very life, was there--

So still she was, so pale, so fair."

Canto II. stanza xxi. lines 5-14.]

[424] {519} ["I admire the fabrication of the 'big Tear,' which is very

fine--much larger, by the way, than Shakespeare's."--Letter of John

Murray to Lord Byron (_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 354).]

[425] [Compare _Christabel_, Part I. line 253--"A sight to dream of, not

to tell!"]

[rc] {521} _For a departing beings soul_.--[Copy.]

[426] [For the peculiar use of "knoll" as a verb, compare _Childe

Harold_, Canto III. stanza xcvi. line 5; and _Werner_, act iii. sc. 3.]

[427] {522} [Lines 401-404, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added

to the Copy.]

[rd] {523} _His latest beads and sins are counted_.--[Copy.]

[428] {524} [For the use of "electric" as a metaphor, compare

Coleridge's _Songs of the Pixies_, v. lines 59, 60--

"The electric flash, that from the melting eye

Darts the fond question and the soft reply."]

[re] _But no more thrilling voice rose there_.--[Copy.]

[429] {526} [Here, again, Byron is _super grammaticam_. The comparison

is between Hugo and "goodly sons," not between Hugo and "bride" in the

preceding line.]

[430] [Lines 539-544 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the

Revise.]

[431] {527} [Lines 551-556 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the

Revise.]

[rf] _Ah, still unwelcomely was haunted_.--[Copy.]

[rg] _Had only sealed a just decree_.--[Copy.]

POEMS OF THE SEPARATION.

INTRODUCTION TO _POEMS OF THE SEPARATION._

The two poems, _Fare Thee Well_ (March 17) and _A Sketch_ (March 29,

1816), which have hitherto been entitled _Domestic Pieces_, or _Poems on

His Own Circumstances_, I have ventured to rename _Poems of the

Separation_. Of secondary importance as poems or works of art, they

stand out by themselves as marking and helping to make the critical

epoch in the life and reputation of the poet. It is to be observed that

there was an interval of twelve days between the date of _Fare Thee

Well_ and _A Sketch_; that the composition of the latter belongs to a

later episode in the separation drama; and that for some reasons

connected with the proceedings between the parties, a pathetic if not

uncritical resignation had given place to the extremity of

exasperation--to hatred and fury and revenge. It follows that either

poem, in respect of composition and of publication, must be judged on

its own merits. Contemporary critics, while they were all but unanimous

in holding up _A Sketch_ to unqualified reprobation, were divided with

regard to the good taste and good faith of _Fare Thee Well_. Moore

intimates that at first, and, indeed, for some years after the

separation, he was strongly inclined to condemn the _Fare Thee Well_ as

a histrionic performance--"a showy effusion of sentiment;" but that on

reading the account of all the circumstances in Byron's _Memoranda_, he

was impressed by the reality of the "swell of tender recollections,

under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study,

these stanzas were produced--the tears, as he said, falling fast over

the paper as he wrote them" (_Life_, p. 302).

With whatever purpose, or under whatever emotion the lines were written,

Byron did not keep them to himself. They were shown to Murray, and

copies were sent to "the initiated." "I have just received," writes

Murray, "the enclosed letter from Mrs. Maria Graham [1785-1842, _née_

Dundas, authoress and traveller, afterwards Lady Callcott], to whom I

had sent the verses. It will show you that you are thought of in the

remotest corners, and furnishes me with an excuse for repeating that I

shall not forget you. God bless your Lordship. Fare _Thee_ Well" [MSS.

M.].

But it does not appear that they were printed in their final shape (the

proof of a first draft, consisting of thirteen stanzas, is dated March

18, 1816) till the second copy of verses were set up in type with a view

to private distribution (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 279). Even then there

was no thought of publication on the part of Byron or of Murray, and, as

a matter of fact, though _Fare Thee Well_ was included in the "Poems" of

1816, it was not till both poems had appeared in over twenty pirated

editions that _A Sketch_ was allowed to appear in vol. iii. of the

Collected Works of 1819. Unquestionably Byron intended that the

"initiated," whether foes or sympathizers, should know that he had not

taken his dismissal in silence; but it is far from certain that he

connived at the appearance of either copy of verses in the public press.

It is impossible to acquit him of the charge of appealing to a limited

circle of specially chosen witnesses and advocates in a matter which lay

between himself and his wife, but the aggravated offence of rushing into

print may well be attributed to "the injudicious zeal of a friend," or

the "malice prepense" of an enemy. If he had hoped that the verses would

slip into a newspaper, as it were, _malgré lui_, he would surely have

taken care that the seed fell on good ground under the favouring

influence of Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_, or Leigh Hunt of the

_Examiner_. As it turned out, the first paper which possessed or

ventured to publish a copy of the "domestic pieces" was the _Champion_,

a Tory paper, then under the editorship of John Scott (1783-1821), a man

of talent and of probity, but, as Mr. Lang puts it (_Life and Letters_

of John Gibson Lockhart, 1897, i. 256), "Scotch, and a professed

moralist." The date of publication was Sunday, April 14, and it is to

be noted that the _Ode from the French_ ("We do not curse thee,

Waterloo") had been published in the _Morning Chronicle_ on March 15,

and that on the preceding Sunday, April 7, the brilliant but unpatriotic

apostrophe to the _Star of the Legion of Honour_ had appeared in the

_Examiner_. "We notice it [this strain of his Lordship's harp]," writes

the editor, "because we think it would not be doing justice to the

merits of such political tenets, if they were not coupled with their

corresponding practice in regard to moral and domestic obligations.

There is generally a due proportion kept in 'the music of men's lives.'

... Of many of the _facts_ of this distressing case we are not ignorant;

but God knows they are not for a newspaper. Fortunately they fall within

very general knowledge, in London at least; if they had not they would

never have found their way to us. But there is a respect due to certain

wrongs and sufferings that would be outraged by uncovering them." It was

all very mysterious, very terrible; but what wonder that the laureate of

the ex-emperor, the contemner of the Bourbons, the pæanist of the "star

of the brave," "the rainbow of the free," should make good his political

heresy by personal depravity--by unmanly vice, unmanly whining, unmanly

vituperation?

Wordsworth, to whom Scott forwarded the _Champion_ of April 14, "outdid"

the journalist in virtuous fury: "Let me say only one word of Lord B.

The man is insane. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less

indignation than pity. The latter copy is the Billingsgate of Bedlam.

... You yourself seem to labour under some delusion as to the merits of

Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the _Fare Well_, with

far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution

contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface me,' etc. Can worse doggerel

than such a stanza be written? One verse is commendable: 'All my madness

none can know.'" The criticism, as criticism, confutes itself, and is

worth quoting solely because it displays the feeling of a sane and

honourable man towards a member of the "opposition," who had tripped and

fallen, and now lay within reach of his lash (see _Life of William

Wordsworth_, 1889, ii. 267, etc.).

It was not only, as Macaulay put it, that Byron was "singled out as an

expiatory sacrifice" by the British public in a periodical fit of

morality, but, as the extent and the limitations of the attack reveal,

occasion was taken by political adversaries to inflict punishment for an

outrage on popular sentiment.

The _Champion_ had been the first to give tongue, and the other

journals, on the plea that the mischief was out, one after the other

took up the cry. On Monday, April 15, the _Sun_ printed _Fare Thee

Well_, and on Tuesday, April 16, followed with _A Sketch_. On the same

day the _Morning Chronicle_, protesting that "the poems were not written

for the public eye, but as having been inserted in a Sunday paper,"

printed both sets of verses; the _Morning Post_, with an ugly hint that

"the noble Lord gives us verses, when he dare not give us

circumstances," restricted itself to _Fare Thee Well_; while the

_Times_, in a leading paragraph, feigned to regard "the two

extraordinary copies of verses ... the whining stanzas of _Fare Thee

Well_, and the low malignity and miserable doggerel of the companion

_Sketch_," as "an injurious fabrication." On Thursday, the 18th, the

_Courier_, though declining to insert _A Sketch_, deals temperately and

sympathetically with the _Fare Thee Well_, and quotes the testimony of a

"fair correspondent" (? Madame de Staël), that if "her husband had bade

her such a farewell she could not have avoided running into his arms,

and being reconciled immediately--'Je n'aurois pu m'y tenir un

instant';" and on the same day the _Times_, having learnt to its

"extreme astonishment and regret," that both poems were indeed Lord

Byron's, maintained that the noble author had "degraded literature, and

abused the privileges of rank, by converting them into weapons of

vengeance against an inferior and a female." On Friday, the 19th, the

_Star_ printed both poems, and the _Morning Post_ inserted a criticism,

which had already appeared in the _Courier_ of the preceding day. On

Saturday, the 20th, the _Courier_ found itself compelled, in the

interests of its readers, to print both poems. On Sunday, the 21st, the

octave of the original issue, the _Examiner_ devoted a long article to

an apology for Byron, and a fierce rejoinder to the _Champion_; and on

the same day the _Independent Whig_ and the _Sunday News_, which

favoured the "opposition," printed both poems, with prefatory notices

more or less favourable to the writer; whereas the Tory _Antigallican

Monitor_, which also printed both poems, added the significant remark

that "if everything said of Lord Byron be true, it would appear that the

Whigs were not altogether so immaculate as they themselves would wish

the world to suppose."

The testimony of the press is instructive from two points of view. In

the first place, it tends to show that the controversy was conducted on

party lines; and, secondly, that the editor of the _Champion_ was in

some degree responsible for the wide diffusion and lasting publicity of

the scandal. The separation of Lord and Lady Byron must, in any case,

have been more than a nine days' wonder, but if the circulation of the

"pamphlet" had been strictly confined to the "initiated," the excitement

and interest of the general public would have smouldered and died out

for lack of material.

In his second letter on Bowles, dated March 25, 1821 (_Observations upon

Observations_, _Life_, 1892, p. 705), Byron alludes to the publication

of these poems in the _Champion_, and comments on the behaviour of the

editor, who had recently (February 16, 1821) been killed in a duel. He

does not minimize the wrong, but he pays a fine and generous tribute to

the courage and worth of his assailant. "Poor Scott is now no more ...he

died like a brave man, and he lived an able one," etc. It may be added

that Byron was an anonymous subscriber to a fund raised by Sir James

Mackintosh, Murray, and others, for "the helpless family of a man of

virtue and ability" (_London Magazine_, April, 1821, vol. iii. p. 359).

For chronological reasons, and in accordance with the precedent of the

edition of 1832, a third poem, _Stanzas to Augusta_, has been included

in this group.

POEMS OF THE SEPARATION

FARE THEE WELL.[432]

"Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth:

And Constancy lives in realms above;

And Life is thorny; and youth is vain:

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain;

* * * * *

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining--

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;

A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

Coleridge's Christabel.[rh]

Fare thee well! and if for ever,

Still for ever, fare _thee well:_

Even though unforgiving, never

'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

Would that breast were bared before thee[ri]

Where thy head so oft hath lain,

While that placid sleep came o'er thee[rj]

Which thou ne'er canst know again:

Would that breast, by thee glanced over,

Every inmost thought could show!

Then thou would'st at last discover

'Twas not well to spurn it so.

Though the world for this commend thee--[433]

Though it smile upon the blow,

Even its praises must offend thee,

Founded on another's woe:

Though my many faults defaced me,

Could no other arm be found,

Than the one which once embraced me,

To inflict a cureless wound?

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not--

Love may sink by slow decay,

But by sudden wrench, believe not

Hearts can thus be torn away:

Still thine own its life retaineth--

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;[rk]

And the undying thought which paineth[rl]

Is--that we no more may meet.

These are words of deeper sorrow[rm]

Than the wail above the dead;

Both shall live--but every morrow[rn]

Wake us from a widowed bed.

And when thou would'st solace gather--

When our child's first accents flow--

Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!"

Though his care she must forego?

When her little hands shall press thee--

When her lip to thine is pressed--

Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee--

Think of him thy love _had_ blessed!

Should her lineaments resemble

Those thou never more may'st see,

Then thy heart will softly tremble[ro]

With a pulse yet true to me.

All my faults perchance thou knowest--

All my madness--none can know;[rp]

All my hopes--where'er thou goest--

Wither--yet with _thee_ they go.

Every feeling hath been shaken;

Pride--which not a world could bow--[rq]

Bows to thee--by thee forsaken,[rr]

Even my soul forsakes me now.

But 'tis done--all words are idle--

Words from me are vainer still;[rs]

But the thoughts we cannot bridle

Force their way without the will.

Fare thee well! thus disunited--[rt]

Torn from every nearer tie--

Seared in heart--and lone--and blighted--

More than this I scarce can die.

[First draft, _March_ 18, 1816.

First printed as published, April 4, 1816.]

A SKETCH.[ru][434]

"Honest--honest Iago!

If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."

Shakespeare.

Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,

Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;[rv]

Next--for some gracious service unexpressed,

And from its wages only to be guessed--

Raised from the toilet to the table,--where

Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.

With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,

She dines from off the plate she lately washed.

Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,

The genial confidante, and general spy-- 10

Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess--

An only infant's earliest governess![rw]

She taught the child to read, and taught so well,

That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.

An adept next in penmanship she grows,

As many a nameless slander deftly shows:

What she had made the pupil of her art,

None know--but that high Soul secured the heart,[rx]

And panted for the truth it could not hear,

With longing breast and undeluded ear. 20

Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,[ry]

Which Flattery fooled not, Baseness could not blind,

Deceit infect not, near Contagion soil,

Indulgence weaken, nor Example spoil,[rz]

Nor mastered Science tempt her to look down

On humbler talents with a pitying frown,

Nor Genius swell, nor Beauty render vain,

Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain,[sa]

Nor Fortune change, Pride raise, nor Passion bow,

Nor Virtue teach austerity--till now. 30

Serenely purest of her sex that live,[sb]

But wanting one sweet weakness--to forgive;

Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,

She deems that all could be like her below:

Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend,

For Virtue pardons those she would amend.

But to the theme, now laid aside too long,

The baleful burthen of this honest song,[sc]

Though all her former functions are no more,

She rules the circle which she served before. 40

If mothers--none know why--before her quake;

If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;

If early habits--those false links, which bind

At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--[sd]

Have given her power too deeply to instil

The angry essence of her deadly will;[se]

If like a snake she steal within your walls,

Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;

If like a viper to the heart she wind,

And leave the venom there she did not find; 50

What marvel that this hag of hatred works[sf]

Eternal evil latent as she lurks,

To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,

And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?

Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal's tints

With all the kind mendacity of hints,

While mingling truth with falsehood--sneers with smiles--

A thread of candour with a web of wiles;[sg]

A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,

To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming; 60

A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,

And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:

With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--

A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.[sh]

Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood

Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,

Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,

Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale--[si]

(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace

Congenial colours in that soul or face)-- 70

Look on her features! and behold her mind[sj]

As in a mirror of itself defined:

Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged--

There is no trait which might not be enlarged:

Yet true to "Nature's journeymen,"[435] who made

This monster when their mistress left off trade--

This female dog-star of her little sky,

Where all beneath her influence droop or die.[sk]

Oh! wretch without a tear--without a thought,

Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-- 80

The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou

Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;

Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,

And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.

May the strong curse of crushed affections light[436]

Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!

And make thee in thy leprosy of mind

As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!

Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,

Black--as thy will or others would create: 90

Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,

And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.

Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,

The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread!

Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,

Look on thine earthly victims--and despair!

Down to the dust!--and, as thou rott'st away,

Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.[sl]

But for the love I bore, and still must bear,

To her thy malice from all ties would tear-- 100

Thy name--thy human name--to every eye

The climax of all scorn should hang on high,

Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers--

And festering[437] in the infamy of years.[sm]

[First draft, _March_ 29, 1816.

First printed as published, April 4, 1816.]

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.[438]

When all around grew drear and dark,[sn]

And reason half withheld her ray--

And Hope but shed a dying spark

Which more misled my lonely way;

In that deep midnight of the mind,

And that internal strife of heart,

When dreading to be deemed too kind,

The weak despair--the cold depart;

When Fortune changed--and Love fled far,[so]

And Hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,

Thou wert the solitary star[sp]

Which rose and set not to the last.[sq]

Oh! blest be thine unbroken light!

That watched me as a Seraph's eye,

And stood between me and the night,

For ever shining sweetly nigh.

And when the cloud upon us came,[sr]

Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray--[ss]

Then purer spread its gentle flame,[st]

And dashed the darkness all away.

Still may thy Spirit dwell on mine,[su]

And teach it what to brave or brook--

There's more in one soft word of thine

Than in the world's defied rebuke.

Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree,[sv]

That still unbroke, though gently bent,

Still waves with fond fidelity

Its boughs above a monument.

The winds might rend--the skies might pour,

But there thou wert--and still wouldst be

Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

But thou and thine shall know no blight,

Whatever fate on me may fall;

For Heaven in sunshine will requite

The kind--and thee the most of all.

Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken--thine will never break;

Thy heart can feel--but will not move;

Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.

And these, when all was lost beside,

Were found and still are fixed in thee:--

And bearing still a breast so tried,

Earth is no desert--ev'n to me.

[First published, _Poems_, 1816.]

FOOTNOTES:

[432] {537} ["He there (Byron, in his _Memoranda_) described, and in a

manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender

recollections, under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing

in the study, these stanzas were produced,--the tears, as he said,

falling fast over the paper as he wrote them."--_Life_, p. 302.

It must have been a fair and _complete_ copy that Moore saw (see _Life_,

p. 302, note 3). There are no tear-marks on this (the first draft, sold

at Sotheby's, April 11, 1885) draft, which must be the _first_, for it

is incomplete, and every line (almost) tortured with alterations.

"Fare Thee Well!" was printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, April 21,

1816, at the end of an article (by L. H.) entitled "Distressing

Circumstances in High Life." The text there has two readings different

from that of the pamphlet, viz.--

_Examiner:_ "Than the soft one which embraced me."

Pamphlet: "Than the one which once embraced me."

_Examiner:_ "Yet the thoughts we cannot bridle."

Pamphlet: "But," etc.

--_MS. Notes taken by the late J. Dykes Campbell at Sotheby's, April 18,

1890, and re-transcribed for Mr. Murray, June 15, 1894._

A final proof, dated April 7, 1816, was endorsed by Murray, "Correct 50

copies as early as you can to-morrow."]

[rh] The motto was prefixed in _Poems_, 1816.

[ri] {538} _Thou my breast laid bare before thee_.--[MS. erased.]

[rj] _Not a thought is pondering on thee_.--[MS, erased.]

[433] [Lines 13-20 do not appear in an early copy dated March 18, 1816.

They were added on the margin of a proof dated April 4, 1816.]

[rk] {539} Net result of many alterations.

[rl] _And the lasting thought_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rm] ----_of deadlier sorrow_.--[MS. erased.]

[rn] _Every future night and morrow_.--[MS. erased.]

[ro] _Still thy heart_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rp] _All my follies_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rq] ----_which not the world could bow_.--[MS.]

[rr] _Falls at once_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rs] {540} _Tears and sighs are idler still_.--[MS. erased.]

[rt] _Fare thee well--thus lone and blighted_.--[MS. erased.]

[ru] _A Sketch from Life._--[MS. M.]

[434] ["I send you my last night's dream, and request to have 50 copies

(for private distribution) struck off. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at

them; they are from life."--Letter to Murray, March 30, 1816.

"The original MS. of Lord Byron's Satire, 'A Sketch from Private Life,'

written by his Lordship, 30th March, 1816. Given by his Lordship to me

on going abroad after his separation from Lady Byron, John Hanson. To be

carefully preserved." (This MS. omits lines 19-20, 35-36, 55-56, 65-70,

77-78, 85-92.)

A copy entitled, "A sketch from private Life," dated March 30, 1816, is

in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting. The corrections and additions are in

Byron's handwriting.

A proof dated April 2, 1816, is endorsed by Murray, "Correct with most

particular care and print off 50 copies, and keep standing."]

[rv] _Promoted thence to comb_----[MS. M. erased.]

[rw] ----_early governess_.--[MS. M.]

[rx] ----_but that pure spirit saved her heart_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ry] _Vain was each effort_----.--[MS. M.]

[rz]

_Much Learning madden--when with scarce a peer_

_She soared through science with a bright career_--

_Nor talents swell_----.--[MS. M.]

[sa] ----_bigotry prevoke_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[sb] _Serenely purest of the things that live_.--[MS. M.]

[sc] {542} _The trusty burthen of my honest song_.--[MS. M.]

[sd] _At times the highest_----.--[MS. M.]

[se] ----_of her evil will_.--[MS. M.]

[sf]

_What marvel that this mistress demon works_

/ _wheresoe'er she lurks_.--[MS. M.]

_Eternal evil_ {

\ _when she latent works_.--[Copy.]

[sg] _A gloss of candour of a web of wiles_.--[MS. M.]

[sh] {543} Lines 65-68 were added April 2, 1816.

[si] The parenthesis was added April 2, 1816.

[sj] _Look on her body_----.--[MS. M.]

[435] [See _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2, line 31.]

[sk] _Where all that gaze upon her droop or die_.--[MS. altered April 2,

1816.]

[436] Lines 85-91 were added April 2, 1816, on a page endorsed,

"Quick--quick--quick--quick."

[sl] {544} ----_in thy poisoned clay_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[437] ["I doubt about 'weltering' but the dictionary should decide--look

at it. We say 'weltering in blood'--but do they not also use 'weltering

in the wind' 'weltering on a gibbet'?--there is no dictionary, so look

or ask. In the meantime, I have put 'festering,' which perhaps in any

case is the best word of the two.--P.S. Be quick. Shakespeare has it

often and I do not think it too strong for the figure in this

thing."--Letter to Murray, April 2.]

[sm] _And weltering in the infamy of years_.--[MS. M.]

[438] [His sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh.--These stanzas--the

parting tribute to her whose tenderness had been his sole consolation in

the crisis of domestic misery--were, we believe, the last verses written

by Lord Byron in England. In a note to Mr. Rogers, dated April 16

[1816], he says, "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow;

we shall not meet again for some time at all events--_if ever!_ and

under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you and Mr.

Sheridan, for being unable to wait upon him this evening."--Note to

Edition of 1832, x. 193.

A fair copy, broken up into stanzas, is endorsed by Murray, "Given to me

(and I believe composed by Ld. B.), Friday, April 12, 1816."]

[sn] ----_grew waste and dark_.--[MS. M.]

[so] {545} _When Friendship shook_----.--[MS. M.]

[sp] _Thine was the solitary star_.--[MS. M.]

[sq] _Which rose above me to the last_.--[MS. M.]

[sr]

_And when the cloud between us came_.--[MS. M.]

_And when the cloud upon me came_.--[Copy C. H.]

[ss] _Which would have closed on that last ray_.--[MS. M.]

[st] _Then stiller stood the gentle Flame_.--[MS. M.]

[su] _Still may thy Spirit sit on mine_.--[MS. M.]

[sv] {546}

_And thou wast as a lovely Tree_

_Whose branch unbroke but gently bent_

_Still waved with fond Fidelity_.--[Copy C. H.]

END OF VOL. III.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.