Chapter XXI: Canto THE FOURTH: 375 (2)

Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin[508]--Comforter
And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the Avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

CXXXI.

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate--
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate:--
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain--shall _they_ not mourn?

CXXXII.

And Thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis![509][28.H.]
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long--
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution--just,
Had it but been from hands less near--in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must.

CXXXIII.

It is not that I may not have incurred,
For my ancestral faults or mine, the wound[op]
I bleed withal; and, had it been conferred
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground--
To thee I do devote it--_Thou_ shalt take
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found--
Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake--
But let that pass--I sleep--but Thou shalt yet awake.

CXXXIV.

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now[oq]
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

CXXXV.

That curse shall be Forgiveness.--Have I not--
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!--
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

CXXXVI.[or]

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance[510] of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would _seem_ true--
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

CXXXVII.

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.

CXXXVIII.

The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow upon the spot--all-seeing but unseen.

CXXXIX.

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' genial laws,
And 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.

CXL.

I see before me the Gladiator[511] lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow[os]
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,[ot]
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now[ou]
The arena swims around him--he is gone,[ov]
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

CXLI.

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--[ow][29.H.]
All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire
And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

CXLII.

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;--
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd--[ox][30.H.]
My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays[oy]
On the arena void--seats crushed--walls bowed--
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

CXLIII.

A Ruin--yet what Ruin! from its mass
Walls--palaces--half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,[oz]
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.

CXLIV.

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,[pa]
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head--[512]
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.[pb]

CXLV.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:[513]
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World." From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all--
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
Of Art and Piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome![pc]

CXLVII.

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts;
To Art a model--and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
And they who feel for Genius may repose
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.[515]

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light[516]
What do I gaze on? Nothing--Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight--
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:[pd]
It is not so--I see them full and plain--
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?[pe]

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where _on_ the heart and _from_ the heart we took
Our first and sweetest nurture--when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook[pf]
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives[pg]
Man knows not--when from out its cradled nook
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves--
What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,
The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth:--No--he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side
Drink--drink, and live--Old Man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide.

CLI.

The starry fable of the Milky Way[517]
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest Nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy Sire's heart, replenishing its source[ph]
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the Universe.

CLII.

Turn to the Mole[518] which Hadrian reared on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity--
Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
To build for Giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this Dome: How smiles
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,[pi]
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

CLIII.[519]

But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous Dome,[pj][520]
To which Diana's marvel was a cell--
Christ's mighty shrine above His martyr's tomb![pk]
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle--[521]
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyaena and the jackal in their shade;[522]
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell[pl]
Their glittering mass i' the Sun, and have surveyed[pm]
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;[523]

CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone--with nothing like to thee--
Worthiest of God, the Holy and the True!
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty--
Power--Glory--Strength--and Beauty all are aisled
In this eternal Ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessened--but thy mind,
Expanded by the Genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit[524] abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of Immortality--and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies--nor be blasted by his brow.[pn]

CLVI.

Thou movest--but increasing with the advance,[525]
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance--
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize--[po]
All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles, richer painting--shrines where flame[pp]
The lamps of gold--and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim.

CLVII.

Thou seest not all--but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the Ocean many bays will make
That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll[pq]
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The Glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

CLVIII.

Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense[pr]
Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our Spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause, and be enlightened; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of Art and its great Masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan:[ps]
The fountain of Sublimity displays
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of Man[pt]
Its golden sands, and learn what great Conceptions can.[pu]

CLX.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocooen's[526] torture dignifying pain--
A Father's love and Mortal's agony
With an Immortal's patience blending:--Vain
The struggle--vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The Old Man's clench; the long envenomed chain[pv]
Rivets the living links,--the enormous Asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.[pw]

CLXI.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,[527]
The God of Life, and Poesy, and Light--
The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
With an Immortal's vengeance--in his eye
And nostril beautiful Disdain, and Might
And Majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.

CLXII.

But in his delicate form--a dream of Love,[528]
Shaped by some solitary Nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision[529]--are exprest
All that ideal Beauty ever blessed
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each Conception was a heavenly Guest--
A ray of Immortality--and stood,
Starlike, around, until they gathered to a God![px]

CLXIII.

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure[530]--it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
With an eternal Glory--which, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought--
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

CLXIV.

But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song,
The Being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more--these breathings are his last--
His wanderings done--his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing:--if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed
With forms which live and suffer--let that pass--
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,[py]

CLXV.

Which gathers shadow--substance--life, and all
That we inherit in its mortal shroud--
And spreads the dim and universal pall
Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud
Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allowed
To hover on the verge of darkness--rays
Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,

CLXVI.

And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this--
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear,--but never more,
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:--
It is enough in sooth that _once_ we bore
These fardels[531] of the heart--the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII.

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,[532]
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;--
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground--
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the Chief
Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief--
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII.

Scion of Chiefs and Monarchs, where art thou?
Fond Hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the Grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled
The present happiness and promised joy
Which filled the Imperial Isles so full it seemed to cloy.

CLXIX.

Peasants bring forth in safety.--Can it be,
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for Kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
Her many griefs for _One_; for she had poured
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head[pz]
Beheld her Iris.--Thou, too, lonely Lord,
And desolate Consort--vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

CLXX.

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes[533]: in the dust
The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,
The love of millions! How we did entrust
Futurity to her! and, though it must
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed
Our children should obey her child, and blessed
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed
Like stars to shepherd's eyes:--'twas but a meteor beamed.[534]

CLXXI.

Woe unto us--not her--for she sleeps well:[535]
The fickle reek of popular breath,[536] the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of Monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung
Nations have armed in madness--the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns,[537] and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,--[qa]

CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny--but no--
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a Bride and Mother--and now _there!_
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an Earthquake's,[538] and opprest
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi![539] navelled in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting Wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The Ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears[qb]
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near, Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley;--and afar[31.H.]
The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
"Arms and the Man," whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire:--but beneath thy right[540]
Tully reposed from Rome;--and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight[qc]
The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary Bard's delight.

CLXXV.

But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,--so let it be,--
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the Sea;
The Midland Ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock[541] unfold
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades:[32.H.] long years--
Long, though not very many--since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears[qd]
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run--
We have had our reward--and it is here,--
That we can yet feel gladdened by the Sun,
And reap from Earth--Sea--joy almost as dear
As if there were no Man to trouble what is clear.[542]

CLXXVII.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,[543]
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted--Can ye not
Accord me such a Being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

CLXXVIII.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe,[544] and feel
What I can ne'er express--yet can not all conceal.

CLXXIX.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan--
Without a grave--unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.[qe]

CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For Earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies--[545]
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to Earth:--there let him lay.[qf][546]

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals,
The oak Leviathans,[547] whose huge ribs make[qg]
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War--
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.[548]

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
Assyria--Greece--Rome--Carthage--what are they?[549]
Thy waters washed[550] them power while they were free,[qh]
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,[qi]
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm--
Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime--
The image of Eternity-the throne[qj]
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime[551]
The monsters of the deep are made--each Zone
Obeys thee--thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy[552]
I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a Child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.[553]

CLXXXV.

My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit[qk]
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ,--
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been--and my visions flit
Less palpably before me--and the glow
Which in my Spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been--
A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql]
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm]
Which is his last--if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his--if on ye swell
A single recollection--not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain,
If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.[554]

FOOTNOTES:

[363] {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession of the Lady Dorchester.

[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song....
He is no more--these breathings are his last."]

[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day," sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--

"Here's a happy new year!--but with reason
I beg you'll permit me to say--
Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_,
But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]

[366] {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a man than a monster; and others wonder to find one born five thousand miles from England, endued with common sense.... He must be some Englishman in disguise."--_The Citizen of the World; or a Series of Letters from a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friends in the East_, 1762, Letter xxxiii.]

[367] [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]

[368] {324} [Antonio Canova, sculptor, 1757-1822; Vincenzo Monti, 1754-1828; Ugo Foscolo, 1776-1827 (see _Life_, p. 456, etc.); Ippolito Pindemonte, 1753-1828 (see Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817), poets; Ennius Quirinus Visconti, 1751-1818, the valuer of the Elgin marbles, archaeologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de Cicognara, 1767-1834, archaeologist; the Contessa Albrizzi, 1769?-1836, authoress of _Ritratti di Uomini Illustri_ (see _Life_, pp. 331, 413, etc.); Giuseppe Mezzofanti, 1774-1849, linguist; Angelo Mai (cardinal), 1782-1854, philologist; Andreas Moustoxides, 1787-1860, a Greek archaeologist, who wrote in Italian; Francesco Aglietti (see _Life_, p. 378, etc.), 1757-1836; Andrea Vacca Berlinghieri, 1772-1826 (see _Life_, p. 339).

For biographical essays on Monti, Foscolo, and Pindemonte, see "Essay on the Present Literature of Italy" (Hobhouse's _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, 1818, pp. 347, _sq._). See, too, _Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 333-337, 337-341, 341-342.]

[369] {325} [Shelley (notes M. Darmesteter), in his preface to the _Prometheus Unbound_, "emploie le mot sans demander pardon." "The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change." "Capability" in the sense of "undeveloped faculty or property; a condition physical or otherwise, capable of being converted or turned to use" (_N. Eng. Dict._), appertains rather to material objects. To apply the term figuratively to the forces inherent in national character savoured of a literary indecorum. Hence the apology.]

[370] [Addison, _Cato_, act v. sc. 1, line 3--

"It must be so--_Plato_, thou reason'st well!--
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?"]

[371] [Shelley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines addressed to his infant son--

"My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived----"]

[372] [Scott commented severely on this opprobrious designation of "the great and glorious victory of Waterloo," in his critique on the Fourth Canto, _Q. R._, No. xxxvii., April, 1818.]

[373] {326} [_The substance of some letters written by an Englishman resident in Paris during the last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon_. 1816. 2 vols.]

[374] [In 1817.]

[375] {327}

[Venice and La Mira on the Brenta.
Copied, August, 1817.
Begun, June 26. Finished, July 29th. MS. M.]

[376] [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft of the column as a specimen." Gifford, Frere, and many more to whom Murray "ventured to show it," expressed their approval (_Memoir of John Murray_, i. 385).

"'The Bridge of Sighs,'" he explains (i.e. _Ponte de' Sospiri_), "is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state." Compare _The Two Foscari_, act iv. sc. 1--

"In Venice '_but_'s' a traitor.
But me no '_buts_,' unless you would pass o'er
The Bridge which few repass."

This, however, is an anachronism. The Bridge of Sighs was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1597, more than a century after the death of Francesco Foscari. "It is," says Mr. Ruskin, "a work of no merit and of a late period, owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron" (_Stones of Venice_, 1853, ii. 304; in. 359).]

[377] [Compare _Mysteries of Udolpho_, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 35, 36--

"Its terraces crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics ... appeared as if they had been called up from the Ocean by the wand of an enchanter."]

[lb] {328} ----_throned on her Seventy Isles_.--[MS. M. altern. reading, D.]

[378] Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.--"Quo fit ut qui superne [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere." [_De Venetae Urbis situ Narratio_, lib. i. _Ital. Ill. Script._, 1600, p. 4. Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436-1506) wrote, _inter alia_, a _History of Venice_, published in folio in 1487, and _Rhapsodiae Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad_ A.C. 1504. His description of Venice (_vide supra_) was published after his death in 1527. Hofmann does not give him a good character: "Obiit A.C. 1506, turpi morbo confectus, aetat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his [Greek: Au)toepita/phion] implies that he was satisfied with himself.

"Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat aetas,
Scribentem capit haec Coccion urna brevis."

Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cyb[=e]le), the "mother of the Goddesses," was represented as wearing a mural crown--"coronamque turritam gestare dicitur" (Albricus Phil., _De Imag. Deor._, xii.). Venice with her tiara of proud towers is the earth-goddess Cybele, having "suffered a sea-change."]

[lc] {329} _From spoils of many nations and the East_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[379] ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least precious were framed of turquoise, jasper, or amethyst ... unnumbered jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly, those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St. Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own beams;--these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice" (Villehardouin, lib. in. p. 129). (See _Sketches from Venetian History_, 1831, i. 161.)]

[380] [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth of the Roman Empire" (_ibid._, 1831, i. 167).]

[ld] _Monarchs sate down_----.--[D. erased.]

[381] [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate stanzas of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, capping each other like the shepherds in the _Bucolics_. The rival reciters were sometimes attached to the same gondola; but often the response came from a passing gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers, in his _Italy_, laments the silence which greeted the swan-song of his own gondolier--

"He sung,
As in the time when Venice was Herself,
Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars
We rested; and the verse was verse divine!
We could not err--Perhaps he was the last--
For none took up the strain, none answer'd him;
And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear
A something like the dying voice of Venice!"
_The Gondola_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 79).

Compare, too, Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 6, 1786: "This evening I bespoke the celebrated _song_ of the mariners, who chaunt Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one _singer_ before and the other behind me. They _sing_ their _song_, taking up the verses alternately....

"Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice--the multitude admire force above everything--anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 73.]

[le] {330} _The pleasure-place of all festivity_.--[MS. M.]

[382] {331} [The Rialto, or Rivo alto, "the middle group of islands between the shore and the mainland," on the left of the Grand Canal, was the site of the original city, and till the sixteenth century its formal and legal designation. The Exchange, or Banco Giro, was held in the piazza, opposite the church of San Giacomo, which stands at the head of the canal to the north of the Ponto di Rialto. It was on the Rialto that Antonio rated Shylock about his "usances." "What news on the Rialto?" asks Solanio (_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3, line 102; act iii. sc. 1, line 1). Byron uses the word symbolically for Venetian commerce.]

[383] [Pierre is the hero of Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Shylock and the Moor stand where they did, but what of Pierre? If the name of Otway--"master of the tragic art"--and the title of his masterpiece--_Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_ (first played 1682)--are not wholly forgotten, Pierre and Monimia and Belvidera have "decayed," and are memorable chiefly as favourite characters of great actors and actresses. Genest notes twenty revivals of the _Venice Preserved_, which was played as late as October 27, 1837, when Macready played "Pierre," and Phelps "Jaffier." "No play that I know," says Hartley Coleridge (Essays, 1851, ii. 56), "gains so much by acting as _Venice Preserved_.... Miss O'Neill, I well remember, made me weep with Belvidera; but she would have done the same had she spoken in an unknown tongue." Byron, who professed to be a "great admirer of Otway," in a letter to Hodgson, August 22, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 339, note 1), alludes to some lines from _Venice Preserved_ (act ii. sc. 3), which seem to have taken his fancy. Two lines spoken by Belvidera (act ii.), if less humorous, are more poetical--

"Oh, the day
Too soon will break, and wake us to our sorrow;
Come, come to bed, and bid thy cares Good night!"]

[384] {332} [Compare _The Dream_, i.--

"The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

The ideal personages of the poet's creations have the promise of immortality. The ideal forms which people his imagination transfigure and supplant the dull and grievous realities of his mortal being and circumstance; but there are "things" more radiant, more enchanting still, the "strong realities" of the heart and soul--hope, love, joy. But they pass! We wake, and lo! it was a dream.]

[lf] _Denies to the dull trick of life_----.--[MS. erased.]

[385]

["In youth I wrote because my mind was full,
And now because I feel it growing dull."
_Don Juan_, Canto XIV. stanza x.

In youth the poet takes refuge, in the ideal world, from the crowd and pressure of blissful possibilities; and in age, when hope is beyond hope, he peoples the solitude with beings of the mind.]

[lg] {333} _And this worn feeling_----.--[Editions 1816-1891.]

[lh]
/ _springs_ \
_And, may be, that which_ { } ----.--[MS. M.]
\ _spreads_ /

[li] _Outshines our Fairies--things in shape and hue_.--[MS. M.]

[lj] {334} ----_and though I leave behind_.--[MS. M.]

[lk] _And make myself a home beside a softer sea_.--[MS. erased.]

[ll]
----_to pine_
_Albeit is not my nature, and I twine_.--[MS. M. erased]

[386] [In another mood he wrote to Murray (June 7, 1819), "I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall' [see _The Rivals_, act v. sc. 3]. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country." In this half-humorous outburst he deprecates, or pretends to deprecate, the fate which actually awaited his remains--burial in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard. There is, of course, no reference to a public funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey. In the next stanza (x. line 1) he assumes the possibility of his being excluded from the Temple of Fame; but there is, perhaps, a tacit reference to burial in the Abbey. If the thought, as is probable, occurred to him, he veils it in a metaphor.]

[387] {335} The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedaemonian general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.

[[Greek: Brasi/das ga\r e~)n me\n a)ne\r a)gatho\s], polloi\ d' e)kei/nou krei/ssones e)n te~| Spa/rte|]. Plutarchi _Moralia, Apophthegmata Laconica_ (Tauchnitz, 1820), ii. 127.]

[lm] _The widowed Adriatic mourns her Doge_.--[MS. M erased.]

[388] [The Bucentaur, "the state barge in which, on Ascension Day, the Doge of Venice used to wed the Adriatic by dropping a ring into it," was broken up and rifled by the French in 1797 (note, by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1897, p. 197).

Compare Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 5, 1786: "To give a notion of the Bucentaur in one word, I should say that it is a state-galley. The older one, of which we still have drawings, justified this appellation still more than the present one, which, by its splendour, makes us forget the original....

"The vessel is all ornament; we ought to say, it is overladen with ornament; it is altogether one piece of gilt carving, for no other use.... This state-galley is a good index to show what the Venetians were, and what they considered themselves."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 68.

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic"--

"She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea."
_Works_, 1888, p. 180.]

[389] {336} [For "Lion," see Hobhouse's note iii. The "Horses of St. Mark" (_vide post_, stanza xiii. line 1), which, according to history or legend, Augustus "conveyed" from Alexandria to Rome, Constantine from Rome to Constantinople, Dandolo, in 1204, from Constantinople to Venice, Napoleon, in 1797, from Venice to Paris, and which were restored to the Venetians by the Austrians in 1815, were at one time supposed to belong to the school of Lysippus. Haydon, who published, in 1817, a curious etching of "The Elgin Horse's Head," placed side by side with the "Head of one of the Horses ... now at Venice," subscribes the following critical note: "It is astonishing that the great principles of nature should have been so nearly lost in the time between Phidias and Lysippus. Compare these two heads. The Elgin head is all truth, the other all manner." Hobhouse pronounces the "Horses" to be "irrevocably Chian," but modern archaeologists regard both "school" and exact period as uncertain.]

[ln] _Even on the pillar_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[390] [According to Milman (_Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 144), the humiliation of Barbarossa at the Church of St. Mark took place on Tuesday, July 24, 1177. _A propos_ of the return of the Pope and Emperor to the ducal palace, he quotes "a curious passage from a newly recovered poem, by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant on the Emperor. So great was the press in the market that the aged Pope was thrown down--

"Jam Papa perisset in arto,
Caesar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum."

"This," he remarks, "is an odd contrast of real life with romance."]

[391] {337} ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" was the exclamation of a Highland chieftain at the battle of Sheriff-muir, November 13, 1715 (Scott's _Tales of a Grandfather_, III. Series, chap. x.; _Prose Works_, Paris, 1830, vii. 768). Wordsworth makes the words his own in the sonnet, "In the Pass of Killicranky (an Invasion being expected, October, 1803)" (_Works_, 1888, p. 201)--

"O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!"

And Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of _The Recluse!_'"--an aspiration which Byron would have worded differently.]

[lo]
----_who quelled the imperial foe_.--[MS. M. erased.]
----_empire's all-conquering foe_.--[MS. M.]

[392] [Compare _Marino Faliero_, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158--

"Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers,
To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown."

"The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, the _Paradise_ and the _Pilgrim_, were the first which grappled with the Towers of Constantinople [April, 1204].... The bishops of Soissons and of Troyes would have placed the blind old Doge Dandolo on the imperial throne; his election was opposed by the Venetians.... But probably the wise patriotism of Dandolo himself, and his knowledge of the Venetian mind, would make him acquiesce in the loss of an honour so dangerous to his country.... Venice might have sunk to an outpost, as it were, of the Eastern Empire."--Milman's _Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 350, 353, 354.]

[393] {338} [Hobhouse's version (see _Hist. Notes_, No. vi.) of the war of Chioggia is not borne out by modern research. For example, the long speech which Chinazzo attributes to the Genoese admiral, Pietro Doria, is probably mythical. The actual menace of the "bitting and bridling the horses of St. Mark" is assigned by other historians to Francesco Carrara. Doria was not killed by a stone bullet from the cannon named The Trevisara, but by the fall of the Campanile in Chioggia, which had been struck by the bullet. (_Venice, an Historical Sketch of the Republic_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 225-234.)]

[lp] ----_into whence she rose_.--[Editions 1818-1891.]

[394] [Compare the opening lines of Byron's _Ode on Venice_--

"Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, bewailed the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like threatened men, live long, and since its annexation to Italy, in 1866, a revival of trade and the re-establishment of the arsenal have brought back a certain measure of prosperity.]

[lq] {339} _Even in Destruction's heart_----.--[MS. M.]

[395] That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon--Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon.

[The Venetians were nicknamed Pantaloni. Byron, who seems to have relied on the authority of a Venetian glossary, assumes that the "by-word" may be traced to the patriotism of merchant-princes "who were reputed to hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock and barren headland of Levantine waters" (_Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi_, translated by J. Addington Symonds, 1890, Introd. part ii. p. 44), and that in consequence of this spread-eagleism the Venetians were held up to scorn by their neighbours as "planters of the lion"--a reproach which conveyed a tribute to their prowess. A more probable explanation is that the "by-word," with its cognates "Pantaleone," the typical masque of Italian comedy--progenitor of our "Pantaloon;" and "pantaloni," "pantaloons," the typical Venetian costume--derive their origin from the baptismal name "Pantaleone," frequently given to Venetian children, in honour of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, physician and martyr, whose cult was much in vogue in Northern Italy, and especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.

St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as [Greek: Pantelee/mon], that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled _Pantaleymon_ and _Pantaleemon_. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled, but the compiler of the _Acta Sanctorum_, for July 27, St. Pantaleon's Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), gives the preference to Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed "eum non amplius esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantaleemonem."

The accompanying woodcut is the reproduction of the frontispiece of a black-letter tract, composed by Augustinus de Crema, in honour of the "translation" of one of the sainted martyr's arms to Crema, in Lombardy. It was printed at Cremona, in 1493.]

[396] {340} Shakespeare is my authority for the word "Ottomite" for Ottoman. "Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites" (see _Othello_, act ii. sc. 3, line 161).--[MS. D.]

[397] ["On 29th September (1669) Candia, and the island of Candia, passed away from Venice, after a defence which had lasted twenty-five years, and was unmatched for bravery in the annals of the Republic."--_Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, p. 378.]

[398] ["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours.... The losses are estimated at 8000 Christians and 30,000 Turks.... The chief glory of the victory rests with Sebastian Veniero and the Venetians."--_Venice, etc._, 1893, p. 368.]

[399] {341} [The story is told in Plutarch's _Life of Nicias_, cap. xxix. (_Plut. Vit_., Lipsiae, 1813, v. 154). "The dramas of Euripides were so popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who knew ... portions of them, won the affections of their masters.... I cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its trustworthiness ... is much inferior to its pathos and interest."--Grote's _History of Greece_, 1869, vii. 186.]

[lr] _And won her hopeless children from afar_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[ls]
_And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains_.--[MS. M.]
or, _And sends him home to bless the poet for his strains_.--
[MS. D. erased.]

[lt] {342} _Thy love of Tassa's verse should cut the knot_.--[MS. M.]

[400] [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (_Don Juan_, Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.]

[lu] ----_for come it will and shall_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[lv] _And Otway's--Radcliffe's--Schiller's--Shakspeare's art_.--[MS. M., D.]

[401] Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.

[For _Venice Preserved, vide ante_, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, _vide ante_, stanza i. line 4, note, and _Mysteries, etc._, London, 1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's _Der Geisterseher_ (_Werke_, 1819, x. 97, _sq._) is laid at Venice. "This [the Doge's palace] was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice--more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's _Armenian_, a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the _Ghost Seer_, and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!' [For allusion to the same incident, see Rogers's _Italy_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 73).] But I hate things _all fiction_; and therefore the _Merchant_ and _Othello_ have no great associations for me: but _Pierre_ has."--Letter to Murray, Venice, April 2, 1817. (For an earlier reference to the _Ghost-seer_, see _Oscar of Alva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 131, note.)]

[lw] {344} _Though I have found her thus we will not part_.--[MS. M.]

[402] [Shelley, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, allows to Venice one lingering glory "one remembrance more sublime"--

"That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion,
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror."]

[lx]
_The Past at least is mine--whate'er may come_.
_But when the heart is full the lips must needs lie dumb_.--
[MS. M. erased.]
----_or else mine now were cold and dumb_.--[MS. M.]

[403] {344} _Tannen_ is the plural of _tanne_, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other mountain tree.

[Byron did not "know German" (Letter to Murray, June 7, 1820), and he may, as Mr. Tozer suggests, have supposed that the word "tannen" denoted not "fir trees" generally, but a particular kind of fir tree. He refers, no doubt, to the Ebeltanne (_Abies pectinata_), which is not a native of this country, but grows at a great height on the Swiss Alps and throughout the mountainous region of Central Europe.]

[ly] _But there are minds which as the Tannen grow_.--[MS. erased.]

[lz] _Of shrubless granite_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ma] {345} _In rocks and unsupporting places_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[404] [Cicero, _De Finibus_, II. xxix., controverts the maxim of Epicurus, that a great sorrow is necessarily of short duration, a prolonged sorrow necessarily light: "Quod autem magnum dolorem brevem longinquum levem esse dicitis, id non intelligo quale sit, video enim et magnos et eosdem bene longinquos dolores." But the sentiment is adopted by Montaigne (1. xiv.), ed. 1580, p. 66: "Tu ne la sentiras guiere long temps, si tu la sens trop; elle mettra fin a soy ou a toy; l'un et l'autre revient a un." ("Si tu ne la portes; elle t'emportera," note.) And again by Sir Thomas Brown, "Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves" (see Darmesteter, _Childe Harold_, 1882, p. 193). Byron is not refining upon these conceits, but is drawing upon his own experience. Suffering which does not kill is subject to change, and "continueth not in one stay;" but it remains within call, and returns in an hour when we are not aware.]

[405] {346} [Compare Bishop Blougram's lament on the instability of unfaith--

"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears.

* * * * *

To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there."
Browning's _Poetical Works_, 1869, v. 268.]

[mb]
_A tone of music--eventide in spring_.
or, ----_twilight--eve in spring_.--[MS. M, erased.]

[406] {347} [Compare Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22--

"They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."]

[407] {348} ["Friuli's mountains" are the Julian Alps, which lie to the north of Trieste and north-east of Venice, "the hoar and aery Alps towards the north," which Julian and Count Maddalo (_vide post_, p. 349) saw from the Lido. But the Alpine height along which "a sea of glory" streamed--"the peak of the far Rhaetian hill" (stanza xxviii. line 4)--must lie to the westward of Venice, in the track of the setting sun.]

[408] The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira.

[Compare Shelley's _Julian and Maddalo_ (_Poetical Works_, 1895, i. 343)--

"How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
* * * * *
... We stood
Looking upon the evening, and the flood,
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar
And aery Alps towards the north appeared,
Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue,
Brighter than burning gold."]

[409] {349} [The Brenta rises in Tyrol, and flowing past Padua falls into the Lagoon at Fusina. Mira, or La Mira, where Byron "colonized" in the summer of 1817, and again in 1819, is on the Brenta, some six or seven miles inland from the Lagoon.]