Chapter X: Front Matter (10)

Goethe, in one of his conversations with Henry Crabb Robinson about Byron, said "There is no padding in his poetry" ("Es sind keine Flickwoerter im Gedichte"). This was in 1829, five years after Byron died. "This, and indeed every evening, I believe, Lord Byron was the subject of his praise. He compared the brilliancy and clearness of his style to a metal wire drawn through a steel plate." He expressed regret that Byron should not have lived to execute his vocation, which he said was "to dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands would the Tower of Babel have been!" Byron's views of nature he declared were "equally profound and poetical." Power in all its forms Goethe had respect for, and he was captivated by the indomitable spirit of Manfred. He enjoyed the 'Vision of Judgment' when it was read to him, exclaiming "Heavenly!" "Unsurpassable!" "Byron has surpassed himself." He equally enjoyed the satire on George IV. He did not praise Milton with the warmth with which he eulogized Byron, of whom he said that "the like would never come again; he was inimitable."

Goethe's was the Continental opinion, but it was heightened by his conception of "realism"; he held that the poet must be matter-of-fact, and that it was the truth and reality that made writing popular: "It is by the laborious collection of facts that even a poetical view of nature is to be corrected and authenticated." Tennyson was equally careful for scientific accuracy in regard to all the phenomena of nature. Byron had not scientific accuracy, but with his objectivity Goethe sympathized more than with the reflection and introspection of Wordsworth.

Byron was hailed on the Continent as a poet of power, and the judgment of him was not influenced by his disregard of the society conventions of England, nor by his personal eccentricities, nor because he was not approved by the Tory party and the Tory writers. Perhaps unconsciously--certainly not with the conviction of Shelley--Byron was on the side of the new movement in Europe; the spirit of Rousseau, the unrest of 'Wilhelm Meister,' the revolutionary seething, with its tinge of morbidness and misanthropy, its brilliant dreams of a new humanity, and its reckless destructive theories. In France especially his influence was profound and lasting. His wit and his lyric fire excused his morbidness and his sentimental posing as a waif, unfriended in a cold and treacherous world of women and men; and his genius made misanthropy and personal recklessness a fashion. The world took his posing seriously and his grievances to heart, sighed with him, copied his dress, tried to imitate his adventures, many of them imaginary, and accepted him as a perturbed, storm-tost spirit, representative of an age of agitation.

So he was, but not by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false education, an undisciplined temper, and a changing mind. He was guided by the impulse of the moment. I think it a supportable thesis that every age, every wide and popular movement, finds its supreme expression in a Poet. Byron was the mouthpiece of a certain phase of his time. He expressed it, and the expression remains and is important as a record, like the French Revolution and the battle of Waterloo. Whatever the judgment in history may be of the value to civilization of this eighteenth-century movement extending into the nineteenth, in politics, sociology, literature, with all its recklessness, morbidness, hopefulness, Byron represented it. He was the poet of Revolt. He sounded the note of intemperate, unconsidered defiance in the 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' This satire was audacious; many of its judgments were unjust; but its wit and poetic vigor announced a new force in English literature, and the appearance of a man who was abundantly able to take care of himself and secure respectful treatment. In moments afterward he expressed regret for it, or for portions of it, and would have liked to soften its personalities. He was always susceptible to kindness, and easily won by the good opinion of even a declared enemy. He and Moore became lifelong friends, and between him and Walter Scott there sprang up a warm friendship, with sincere reciprocal admiration of each other's works. Only on politics and religion did they disagree, but Scott thought Byron's Liberalism not very deep: "It appeared to me," he said, "that the pleasure it afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At heart I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle." Scott shared Goethe's opinion of Byron's genius:--"He wrote from impulse, never for effect, and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." It has been a fashion of late years to say that both Byron and Scott have gone by; I fancy it is a case of "not lost, but gone before." Among the men satirized in the 'Bards' was Wordsworth. Years after, Byron met him at a dinner, and on his return told his wife that the "one feeling he had for him from the beginning to the end of the visit was _reverence_." Yet he never ceased to gird at him in his satires. The truth is, that consistency was never to be expected in Byron. Besides, he inherited none of the qualities needed for an orderly and noble life. He came of a wild and turbulent race.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, the sixth of the name, was born in London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, April 19th, 1824. His father, John Byron, a captain in the Guards, was a heartless profligate with no redeeming traits of character. He eloped with Amelia D'Arcy, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and after her divorce from her husband married her and treated her like a brute. One daughter of this union was Augusta, Byron's half-sister, who married Colonel Leigh, and who was the good angel of the poet, and the friend of Lady Byron until there was a rupture of their relations in 1830 on a matter of business. A year after the death of his first wife, John Byron entrapped and married Catherine Gordon of Gicht,--a Scotch heiress, very proud of her descent from James I. of Scotland,--whose estate he speedily squandered. In less than two years after the birth of George, John Byron ran away from his wife and his creditors, and died in France.

Mrs. Byron was a wholly undisciplined and weak woman, proud of her descent, wayward and hysterical. She ruined the child, whom she alternately petted and abused. She interfered with his education and fixed him in all his bad tendencies. He never learned anything until he was sent away from her to Harrow. He was passionate, sullen, defiant of authority, but very amenable to kindness; and with a different mother his nobler qualities, generosity, sense of justice, hatred of hypocrisy, and craving for friendship would have been developed, and the story of his life would be very different from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embittered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, and the evil was aggravated by surgical attempts to straighten the limb. His sensitiveness was increased by unfeeling references to it. His mother used to call him "a lame brat," and his pride received an incurable wound in the heartless remark of Mary Chaworth, "Do you think I could care for that lame boy?" Byron was two years her junior, but his love for her was the purest passion of his life, and it has the sincerest expression in the famous 'Dream.' Byron's lameness, and his morbid fear of growing obese, which led him all his life into reckless experiments in diet, were permanent causes of his discontent and eccentricity. In 1798, by the death of its incumbent, Byron became the heir of Newstead Abbey and the sixth Lord Byron. He had great pride in the possession of this crumbling and ruinous old pile. After its partial repair he occupied it with his mother, and from time to time in his stormy life; but in 1818 it was sold for L90,000, which mostly went to pay debts and mortgages. Almost all the influences about Byron's early youth were such as to foster his worst traits, and lead to those eccentricities of conduct and temper which came at times close to insanity. But there was one exception, his nurse Mary Gray, to whom he owed his intimate knowledge of the Bible, and for whom he always retained a sincere affection. It is worth noting also, as an indication of his nature, that he always had the love of his servants.

A satisfactory outline of Byron's life and work is found in Mr. John Nichol's 'Byron' in the 'English Men of Letters' series. Owing to his undisciplined home life, he was a backward boy in scholarship. In 1805 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he resided irregularly for three years, reading much in a desultory manner, but paying slight attention to the classics and mathematics; so that it was a surprise that he was able to take his degree. But he had keen powers of observation and a phenomenal memory. Notwithstanding his infirmity he was distinguished in many athletic sports, he was fond of animals and such uncomfortable pets as bears and monkeys, and led generally an irregular life. The only fruit of this period in literature was the 'Hours of Idleness,' which did not promise much, and would be of little importance notwithstanding many verses of great lyric skill, had it not been for the slashing criticism on it, imputed to Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review, which provoked the 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' This witty outburst had instant success with the public.

In 1809 Byron came of age, and went abroad on a two-years' pilgrimage to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the "lands of the sun," and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems. He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,--a handsome, willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his _diablerie_, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return in 1811 and the publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold.' All London was at his feet. He had already made his first speech in the House of Lords espousing the Liberal side. The second speech was in favor of Catholic emancipation. The fresh and novel poem, which Byron himself had not at first thought worth offering a publisher, fell in with the humor and moral state of the town. It was then that he made the oft-quoted remark, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." The poem gave new impetus to the stories of his romantic life, and London seemed to idolize him as much for his follies and his _liaisons_ as for his genius. He plunged into all the dissipation of the city. But this period from 1811 to 1815 was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succession he gave to the press poems and romances,--'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' the 'Hebrew Melodies,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' and 'Parisina.' Some of the 'Hebrew Melodies' are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives, full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portraitures of female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody, but melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they still impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of versification, and their frequent beauty.

Sated with varied dissipation, worn out with the flighty adoration of Lady Caroline Lamb, and urged by his friends to marry and settle down, Byron married (January 2d, 1815) Anne Isabella, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke. He liked but did not love her; and she was no doubt fascinated by the reputation of the most famous man in Europe, and perhaps indulged the philanthropic hope that she could reform the literary Corsair. On the 10th of December was born Augusta Ada, the daughter whom Byron celebrates in his verse and to whom he was always tenderly attached. On the 15th of January, five weeks after her daughter's birth, Lady Byron left home with the child to pay a visit to her family, dispatching to her husband a playfully tender letter. Shortly after, he was informed by her father and by herself that she did not intend ever to return to him. It is useless to enter into the controversy as to the cause of this separation. In the light of the latest revelations, the better opinion seems to be that it was a hopeless incongruity that might have been predicted from the characters of the two. It seems that Lady Byron was not quite so amiable as she was supposed to be, and in her later years she was subject to hallucinations. Byron, it must be admitted, was an impossible husband for any woman, most of all for any woman who cared for the social conventions. This affair brought down upon Byron a storm of public indignation which drove him from England. The society which had petted him and excused his vagaries and violations of all decency, now turned upon him with rage and made the idol responsible for the foolishness of his worshipers. To the end of his life, neither society nor the critics ever forgave him, and did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the freedom of speculation in such masterly works as 'Cain' brought upon him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George III., and to expose mercilessly in 'Don Juan' the hypocrisy of English life.

On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron left England, never to return. And then opened the most brilliant period of his literary career. Instead of being crushed by the situation, Byron's warlike spirit responded to it with defiance, and his suffering and his anger invoked the highest qualities of his extraordinary genius. His career in Italy was as wild and dissipated as ever. Strange to say, the best influence in his irregular life was the Countess Guiccioli, who persuaded him at one time to lay aside the composition of 'Don Juan,' and in whose society he was drawn into ardent sympathy with the Italian liberals. For the cause of Italian unity he did much when it was in its darkest period, and his name is properly linked in this great achievement with those of Mazzini and Cavour. It was in Switzerland, before Byron settled in Venice, that he met Shelley, with whom he was thereafter to be on terms of closest intimacy. Each had a mutual regard for the genius of the other, but Shelley placed Byron far above himself. It was while sojourning near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs. Clairmont, who became William Godwin's second wife. The result of this intimacy was a natural daughter, Allegra, for whose maintenance and education Byron provided, and whose early death was severely felt by him.

Byron's life in Italy from 1816 to 1823 continued to be a romance of exciting and dubious adventure. Many details of it are given in Byron's letters,--his prose is always as vigorous as his poetry, and as self-revealing,--and it was no doubt recorded in his famous Diary, which was intrusted to his friend Tom Moore, and was burned after Byron's death. Byron's own frankness about himself, his love of mystification, his impulsiveness in writing anything that entered his brain at the moment, and his habit of boasting about his wickedness, which always went to the extent of making himself out worse than he was, stands in the way of getting a clear narration of his life and conduct. But he was always an interesting and commanding and perplexing personality, and the writings about him by his intimates are as various as the moods he indulged in. The bright light of inquiry always shone upon him, for Byron was the most brilliant, the most famous, the most detested, the most worshiped, and the most criticized and condemned man in Europe.

It was in this period that he produced the works that by their innate vigor and power placed him in the front rank of English poets. A complete list of them cannot be given in this brief notice. The third and fourth cantos of 'Childe Harold' attained a height that the first two cantos had not prepared the world to expect. 'Cain' was perhaps the culmination of his power. The lyrics and occasional poems of this time add to his fame because they exhibit his infinite variety. Critics point out the carelessness of his verse,--and there is an air of haste in much of it; they deny his originality and give the sources of his inspiration,--but he had Shakespeare's faculty of transforming all things to his own will; and they deny him the contribution of thought to the ideas of the world. This criticism must stand against the fact of his almost unequaled power to move the world and make it feel and think. The Continental critics did not accuse him of want of substance. What did he not do for Spain, for Italy, for Greece! No interpretation of their splendid past, of their hope for the future, no musings over the names of other civilizations, no sympathy with national pride, has ever so satisfied the traveling and reading world in these lands, as Byron's. The public is not so good a judge of what poetry should be, as the trained critics; but it is a judge of power, of what is stirring and entertaining: and so it comes to pass that Byron's work is read when much poetry, more finished but wanting certain vital qualities, is neglected. I believe it is a fact that Byron is more quoted than any English poet except Pope since Shakespeare, and that he is better known to the world at large than any except the Master. But whether this is so or not, he is more read now at the close of this century than he was in its third quarter.

'The Dream' and 'Darkness' are poems that will never lose their value so long as men love and are capable of feeling terror. 'Manfred,' 'Mazeppa,' 'Heaven and Earth,' 'The Prisoner of Chillon,' and the satire of the 'Vision of Judgment' maintain their prominence; and it seems certain that many of the lyrics, like 'The Isles of Greece' and the 'Maid of Athens,' will never pall upon any generation of readers, and the lyrics will probably outlast the others in general favor. Byron wrote many dramas, but they are not acting plays. He lacked the dramatic instinct, and it is safe to say that his plays, except in certain passages, add little to his great reputation.

In the opinion of many critics, Byron's genius was more fully displayed in 'Don Juan' than in 'Childe Harold.' Byron was Don Juan, mocking, satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all conventional opinion. The ease, the grace, the _diablerie_ of the poem are indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended by its satire of English hypocrisy had no difficulty in deciding that it was not fit for English readers. I wonder what would be the judgment of it if it were a recovered classic disassociated from the personality of any writer.

Byron was an aristocrat, and sometimes exhibited a silly regard for his rank; but he was a democrat in all the impulses of his nature. His early feeling was that as a peer he condescended to authorship, and for a time he would take no pay for what he wrote. But later, when he needed money, he was keen at a bargain for his poetry. He was extravagant in his living, generous to his friends and to the popular causes he espoused, and cared nothing for money except the pleasure of spending it. It was while he was living at Ravenna that he became involved in the intrigues for Italian independence. He threw himself, his fortune and his time, into it. The time has come, he said, when a man must do something--writing was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of the Carbonari; he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation; his political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and leadership. When that dream faded under the reality of the armies of despotism, his thoughts turned to Greece. Partly his restless nature, partly love of adventure carried him there; but once in the enterprise, he gave his soul to it with a boldness, a perseverance, a good sense, a patriotic fervor that earn for him the title of a hero in a good cause. His European name was a tower of strength to the Greek patriots. He mastered the situation with a statesman's skill and with the perception of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of campaigning, and waited in patience to bring some order to the wrangling factions. If his life had been spared, it is possible that the Greeks then might have thrown off the Turkish yoke; but he succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by the exposure of a frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at Missolonghi in his thirty-seventh year. He was adored by the Greeks, and his death was a national calamity. This last appearance of Lord Byron shows that he was capable of as great things in action as in the realm of literature. It was the tragic end of the stormy career of a genius whose life was as full of contradictions as his character.

It was not only in Greece that Byron's death was profoundly felt, but in all Europe, which was under the spell of his genius. Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie, in her charming recollections of Tennyson, says:--"One day the news came to the village--the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation--that Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. 'Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end,' he once said, speaking of those bygone days. 'I thought everything was over and finished for every one--that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone and carved "Byron is dead" into the sandstone.'"

MAID OF ATHENS

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~[107]

By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each AEgean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
~Zoe mou, sas agapo.~

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Zoe mou, sas agapo: "My life, I love you."

TRANSLATION OF A ROMAIC SONG

I enter thy garden of roses,
Beloved and fair Haidee,
Each morning where Flora reposes,
For surely I see her in thee.
O Lovely! thus low I implore thee,
Receive this fond truth from my tongue,
Which utters its song to adore thee,
Yet trembles for what it has sung:
As the branch, at the bidding of Nature,
Adds fragrance and fruit to the tree,
Through her eyes, through her every feature,
Shines the soul of the young Haidee.

But the loveliest garden grows hateful
When love has abandoned the bowers;
Bring me hemlock--since mine is ungrateful,
That herb is more fragrant than flowers.
The poison, when poured from the chalice,
Will deeply embitter the bowl;
But when drunk to escape from thy malice,
The draught shall be sweet to my soul.
Too cruel! in vain I implore thee
My heart from these horrors to save:
Will naught to my bosom restore thee?
Then open the gates of the grave.

As the chief who to combat advances
Secure of his conquest before,
Thus thou, with those eyes for thy lances,
Hast pierced through my heart to its core.
Ah, tell me, my soul, must I perish
By pangs which a smile would dispel?
Would the hope, which thou once bad'st me cherish,
For torture repay me too well?
Now sad is the garden of roses,
Beloved but false Haidee!
There Flora all withered reposes,
And mourns o'er thine absence with me.

GREECE

From 'The Giaour'

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

Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylae?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free--
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis!
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!

'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace:
Enough--no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

THE HELLESPONT AND TROY

From 'The Bride of Abydos'

The winds are high on Helle's wave;
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos's daughter.
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret torch was blazing high,
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds, warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go:
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the light of love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
"Ye waves, divide not lovers long!"--
That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,
The desert of old Priam's pride,
The tombs, sole relics of his reign,
All--save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!

Oh! yet--for there my steps have been;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore;
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne--
Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,
To trace again those fields of yore,
Believing every hillock green
Contains no fabled hero's ashes,
And that around the undoubted scene
Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes,--
Be long my lot! and cold were he
Who there could gaze denying thee!

GREECE AND HER HEROES

From 'The Siege of Corinth'

They fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing:
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain:
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still, and theirs!
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.

THE ISLES OF GREECE

From 'Don Juan'

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.

The Scian[108] and the Teian[109] muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon--
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;--all were his!
He counted them at break of day--
And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now--
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face:
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.

Must _we_ but weep o'er days more blest?
Must _we_ but blush?--Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylae!

What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah, no;--the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,
But one, arise--we come, we come!"
'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain--in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave--
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these:
It made Anacreon's song divine;
He served--but served Polycrates--
A tyrant: but our masters then
Were still at least our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
_That_ tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore:
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks--
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade:
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marble steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swan-like, let me sing and die!
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine--
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

FOOTNOTES:

[108] Homer.

[109] Anacreon.

GREECE AND THE GREEKS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away--is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each moldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

. . . . . . .

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait--
Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas's banks, and call thee from the tomb?

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every earl can lord it o'er thy land:
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.

. . . . . . .

Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe:
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame....

When riseth Lacedaemon's hardihood,
When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a State;
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendor renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now.
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild,
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mold,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

TO ROME

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago:
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride:
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep, Barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:--
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "Here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka! it is clear--"
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas, the lofty city! and alas,
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page! But these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
Alas for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

THE COLISEUM

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus's genial laws,
And such the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him--he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
_There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday:
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged?--Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

. . . . . . .

A ruin--yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,--
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

At the Storming of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, 1527

From 'The Deformed Transformed'

'Tis the morn, but dim and dark.
Whither flies the silent lark?
Whither shrinks the clouded sun?
Is the day indeed begun?
Nature's eye is melancholy
O'er the city high and holy;
But without there is a din
Should arouse the saints within,
And revive the heroic ashes
Round which yellow Tiber dashes.
O ye seven hills! awaken,
Ere your very base be shaken!

Hearken to the steady stamp!
Mars is in their every tramp!
Not a step is out of tune,
As the tides obey the moon!
On they march, though to self-slaughter,
Regular as rolling water,
Whose high waves o'ersweep the border
Of huge moles, but keep their order,
Breaking only rank by rank.
Hearken to the armor's clank!
Look down o'er each frowning warrior,
How he glares upon the barrier:
Look on each step of each ladder,
As the stripes that streak an adder.

Look upon the bristling wall,
Manned without an interval!
Round and round, and tier on tier,
Cannon's black mouth, shining spear,
Lit match, bell-mouthed musquetoon,
Gaping to be murderous soon--
All the warlike gear of old,
Mixed with what we now behold,
In this strife 'twixt old and new,
Gather like a locust's crew.
Shade of Remus! 'tis a time
Awful as thy brother's crime!
Christians war against Christ's shrine:
Must its lot be like to thine?

Near--and near--and nearer still,
As the earthquake saps the hill,
First with trembling, hollow motion,
Like a scarce-awakened ocean,
Then with stronger shock and louder,
Till the rocks are crushed to powder,--
Onward sweeps the rolling host!
Heroes of the immortal boast!
Mighty chiefs! eternal shadows!
First flowers of the bloody meadows
Which encompass Rome, the mother
Of a people without brother!
Will you sleep when nations' quarrels
Plow the root up of your laurels?
Ye who wept o'er Carthage burning,
Weep not--_strike_! for Rome is mourning!

Onward sweep the varied nations!
Famine long hath dealt their rations.
To the wall, with hate and hunger,
Numerous as wolves, and stronger,
On they sweep. O glorious city!
Must thou be a theme for pity?
Fight like your first sire, each Roman!
Alaric was a gentle foeman,
Matched with Bourbon's black banditti.
Rouse thee, thou eternal city!
Rouse thee! Rather give the torch
With thine own hand to thy porch,
Than behold such hosts pollute
Your worst dwelling with their foot.

Ah! behold yon bleeding spectre!
Ilion's children find no Hector;
Priam's offspring loved their brother;
Rome's great sire forgot his mother,
When he slew his gallant twin,
With inexpiable sin.
See the giant shadow stride
O'er the ramparts high and wide!
When the first o'erleapt thy wall,
Its foundation mourned his fall.
Now, though towering like a Babel,
Who to stop his steps are able?
Stalking o'er thy highest dome,
Remus claims his vengeance, Rome!

Now they reach thee in their anger;
Fire and smoke and hellish clangor
Are around thee, thou world's wonder!
Death is in thy walls and under.
Now the meeting steel first clashes,
Downward then the ladder crashes,
With its iron load all gleaming,
Lying at its foot blaspheming.
Up again! for every warrior
Slain, another climbs the barrier.
Thicker grows the strife; thy ditches
Europe's mingling gore enriches.
Rome! although thy wall may perish,
Such manure thy fields will cherish,
Making gay the harvest-home;
But thy hearths! alas, O Rome!--
Yet be Rome amidst thine anguish,
Fight as thou wast wont to vanquish!

Yet once more, ye old Penates,
Let not your quenched hearths be Ate's!
Yet again, ye shadowy heroes,
Yield not to these stranger Neros!
Though the son who slew his mother
Shed Rome's blood, he was your brother:
'Twas the Roman curbed the Roman;--
Brennus was a baffled foeman.
Yet again, ye saints and martyrs,
Rise! for yours are holier charters!
Mighty gods of temples falling,
Yet in ruin still appalling,
Mightier founders of those altars
True and Christian--strike the assaulters!
Tiber! Tiber! let thy torrent
Show even nature's self abhorrent.
Let each breathing heart dilated
Turn, as doth the lion baited:
Rome be crushed to one wide tomb,
But be still the Roman's Rome!

VENICE

From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand;
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O'er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway:
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away--
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

ODE TO VENICE