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Front matter
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron · about 121 minutes
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
This etext contains some multi-byte characters in UTF-8 format. The original work contained a few phrases or lines of Greek text. These are shown here as UTF characters followed by a Beta-code transliteration, for example: Οῖμοι [Greek: Oi~moi].
The original text also contains two characters not supported by UTF. In note [463], [=N] and [=S] represent letters N and S with a bar above. In a few places superscript letters are shown by carets: May 27^th^.
An important feature of this edition is its copious footnotes. Footnotes indexed with letters (e.g. [c], [bf]) show variant forms of Byron's text from manuscripts and other sources. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers (e.g. [17], [221]) are informational. Text in notes and elsewhere in square brackets is the work of editor E. H. Coleridge. Text not in brackets is by Byron himself.
In the original, footnotes were printed at the foot of the page on which they were referenced, and their indices started over on each page. In this etext, footnotes have been collected at the ends of each major section, and have been consecutively numbered throughout. Within each block of footnotes are numbers in braces: {321}. These represent the page number on which following notes originally appeared. To find a note that was originally printed on page 27, search for {27}.
In the work "Francesca di Rimini" the original printed lines of the Italian on facing pages opposite the matching lines of Byron's translation. In this etext, the lines of the Italian original have been collected following the translation.
Two minor corrections were made in this etext, both in the note following the title of MANFRED: the year 1348 was corrected to 1834, and the word "Tschairowsky" was corrected to "Tschaikowsky."
THE WORKS
OF
LORD BYRON.
A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Poetry. Vol. IV.
EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A., HON. F.R.S.L.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1901
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH VOLUME.
The poems included in this volume consist of thirteen longer or more important works, written at various periods between June, 1816, and October, 1821; of eight occasional pieces (Poems of July-September, 1816), written in 1816; and of another collection of occasional pieces (Poems 1816-1823), written at intervals between November, 1816, and September, 1823. Of this second group of minor poems five are now printed and published for the first time.
The volume is not co-extensive with the work of the period. The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold (1816-1817), the first five cantos of Don Juan (1818, 1819, 1820), Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari, Cain, and Heaven and Earth (1821), form parts of other volumes, but, in spite of these notable exceptions, the fourth volume contains the work of the poet's maturity, which is and must ever remain famous. Byron was not content to write on one kind of subject, or to confine himself to one branch or species of poetry. He tracked the footsteps now of this master poet, now of another, far outstripping some of his models; soon spent in the pursuit of others. Even in his own lifetime, and in the heyday of his fame, his friendliest critics, who applauded him to the echo, perceived that the "manifold motions" of his versatile and unsleeping talent were not always sanctioned or blessed by his genius. Hence the unevenness of his work, the different values of this or that poem. But, even so, in width of compass, in variety of style, and in measure of success, his achievement was unparalleled. Take such poems as Manfred or Mazeppa, which have left their mark on the literature of Europe; as Beppo, the avant courrier of Don Juan, or the "inimitable" Vision of Judgment, which the "hungry generations" have not trodden down or despoiled of its freshness. Not one of these poems suggests or resembles the other, but each has its crowd of associations, a history and almost a literature of its own.
The whole of this volume was written on foreign soil, in Switzerland or Italy, and, putting aside The Dream, The Monody on the Death of Sheridan, The Irish Avatar, and The Blues, the places, the persons and events, the matériel of the volume as a whole, to say nothing of the style and metre of the poems, are derived from the history and the literature of Switzerland and Southern Europe. An unwilling, at times a vindictive exile, he did more than any other poet or writer of his age to familiarize his own countrymen with the scenery, the art and letters of the Continent, and, conversely, to make the existence of English literature, or, at least, the writings of one Englishman, known to Frenchmen and Italians; to the Teuton and the Slav. If he "taught us little" as prophet or moralist; as a guide to knowledge; as an educator of the general reader--"your British blackguard," as he was pleased to call him--his teaching and influence were "in widest commonalty spread."
Questions with regard to his personality, his morals, his theological opinions, his qualifications as an artist, his grammar, his technique, and so forth, have, perhaps inevitably, absorbed the attention of friend and foe, and the one point on which all might agree has been overlooked, namely, the fact that he taught us a great deal which it is desirable and agreeable to know--which has passed into common knowledge through the medium of his poetry. It is true that he wrote his plays and poems at lightning speed, and that if he was at pains to correct some obvious blunders, he expended but little labour on picking his phrases or polishing his lines; but it is also true that he read widely and studied diligently, in order to prepare himself for an outpouring of verse, and that so far from being a superficial observer or inaccurate recorder, his authority is worth quoting in questions of fact and points of detail.
The appreciation of poetry is a matter of taste, and still more of temperament. Readers cannot be coerced into admiration, or scolded into disapproval and contempt. But if they are willing or can be persuaded to read with some particularity and attention the writings of the illustrious dead, not entirely as partisans, or with the view to dethroning other "Monarchs of Parnassus," they will divine the secret of their fame, and will understand, perhaps recover, the "first rapture" of contemporaries.
Byron sneered and carped at Southey as a "scribbler of all works." He was himself a reader of all works, and without some measure of book-learning and not a little research the force and significance of his various numbers are weakened or obliterated.
It is with the hope of supplying this modicum of book-learning that the Introductions and notes in this and other volumes have been compiled.
I desire to acknowledge, with thanks, the courteous response of Mons. J. Capré, Commandant of the Castle of Chillon, to a letter of inquiry with regard to the "Souterrains de Chillon."
I have to express my gratitude to Sir Henry Irving, to Mr. Joseph Knight, and to Mr. F. E. Taylor, for valuable information concerning the stage representation of Manfred and Marino Faliero.
I am deeply indebted to Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., and to my friend, Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, for assistance in many important particulars during the construction of the volume.
I must also record my thanks to Mr. Oscar Browning, Mr. Josceline Courtenay, and other correspondents, for information and assistance in points of difficulty.
I have consulted and derived valuable information from the following works: The Prisoner of Chillon, etc., by the late Professor Kölbing; Mazeppa, by Dr. Englaender; Marino Faliero avanti il Dogado and La Congiura (published in the Nuovo Archivio Veneto), by Signor Vittorio Lazzarino; and Selections from the Poetry of Lord Byron, by Dr. F. I. Carpenter of Chicago, U.S.A.
I take the opportunity of expressing my acknowledgments to Miss K. Schlesinger, Miss De Alberti, and to Signor F. Bianco, for their able and zealous services in the preparation of portions of the volume.
On behalf of the publisher I beg to acknowledge the kindness of Captain the Hon. F. L. King Noel, in sanctioning the examination and collation of the MS. of Beppo, now in his possession; and of Mrs. Horace Pym of Foxwold Chace, for permitting the portrait of Sheridan by Sir Joshua Reynolds to be reproduced for this volume.
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
May 5, 1901.
CONTENTS OF VOL. IV.
Preface to Vol. IV. of the Poems
The Prisoner of Chillon.
Introduction to The Prisoner of Chillon 3 Sonnet on Chillon 7 Advertisement 9 The Prisoner of Chillon 13
Poems of July-September, 1816. The Dream.
Introduction to The Dream 31 The Dream. First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 33 Darkness. First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 42 Churchill's Grave. First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 45 Prometheus. First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 48 A Fragment. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 36 51 Sonnet to Lake Leman, First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 53 Stanzas to Augusta. First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816 54 Epistle to Augusta. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 38-41 57 Lines on hearing that Lady Byron was Ill. First published, 1831 63
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.
Introduction to Monody, etc. 69 Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan, Spoken at Drury Lane Theatre, London 71
Manfred: A Dramatic Poem.
Introduction to Manfred 79 Manfred 85
The Lament of Tasso.
Introduction to The Lament of Tasso 139 Advertisement 141 The Lament of Tasso 143
Beppo: A Venetian Story.
Introduction to Beppo 155 Beppo 159
Ode on Venice.
Ode on Venice 193
Mazeppa.
Introduction to Mazeppa 201 Advertisement 205 Mazeppa 207
The Prophecy of Dante.
Introduction to The Prophecy of Dante 237 Dedication 241 Preface 243 The Prophecy of Dante. Canto the First 247 Canto the Second 255 Canto the Third 261 Canto the Fourth 269
The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci.
Introduction to The Morgante Maggiore 279 Advertisement 283 The Morgante Maggiore. Canto the First 285
Francesca Of Rimini.
Introduction to Francesca of Rimini 313 Francesco of Rimini 317
Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: an Historical Tragedy.
Introduction to Marino Faliero 325 Preface 331 Marino Faliero 345 Appendix 462
The Vision Of Judgment.
Introduction to The Vision of Judgment 475 Preface 481 The Vision of Judgment 487
Poems 1816-1823.
A very Mournful Ballad on the Siege and Conquest of Alhama. First published, Childe Harold, Canto IV., 1818 529 Sonetto di Vittorelli. Per Monaca 535 Translation from Vittorelli. On a Nun. First published, Childe Harold, Canto IV., 1818 535 On the Bust of Helen by Canova. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 61 536 [Venice. A Fragment.] MS. M 537 So we'll go no more a-roving. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 79 538 [Lord Byron's Verses on Sam Rogers.] Question and Answer. First published, Fraser's Magazine, January, 1833, vol. vii. pp. 82-84 538 The Duel. MS. M 542 Stanzas to the Po. First published, Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824 545 Sonnet on the Nuptials of the Marquis Antonio Cavalli with the Countess Clelia Rasponi of Ravenna. MS. M 547 Sonnet to the Prince Regent. On the Repeal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Forfeiture. First published, Letters and Journals, ii. 234, 235 548 Stanzas. First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1832 549 Ode to a Lady whose Lover was killed by a Ball, which at the same time shivered a portrait next his heart. MS. M. 552 The Irish Avatar. First published, Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824 555 Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 566, not 562 Stanzas to a Hindoo Air. First published, Works of Lord Byron 563 To ---- First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1833 564 To the Countess of Blessington. First published, Letters and Journals, 1830 565 Aristomanes. Canto First. MS. D. 566
The Blues: A Literary Eclogue.
Introduction to The Blues 569 The Blues. Eclogue the First 573 Eclogue the Second 580
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
-
Lord Byron, from an Engraving after a Drawing by G. H. Harlowe
-
The Prison of Bonivard
-
The Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, from a Portrait in Oils by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., in the Possession of Mrs. Horace Pym of Foxwold Chace
-
The Right Honourable John Hookham Frere, from a Mezzotint by W. W. Barney, after a Picture by John Hoppner, R.A.
-
Robert Southey, Poet Laureate, from a Drawing made in 1811 by John Downman, A.R.A., in the Possession of A. H. Hallam Murray, Esq.
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON INTRODUCTION TO _THE PRISONER OF CHILLON_.
The Prisoner of Chillon, says Moore (Life, p. 320), was written at Ouchy, near Lausanne, where Byron and Shelley "were detained two days in a small inn [Hôtel de l'Ancre, now d'Angleterre] by the weather." Byron's letter to Murray, dated June 27 (but? 28), 1816, does not precisely tally with Shelley's journal contained in a letter to Peacock, July 12, 1816 (Prose Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, ii. 171, sq.); but, if Shelley's first date, June 23, is correct, it follows that the two poets visited the Castle of Chillon on Wednesday, June 26, reached Ouchy on Thursday, June 27, and began their homeward voyage on Saturday, June 29 (Shelley misdates it June 30). On this reckoning the Prisoner of Chillon was begun and finished between Thursday, June 27, and Saturday, June 29, 1816. Whenever or wherever begun, it was completed by July 10 (see Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 364), and was ready for transmission to England by July 25. The MS., in Claire's handwriting, was placed in Murray's hands on October 11, and the poem, with seven others, was published December 5, 1816.
In a final note to the Prisoner of Chillon (First Edition, 1816, p. 59), Byron confesses that when "the foregoing poem was composed he knew too little of the history of Bonnivard to do justice to his courage and virtues," and appends as a note to the "Sonnet on Chillon," "some account of his life ... furnished by the kindness of a citizen of that Republic," i.e. Geneva. The note, which is now entitled "Advertisement," is taken bodily from the pages of a work published in 1786 by the Swiss naturalist, Jean Senebier, who died in 1809. It was not Byron's way to invent imaginary authorities, but rather to give his references with some pride and particularity, and it is possible that this unacknowledged and hitherto unverified "account" was supplied by some literary acquaintance, who failed to explain that his information was common property. Be that as it may, Senebier's prose is in some respects as unhistorical as Byron's verse, and stands in need of some corrections and additions.
François Bonivard (there is no contemporary authority for "Bonnivard") was born in 1493. In early youth (1510) he became by inheritance Prior of St. Victor, a monastery outside the walls of Geneva, and on reaching manhood (1514) he accepted the office and the benefice, "la dignité ecclésiastique de Prieur et de la Seigneurie temporelle de St. Victor." A lover of independence, a child of the later Renaissance, in a word, a Genevese, he threw in his lot with a band of ardent reformers and patriots, who were conspiring to shake off the yoke of Duke Charles III. of Savoy, and convert the city into a republic. Here is his own testimony: "Dès que j'eus commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, je me sentis entrainé par un goût prononcé pour les Républiques dont j'épousai toujours les intérêts." Hence, in a great measure, the unrelenting enmity of the duke, who not only ousted him from his priory, but caused him to be shut up for two years at Grolée, Gex, and Belley, and again, after he had been liberated on a second occasion, ordered him, a safe conduct notwithstanding, to be seized and confined in the Castle of Chillon. Here he remained from 1530 to February 1, 1536, when he was released by the Bernese.
For the first two years he was lodged in a room near the governor's quarters, and was fairly comfortable; but a day came when the duke paid a visit to Chillon; and "then," he writes, "the captain thrust me into a cell lower than the lake, where I lived four years. I know not whether he did it by the duke's orders or of his own accord; but sure it is that I had so much leisure for walking, that I wore in the rock which was the pavement a track or little path, as it had been made with a hammer" (Chroniques des Ligues de Stumpf, addition de Bonivard).
After he had been liberated, "par la grace de Dieu donnee a Mess^rs^ de Berne," he returned to Geneva, and was made a member of the Council of the State, and awarded a house and a pension of two hundred crowns a year. A long life was before him, which he proceeded to spend in characteristic fashion, finely and honourably as scholar, author, and reformer, but with little self-regard or self-respect as a private citizen. He was married no less than four times, and not one of these alliances was altogether satisfactory or creditable. Determined "to warm both hands before the fire of life," he was prone to ignore the prejudices and even the decencies of his fellow-citizens, now incurring their displeasure, and now again, as one who had greatly testified for truth and freedom, being taken back into favour and forgiven. There was a deal of human nature in Bonivard, with the result that, at times, conduct fell short of pretension and principle. Estimates of his character differ widely. From the standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, "C'était un fort mauvais sujet et un plus mauvais prêtre;" and even his captivity, infamous as it was, "ne peut rendre Bonivard intéressant" (Notices Généalogiques sur les Famillies Genevoises, par J. A. Galiffe, 1836, iii. 67, sq.); whilst an advocate and champion, the author of the Preface to Les Chroniques de Genève par François de Bonnivard, 1831, tom. i. pt. i. p. xli., avows that "aucun homme n'a fait preuve d'un plus beau caractère, d'un plus parfait désintéressement que l'illustre Prieur de St. Victor." Like other great men, he may have been guilty of "quelques égaremens du coeur, quelques concessions passagères aux dévices des sens," but "Peu importe à la postérité les irrégularités de leur vie privée" (p. xlviii.).
But whatever may be the final verdict with regard to the morals, there can be no question as to the intellectual powers of the "Prisoner of Chillon." The publication of various MS. tracts, e.g. Advis et Devis de l'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Genève, 1865; Advis et Devis des Lengnes, etc., 1865, which were edited by the late J. J. Chaponnière, and, after his death, by M. Gustave Revilliod, has placed his reputation as historian, satirist, philosopher, beyond doubt or cavil. One quotation must suffice. He is contrasting the Protestants with the Catholics (Advis et Devis de la Source de Lidolatrie, Geneva, 1856, p. 159): "Et nous disons que les prebstres rongent les mortz et est vray; mais nous faisons bien pys, car nous rongeons les vifz. Quel profit revient aux paveures du dommage des prebstres? Nous nous ventons touttes les deux parties de prescher Christ cruciffie et disons vray, car nous le laissons cruciffie et nud en l'arbre de la croix, et jouons a beaux dez au pied dicelle croix, pour scavoir qui haura sa robe."
For Bonivard's account of his second imprisonment, see Les Chroniques de Genève, tom. ii. part ii. pp. 571-577; see, too, Notice sur François Bonivard, ...par Le Docteur J. J. Chaponnière, Mémoires et Documents Publiés, par La Société d'Histoire, etc., de Genève, 1845, iv. 137-245; Chillon Etude Historique, par L. Vulliemin, Lausanne, 1851; Revue des Deux Mondes, Seconde Période, vol. 82, Août, 1869, pp. 682-709; "True Story of the Prisoner of Chillon," Nineteenth Century, May, 1900, No. 279, pp. 821-829, by A. van Amstel (Johannes Christiaan Neuman).
The Prisoner of Chillon was reviewed (together with the Third Canto of Childe Harold) by Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review, No. xxxi., October, 1816), and by Jeffrey (Edinburgh Review, No. liv., December, 1816).
With the exception of the Eclectic (March, 1817, N.S., vol. vii. pp. 298-304), the lesser reviews were unfavourable. For instance, the Critical Review (December, 1816, Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581) detected the direct but unacknowledged influence of Wordsworth on thought and style; and the Portfolio (No. vi. pp. 121-128), in an elaborate skit, entitled "Literary Frauds," assumed, and affected to prove, that the entire poem was a forgery, and belonged to the same category as The Right Honourable Lord Byron's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, etc.
For extracts from these and other reviews, see Kölbing, Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems, Weimar, 1896, excursus i. pp. 3-55.
SONNET ON CHILLON
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind![1]
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
For there thy habitation is the heart--
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!--May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.[2]
ADVERTISEMENT
When this poem[a] was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:--
"François De Bonnivard, fils de Louis De Bonnivard, originaire de Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui résigna le Prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Genève, et qui formait un bénéfice considérable....
"Ce grand homme--(Bonnivard mérite ce litre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son coeur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances, et la vivacité de son esprit),--ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroïque peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les coeurs des Genevois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis: pour assurer la liberté de notre République, il ne craignit pas de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il méprisa ses richesses; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie qu'il honora de son choix: dès ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zélé de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l'intrépidité d'un héros, et il écrivit son Histoire avec la naïveté d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un patriote.
"Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que, dès qu'il eut commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entraîné par son goût pour les Républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérêts: c'est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie....
"Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonça hautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Evêque....
"En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie: Le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer à Fribourg pour en éviter les suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnaient, et conduit par ordre du Prince à Grolée, où il resta prisonnier pendant deux ans. Bonnivard était malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses malheurs n'avaient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il était toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la menaçaient, et par conséquent il devait être exposé à leurs coups. Il fut rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent, et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Savoye: ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Château de Chillon, où il resta sans être interrogé jusques en 1536; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s'emparèrent du Pays-de-Vaud.
"Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée: la République s'empressa de lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de le dédommager des maux qu'il avoit soufferts; elle le reçut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536; elle lui donna la maison habitée autrefois par le Vicaire-Général, et elle lui assigna une pension de deux cent écus d'or tant qu'il séjournerait à Genève. Il fut admis dans le Conseil des Deux-Cent en 1537.
"Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'être utile: après avoir travaillé à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bonnivard engagea le Conseil à accorder [aux ecclésiastiques et aux paysans] un tems suffisant pour examiner les propositions qu'on leur faisait; il réussit par sa douceur: on prêche toujours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le prêche avec charité....
"Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu'il avait bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et qu'il avait approfondi la théologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimait les sciences, et il croyait qu'elles pouvaient faire la gloire de Genève; aussi il ne négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothèque au public; elle fut le commencement de notre bibliothèque publique; et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles éditions du quinzième siècle qu'on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la même année, ce bon patriote institua la République son héritière, à condition qu'elle employerait ses biens à entretenir le collège dont on projettait la fondation.
"Il parait que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet, 1570, jusques en 1571."--[Histoire Littéraire de Genève, par Jean Senebier (1741-1809), 1786, i. 131-137.]
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
I.
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,[3]
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,[b]
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are banned,[4] and barred--forbidden fare; 10
But this was for my father's faith
I suffered chains and courted death;
That father perished at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling place;
We were seven--who now are one,[5]
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finished as they had begun,
Proud of Persecution's rage;[c] 20
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have sealed,
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;--
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
II.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,[6]
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 30
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp:[7]
And in each pillar there is a ring,[8]
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away, 40
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years--I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother drooped and died,
And I lay living by his side.
III.
They chained us each to a column stone,
And we were three--yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace, 50
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together--yet apart,
Fettered in hand, but joined in heart,[d]
'Twas still some solace in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old, 60
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,
A grating sound, not full and free,
As they of yore were wont to be:
It might be fancy--but to me
They never sounded like our own.
IV.
I was the eldest of the three,
And to uphold and cheer the rest 70
I ought to do--and did my best--
And each did well in his degree.
The youngest, whom my father loved,
Because our mother's brow was given
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven--
For him my soul was sorely moved:
And truly might it be distressed
To see such bird in such a nest;[9]
For he was beautiful as day--
(When day was beautiful to me 80
As to young eagles, being free)--
A polar day, which will not see[10]
A sunset till its summer's gone,
Its sleepless summer of long light,
The snow-clad offspring of the sun:
And thus he was as pure and bright,
And in his natural spirit gay,
With tears for nought but others' ills,
And then they flowed like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe 90
Which he abhorred to view below.
V.
The other was as pure of mind,
But formed to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perished in the foremost rank
With joy:--but not in chains to pine:
His spirit withered with their clank,
I saw it silently decline--
And so perchance in sooth did mine: 100
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
Had followed there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fettered feet the worst of ills.
VI.
Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 110
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,[11]
Which round about the wave inthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made--and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake[12]
The dark vault lies wherein we lay:
We heard it ripple night and day;
Sounding o'er our heads it knocked;
And I have felt the winter's spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high 120
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rocked,
And I have felt it shake, unshocked,[13]
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.
VII.
I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare, 130
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captives' tears
Have moistened many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mould 140
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;[14]
But why delay the truth?--he died.[e]
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand--nor dead,--
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.[f]
He died--and they unlocked his chain,
And scooped for him a shallow grave[15] 150
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begged them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine--it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,[16]
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer--
They coldly laughed--and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above 160
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,
Such Murder's fitting monument!
VIII.
But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherished since his natal hour,
His mother's image in fair face,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyred father's dearest thought,[17]
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be 170
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired--
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was withered on the stalk away.[18]
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:[19]
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean 180
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors--this was woe
Unmixed with such--but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender--kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray;
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright;
And not a word of murmur--not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,--
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence--lost 200
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting Nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listened, but I could not hear;
I called, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;
I called, and thought I heard a sound--
I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210
And rushed to him:--I found him not,
_I_ only stirred in this black spot,
_I_ only lived, _I_ only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last, the sole, the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath--
My brothers--both had ceased to breathe: 220
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive--
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,[20]
I had no earthly hope--but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death. 230
IX.
What next befell me then and there
I know not well--I never knew--
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling--none--
Among the stones I stood a stone,[21]
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night--it was not day; 240
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness--without a place;
There were no stars--no earth--no time--
No check--no change--no good--no crime--
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! 250
X.
A light broke in upon my brain,--
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track; 260
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,[22]
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me! 270
I never saw its like before,
I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seemed like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,[23]
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in wingéd guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For--Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile--
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;[24]
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew, 290
For he would never thus have flown--
And left me twice so doubly lone,--
Lone--as the corse within its shroud,
Lone--as a solitary cloud,[25]
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear[26]
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.
XI.
A kind of change came in my fate, 300
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:--my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one, 310
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,
My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.
XII.
I made a footing in the wall,
It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all, 320
Who loved me in a human shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me:[27]
No child--no sire--no kin had I,
No partner in my misery;
I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend
To my barred windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high, 330
The quiet of a loving eye.[28]
XIII.
I saw them--and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high--their wide long lake below,[g]
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;[29]
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,[30]
And whiter sails go skimming down; 340
And then there was a little isle,[31]
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seemed no more,[32]
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue. 350
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seemed joyous each and all;[33]
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seemed to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled--and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode 360
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,--
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.
XIV.
It might be months, or years, or days--
I kept no count, I took no note--
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free; 370
I asked not why, and recked not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be,
I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage--and all my own![34]
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home: 380
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill--yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;[h]
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends 390
To make us what we are:--even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] {7}[In the first draft, the sonnet opens thus--
"Belovéd Goddess of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart,
Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd--
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Thy joy is with them still, and unconfined,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom."
Ed. 1832.]
[2] [Compare--
"I appeal from her [sc. Florence] to Thee."
_Proph. of Dante_, Canto I. line 125.]
[a] {8} When the foregoing.... Some account of his life will be found in a note appended to the Sonnet on Chillon, with which I have been furnished, etc.--[Notes, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816, p. 59.]
[3] {13} Ludovico Sforza, and others.--The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed.
[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (French Revolution, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses."
Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and--
"For deadly fear can time outgo,
And blanch at once the hair."
_Marmion_, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.]
[b] But with the inward waste of grief.--[MS.]
[4] [The N. Engl. Dict., art. "Ban," gives this passage as the earliest instance of the use of the verb "to ban" in the sense of "to interdict, to prohibit." Exception was taken to this use of the word in the Crit. Rev., 1817, Series V. vol. iv. p. 571.]
[5] {14}[Compare the epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers," etc. (Elze's Life of Lord Byron, p. 4, note 1).
Compare, too, Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, lines 391, 392--
"Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride,
Two in the field and three on gibbets died."
The Bonivard of history had but two brothers, Amblard and another.]
[c] Braving rancour--chains--and rage.--[MS.]
[6] ["This is really so: the loop-holes that are partly stopped up are now but long crevices or clefts, but Bonivard, from the spot where he was chained, could, perhaps, never get an idea of the loveliness and variety of radiating light which the sunbeam shed at different hours of the day.... In the morning this light is of luminous and transparent shining, which the curves of the vaults send back all along the hall. Victor Hugo (Le Rhin, ... Hachette, 1876, I. iii. pp. 123-131) describes this ... 'Le phénomène de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Genève n'y réussit pas moins bien que la Méditerranée.' During the afternoon the hall assumes a much deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the scene changes to the deep glow of fire ..."--Guide to the Castle of Chillon, by A. Naef, architect, 1896, pp, 35, 36.]
[7] {15}[Compare--
"One little marshy spark of flame."
_Def. Trans_., Part I. sc. I.
Kölbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the "will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (Manfred, act i. sc. I, line 195)--
"And the wisp on the morass,"
which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, Letters, 1900, iv. 204, note 2, et post p. 92, note 1).]
[8] [This "...is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the author of Guide, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's room."--Guide, etc., pp. 39-42. The inscription was in situ as early as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgcumbe points out (Notes and Queries, Series V. xi. 487).]
[d] {16}--pined in heart.--[Editions 1816-1837.]
[9] [Compare, for similarity of sound--
"Thou tree of covert and of rest
For this young Bird that is distrest."
_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,_ by W. Wordsworth,
_Works,_ 1889, p. 364.
Compare, too--
"She came into the cave, but it was merely
To see her bird reposing in his nest."
_Don Juan,_ Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]
[10] {17}[Compare--
"Those polar summers, _all_ sun, and some ice."
_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]
[11] {18} [Ruskin (Modern Painters, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9, "Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines 107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details; and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular!"]
[12] The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.
["Le château de Chillon ... est situé dans le lac sur un rocher qui forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder à plus de cent cinquante brasses qui font près de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le fond. On a creusé dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets. C'est-là que fut détenu six ans prisonnier François Bonnivard ... homme d'un mérite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermeté à toute épreuve, ami de la liberté, quoique Savoyard, et tolérant quoique prêtre," etc. (La Nouvelle Héloïse, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1); Oeuvres complètes, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).
With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Shelley, contained in a letter to Peacock, dated July 12, 1816 (Prose Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Shelley as well as Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says (Mémoires, etc., 1843, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of les souterrains] is now three metres higher than the level of the water, and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about two metres above the surface of the lake."--Guide, etc., pp. 28, 29.]
[13] {19}[The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps, prided himself on this feeble and irritating paronomasy; but nothing can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and sententious Bonivard of the legend.]
[14] [Compare--
"...I'm a forester and breather
Of the steep mountain-tops."
_Werner_, act iv. sc. 1.]
[e] But why withhold the blow?--he died. [MS.]
[f] {20}To break or bite----.--[MS.]
[15] [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (A fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters, 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p. 452).]
[16] [Compare--
"And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."
_Christabel_, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]
[17] [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his uncle, Jean-Aimé Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied that his father was "literally put to death."]
[18] {21}[Kölbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in Werner, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's The Times, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original--
"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i. sc. i, lines 76, 77.]
[19] [Compare--
"The first, last look of Death revealed."
_The Giaour_, line 89, note 2.
Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death," so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of Manfred in his paper Kunst and Alterthum, Letters, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.
"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (English Bards, etc., lines 680-686; Poetical Works, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]
[20] {22}[Compare--
"And yet I could not die."
_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 262.]
[21] {23}[Compare--
"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."
Dante's _Inferno_, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]
[22] {24}[Compare "Song by Glycine"--
"A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted;
And poised therein a bird so bold--
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.
_Zapolya_, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]
[23] [Compare--
"When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate."
_Ruth_, by W. Wordsworth, _Works_, 1889, p. 121.]
[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."--Note to Southey's Thalaba, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]
[25] {25}[Compare--
"I wandered lonely as a cloud."
_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]
[26] [Compare--
"Yet some did think that he had little business here."
_Ibid_., p. 183.
Compare, too, The Dream, line 166, vide post, p. 39--
"What business had they there at such a time?"]
[27] {26}[Compare--
"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew
'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."
Dryden, _Palamon and Arcite_, bk. i. lines 216, 217.
Compare, too--
"An exile----
Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."
_Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 131, 132.]
[28] [Compare--
"The harvest of a quiet eye."
_A Poet's Epitaph_, line 51, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]
[g]
_I saw them with their lake below,_
_And their three thousand years of snow_.--[MS.]
[29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy. The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]
[30] [Villeneuve.]
[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.
[32] {27}[Compare--
"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake,
And one green island."
_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]
[33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes--
"O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare,"
_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. lines 282, 283.
There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]
[34] {28}[Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea--From Prison"--
"Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."]
[h] Here follows in the MS.--
Nor stew I of my subjects one--
/ hath so little
What sovereign < > done?
\ yet so much hath /
POEMS OF
JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1816.
THE DREAM.
INTRODUCTION TO _THE DREAM_
The Dream, which was written at Diodati in July, 1816 (probably towards the end of the month; see letters to Murray and Rogers, dated July 22 and July 29), is a retrospect and an apology. It consists of an opening stanza, or section, on the psychology of dreams, followed by some episodes or dissolving views, which purport to be the successive stages of a dream. Stanzas ii. and iii. are descriptive of Annesley Park and Hall, and detail two incidents of Byron's boyish passion for his neighbour and distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth. The first scene takes place on the top of "Diadem Hill," the "cape" or rounded spur of the long ridge of Howatt Hill, which lies about half a mile to the south-east of the hall. The time is the late summer or early autumn of 1803. The "Sun of Love" has not yet declined, and the "one beloved face" is still shining on him; but he is beginning to realize that "her sighs are not for him," that she is out of his reach. The second scene, which belongs to the following year, 1804, is laid in the "antique oratory" (not, as Moore explains, another name for the hall, but "a small room built over the porch, or principal entrance of the hall, and looking into the courtyard"), and depicts the final parting. His doom has been pronounced, and his first impulse is to pen some passionate reproach, but his heart fails him at the sight of the "Lady of his Love," serene and smiling, and he bids her farewell with smiles on his lips, but grief unutterable in his heart.
Stanza iv. recalls an incident of his Eastern travels--a halt at noonday by a fountain on the route from Smyrna to Ephesus (March 14, 1810), "the heads of camels were seen peeping above the tall reeds" (see Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 59.).
The next episode (stanza v.) depicts an imaginary scene, suggested, perhaps, by some rumour or more definite assurance, and often present to his "inward eye"--the "one beloved," the mother of a happy family, but herself a forsaken and unhappy wife.
He passes on (stanza vi.) to his marriage in 1815, his bride "gentle" and "fair," but not the "one beloved,"--to the wedding day, when he stood before an altar, "like one forlorn," confused by the sudden vision of the past fulfilled with Love the "indestructible"!
In stanza vii. he records and analyzes the "sickness of the soul," the so-called "phrenzy" which had overtaken and changed the "Lady of his Love;" and, finally (stanza viii.), he lays bare the desolation of his heart, depicting himself as at enmity with mankind, but submissive to Nature, the "Spirit of the Universe," if, haply, there may be "reserved a blessing" even for him, the rejected and the outlaw.
Moore says (Life, p. 321) that The Dream cost its author "many a tear in writing"--being, indeed, the most mournful as well as picturesque "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of man. In his Real Lord Byron (i. 284) Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson maintains that The Dream "has no autobiographical value.... A dream it was, as false as dreams usually are." The character of the poet, as well as the poem itself, suggests another criticism. Byron suffered or enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had never happened or happened otherwise; if he had not "quivered" during the wedding service at Seaham; if a vision of Annesley and Mary Chaworth had not flashed into his soul,--he would have taken no pleasure in devising these incidents and details, and weaving them into a fictitious narrative. He took himself too seriously to invent and dwell lovingly on the acts and sufferings of an imaginary Byron. The Dream is "picturesque" because the accidents of the scenes are dealt with not historically, but artistically, are omitted or supplied according to poetical licence; but the record is neither false, nor imaginary, nor unusual. On the other hand, the composition and publication of the poem must be set down, if not to malice and revenge, at least to the preoccupancy of chagrin and remorse, which compelled him to take the world into his confidence, cost what it might to his own self-respect, or the peace of mind and happiness of others.
For an elaborate description of Annesley Hall and Park, written with a view to illustrate The Dream, see "A Byronian Ramble," Part II., the Athenæum, August 30, 1834. See, too, an interesting quotation from Sir Richard Phillips' unfinished Personal Tour through the United Kingdom, published in the Mirror, 1828, vol. xii. p. 286; Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, by Washington Irving, 1835, p. 191, seq.; The House and Grave of Byron, 1855; and an article in Lippincott's Magazine, 1876, vol. xviii. pp. 637, seq.
THE DREAM
I.
Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their developement have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of Joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being;[35] they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time, 10
And look like heralds of Eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak
Like Sibyls of the future; they have power--
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not--what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,[36]
The dread of vanished shadows--Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?--What are they?
Creations of the mind?--The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own 20
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.[37]
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep--for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.[38]
II.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, 30
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs;--the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing--the one on all that was beneath 40
Fair as herself--but the Boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young--yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The Maid was on the eve of Womanhood;
The Boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one belovéd face on earth,
And that was shining on him: he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away; 50
He had no breath, no being, but in hers;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,[i][39]
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects:--he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,[40]
Which terminated all: upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,[41]
And his cheek change tempestuously--his heart 60
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother--but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.[42]--It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not--and why?
Time taught him a deep answer--when she loved 70
Another: even _now_ she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed[43]
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
III.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;--he was alone,[44]
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon 80
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion--then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet 90
She knew she was by him beloved--she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge,[45] that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, 100
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.[46]
IV.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea 110
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man 120
Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.[47]
V.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better:--in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy, 130
Daughters and sons of Beauty,--but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.[48]
What could her grief be?--she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, 140
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind--a spectre of the past.
VI.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand
Before an Altar--with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight[49] of his Boyhood;--as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock[50] 150
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then--
As in that hour--a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced,--and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been--
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, 160
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light:
What business had they there at such a time?
VII.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love;--Oh! she was changed
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes 170
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The Queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms, impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight, familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness--and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth? 180
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real![j][51]
VIII.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until, 190
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,[52]
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains:[53] with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe[54]
He held his dialogues; and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed[55] 200
A marvel and a secret--Be it so.
IX.
My dream was past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality--the one
To end in madness--both in misery.
July, 1816.
[First published, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]
DARKNESS.[k][56]
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones, 10
The palaces of crownéd kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the World contained;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks 20
Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past World; and then again 30
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:--a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 40
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was Death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them,[57] or the dropping dead 50
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up, 60
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld[58]
Each other's aspects--saw, and shrieked, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump, 70
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air, 80
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.
Diodati, _July_, 1816.
[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]
CHURCHILL'S GRAVE,[59]
A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.[60]
I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The Comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked,
Through the thick deaths of half a century; 10
And thus he answered--"Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought,--and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave
I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless? As I said,[61]
The Architect of all on which we tread, 20
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought,
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;--as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,[62]
Thus spoke he,--"I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected[63] tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way 30
To pay him honour,--and myself whate'er
Your honour pleases:"--then most pleased I shook[l]
From out my pocket's avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently:--Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I--for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a softened eye, 40
On that old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame,--
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.
Diodati, 1816.
[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]
PROMETHEUS.[64]
I.
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?[65]
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe, 10
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
II.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,[66]
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate, 20
Which for its pleasure doth create[67]
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:[68]
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,[69]
But would not to appease him tell; 30
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
III.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,[70]
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy, 40
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,[71]
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny; 50
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--an equal to all woes--[m][72]
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concentered recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
Diodati, _July_, 1816.
[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]
A FRAGMENT.[73]
Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of withered flowers,
But bid it flow as now--until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.
* * * * *
What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision--what I see
Of all which lives alone is Life to me, 10
And being so--the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead--for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided--equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea; 20
It may be both--but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.
The under-earth inhabitants--are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?
Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?--darkened and intense 30
As Midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth!
Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors--and we
But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the Grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold[74]
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more. 40
* * * * *
Diodati, _July_, 1816.
[First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 36.]
SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.
Rousseau--Voltaire--our Gibbon--and De Staël--
Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by _thee_
How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,
In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,[76]
The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the Heirs of Immortality
Is proud, and makes the breath of Glory real!
Diodati, _July_, 1816.
[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]
STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.[n][77]
I.
Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,[o]
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy Soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the Love which my Spirit hath painted[p]
It never hath found but in _Thee_.
II.
Then when Nature around me is smiling,[78]
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,[q]
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,[r]
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from _Thee._
III.
Though the rock of my last Hope is shivered,[s]
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To Pain--it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
'Tis of _Thee_ that I think--not of them.[t]
IV.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;[u][79]
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.[v]
V.
Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my Soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:[80]
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,[w]
It could not deprive me of _Thee_.
VI.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,[x]
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the Desert a fountain is springing,[y][81]
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of _Thee_.[82]
_July_ 24, 1816.
[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]
EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.[83]
I.
My Sister! my sweet Sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same--
A loved regret which I would not resign.[z]
There yet are two things in my destiny,--
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.[84]
II.
The first were nothing--had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,[aa]
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past[ab]
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's[85] fate of yore,--
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.
III.
If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlooked or unforeseen,
I have sustained my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;[ac]
I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.
IV.
Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marred
The gift,--a fate, or will, that walked astray;[86]
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.
V.
Kingdoms and Empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have rolled
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something--I know not what--does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;--not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase Pain.
VI.
Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me--or, perhaps, a cold despair
Brought on when ills habitually recur,--
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,
(For even to this may change of soul refer,[ad]
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.[ae]
VII.
I feel almost at times as I have felt
In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
Which do remember me of where I dwelt,
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,[af]
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love--but none like thee.[ag]
VIII.
Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation;--to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
Here to be lonely is not desolate,[87]
For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a Lake I can behold
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.[88]
IX.
Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow
The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may show;--
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
And the tide rising in my altered eye.[ah]
X.
I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,
By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
_Leman's_ is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make,
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
Resigned for ever, or divided far.
XI.
The world is all before me; I but ask
Of Nature that with which she will comply--
It is but in her Summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.
She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister--till I look again on thee.
XII.
I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not;--for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun--[89]
The earliest--even the only paths for me--[ai]
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be;
The Passions which have torn me would have slept;
_I_ had not suffered, and _thou_ hadst not wept.
XIII.
With false Ambition what had I to do?
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make--a Name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over--I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.
XIV.
And for the future, this world's future may[aj]
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day;[ak]
Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have filled a century,[90]
Before its fourth in time had passed me by.
XV.
And for the remnant which may be to come[al]
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless,--for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, Happiness at times would steal,
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings farther.--Nor shall I conceal
That with all this I still can look around,
And worship Nature with a thought profound.
XVI.
For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are--I am, even as thou art--[am]
Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
It is the same, together or apart,
From Life's commencement to its slow decline
We are entwined--let Death come slow or fast,[an]
The tie which bound the first endures the last!
[First published, _Letters and Journals,_ 1830, ii. 38-41.]
LINES ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.[91]
And thou wert sad--yet I was not with thee;
And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near;
Methought that Joy and Health alone could be
Where I was _not_--and pain and sorrow here!
And is it thus?--it is as I foretold,
And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
While Heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost, except a little life.
I am too well avenged!--but 'twas my right;
Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
To be the Nemesis who should requite--[92]
Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
Mercy is for the merciful!--if thou
Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now.
Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep:--[93]
Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shall feel
A hollow agony which will not heal,
For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;
Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
The bitter harvest in a woe as real!
I have had many foes, but none like thee;
For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
But thou in safe implacability
Hadst nought to dread--in thy own weakness shielded,
And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare;
And thus upon the world--trust in thy truth,
And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth--
On things that were not, and on things that are--
Even upon such a basis hast thou built
A monument, whose cement hath been guilt!
The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,[94]
And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
Fame, peace, and hope--and all the better life
Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
And found a nobler duty than to part.
But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger, and for future gold--
And buying others' grief at any price.[95]
And thus once entered into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,[96]
Did not still walk beside thee--but at times,
And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments incompatible,
Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
In Janus-spirits--the significant eye
Which learns to lie with silence--the pretext[97]
Of prudence, with advantages annexed--
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end--
All found a place in thy philosophy.
The means were worthy, and the end is won--
I would not do by thee as thou hast done!
September, 1816.
[First published, New Monthly Magazine, August, 1832, vol. xxxv. pp. 142, 143.]
FOOTNOTES:
[35] {33}[Compare--
"Come, blessed barrier between day and day."
[36] [Compare--
"...the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day."
_The Pains of Sleep_, lines 33, 34, by S. T. Coleridge,
_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 170.]
[37] {34}[Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza vi. lines 1-4, note, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 219.]
[38] [Compare--
"With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour."
_Cain_, act i. sc. 1]
[i] {35}
----_she was his sight,_
_For never did he turn his glance until_
_Her own had led by gazing on an object._--[MS.]
[39] {35}[Compare--
"Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me."
_To Anthea, etc._, by Robert Herrick.]
[40] [Compare--
"...the river of your love,
Must in the ocean of your affection
To me, be swallowed up."
Massinger's _Unnatural Combat_, act iii. sc. 4.]
[41] [Compare--
"The hot blood ebbed and flowed again."
_Parisina_, line 226, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 515.]
[42] ["Annesley Lordship is owned by Miss Chaworth, a minor heiress of the Chaworth family."--Throsby's Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire, 1797, ii. 270.]
[43] ["Moore, commenting on this (Life, p. 28), tells us that the image of the lover's steed was suggested by the Nottingham race-ground ... nine miles off, and ... lying in a hollow, and totally hidden from view.... Mary Chaworth, in fact, was looking for her lover's steed along the road as it winds up the common from Hucknall."-"A Byronian Ramble," Athenæum, No. 357, August 30, 1834.]
[44] {36}[Moore (Life, p. 28) regards "the antique oratory," as a poetical equivalent for Annesley Hall; but vide ante, the Introduction to The Dream, p. 31.]
[45] [Compare--
"Love by the object loved is soon discerned."
_Story of Rimini_, by Leigh Hunt, Canto III. ed. 1844, p. 22.
The line does not occur in the first edition, published early in 1816, or, presumably, in the MS. read by Byron in the preceding year. (See Letter to Murray, November 4, 1815.)]
[46] {37}[Byron once again revisited Annesley Hall in the autumn of 1808 (see his lines, "Well, thou art happy," and "To a Lady," etc., Poetical Works, 1898, i. 277, 282, note 1); but it is possible that he avoided the "massy gate" ("arched over and surmounted by a clock and cupola") of set purpose, and entered by another way. He would not lightly or gladly have taken a liberty with the actual prosaic facts in a matter which so nearly concerned his personal emotions (vide ante, the Introduction to The Dream, p. 31).]
[47] ["This is true keeping--an Eastern picture perfect in its foreground, and distance, and sky, and no part of which is so dwelt upon or laboured as to obscure the principal figure."--Sir Walter Scott, Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. "Byron's Dream" is the subject of a well-known picture by Sir Charles Eastlake.]
[48] {38}[Compare--
"Then Cythna turned to me and from her eyes
Which swam with unshed tears," etc.
Shelly's _Revolt of Islam_ ("Laon and Cythna"),
Canto XII. stanza xxii. lines 2, 3, _Poetical Works_, 1829, p. 48.]
[49] [An old servant of the Chaworth family, Mary Marsden, told Washington Irving (Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, 1835, p. 204) that Byron used to call Mary Chaworth "his bright morning star of Annesley." Compare the well-known lines--
"She was a form of Life and Light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye,
The Morning-star of Memory!"
_The Giaour_, lines 1127-1130, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 136, 137.]
[50] ["This touching picture agrees closely, in many of its circumstances, with Lord Byron's own prose account of the wedding in his Memoranda; in which he describes himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down--he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes--his thoughts were elsewhere: and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders to find that he was--married."--Life, p. 272.
Medwin, too, makes Byron say (Conversations, etc., 1824, p. 46) that he "trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her (the bride) Miss Milbanke." All that can be said of Moore's recollection of the "memoranda," or Medwin's repetition of so-called conversations (reprinted almost verbatim in Life, Writings, Opinions, etc., 1825, ii. 227, seq., as "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Manuscript," etc.), is that they tend to show that Byron meant The Dream to be taken literally as a record of actual events. He would not have forgotten by July, 1816, circumstances of great import which had taken place in December, 1815: and he's either lying of malice prepense or telling "an ower true tale."]
[j] {40}
----_the glance_
_Of melancholy is a fearful gift;_
_For it becomes the telescope of truth,_
_And shows us all things naked as they are_.--[MS.]
[51] [Compare--
"Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such."
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxiii. lines 1-5,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 420.]
[52] Mithridates of Pontus. [Mithridates, King of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), surnamed Eupator, succeeded to the throne when he was only eleven years of age. He is said to have safeguarded himself against the designs of his enemies by drugging himself with antidotes against poison, and so effectively that, when he was an old man, he could not poison himself, even when he was minded to do so--"ut ne volens quidem senex veneno mori potuerit."--Justinus, Hist., lib. xxxvii. cap. ii.
According to Medwin (Conversations, p. 148), Byron made use of the same illustration in speaking of Polidori's death (April, 1821), which was probably occasioned by "poison administered to himself" (see Letters, 1899, iii. 285).]
[53] {41}[Compare--
"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends."
_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xiii. line 1.
"...and to me
High mountains are a feeling."
_Ibid._, stanza lxxii. lines 2,3, _Poetical Works_, 1899,
ii. 223, 261.]
[54] [Compare--
"Ye Spirits of the unbounded Universe!"
_Manfred_, act i. sc. 1, line 29, _vide post_, p. 86.]
[55] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 2, lines 79-91; and ibid., act iii. sc. 1, lines 34-39; and sc. 4, lines 112-117, vide post, pp. 105, 121, 135.]
[k] {42}In the original MS. A Dream.
[56] [Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review, October, 1816, vol. xvi. p. 204) did not take kindly to Darkness. He regarded the "framing of such phantasms" as "a dangerous employment for the exalted and teeming imagination of such a poet as Lord Byron. The waste of boundless space into which they lead the poet, the neglect of precision which such themes may render habitual, make them in respect to poetry what mysticism is to religion." Poetry of this kind, which recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge," was a novel and untoward experiment on the part of an author whose "peculiar art" it was "to show the reader where his purpose tends." The resemblance to Coleridge is general rather than particular. It is improbable that Scott had ever read Limbo (first published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817), an attempt to depict the "mere horror of blank nought-at-all;" but it is possible that he had in his mind the following lines (384-390) from Religious Musings, in which "the final destruction is impersonated" (see Coleridge's note) in the "red-eyed Fiend:"--
"For who of woman born may paint the hour,
When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane,
Making the noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans
In feverous slumbers?"
_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 60.
Another and a less easily detected source of inspiration has been traced (see an article on Campbell's Last Man, in the London Magazine and Review, 1825, New Series, i. 588, seq.) to a forgotten but once popular novel entitled The Last Man, or Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in Futurity (two vols. 1806). Kölbing (Prisoner of Chillon, etc., pp. 136-140) adduces numerous quotations in support of this contention. The following may serve as samples: "As soon as the earth had lost with the moon her guardian star, her decay became more rapid.... Some, in their madness, destroyed the instruments of husbandry, others in deep despair summoned death to their relief. Men began to look on each other with eyes of enmity" (i. 105). "The sun exhibited signs of decay, its surface turned pale, and its beams were frigid. The northern nations dreaded perishing by intense cold ... and fled to the torrid zone to court the sun's beneficial rays" (i. 120). "The reign of Time was over, ages of Eternity were going to begin; but at the same moment Hell shrieked with rage, and the sun and stars were extinguished. The gloomy night of chaos enveloped the world, plaintive sounds issued from mountains, rocks, and caverns,--Nature wept, and a doleful voice was heard exclaiming in the air, 'The human race is no more!'"(ii. 197).
It is difficult to believe that Byron had not read, and more or less consciously turned to account, the imagery of this novel; but it is needless to add that any charge of plagiarism falls to the ground. Thanks to a sensitive and appreciative ear and a retentive memory, Byron's verse is interfused with manifold strains, but, so far as Darkness is concerned, his debt to Coleridge or the author of Omegarus and Syderia is neither more nor less legitimate than the debt to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel, which a writer in the Imperial Magazine (1828, x. 699), with solemn upbraidings, lays to his charge.
The duty of acknowledging such debts is, indeed, "a duty of imperfect obligation." The well-known lines in Tennyson's Locksley Hall--
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue!"
is surely an echo of an earlier prophecy from the pen of the author of Omegarus and Syderia: "In the center the heavens were seen darkened by legions of armed vessels, making war on each other!... The soldiers fell in frightful numbers.... Their blood stained the soft verdure of the trees, and their scattered bleeding limbs covered the fields and the roofs of the labourers' cottages" (i. 68). But such "conveyings" are honourable to the purloiner. See, too, the story of the battle between the Vulture-cavalry and the Sky-gnats, in Lucian's Veræ Historiæ, i. 16.]
[57] {44}
["If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee."
_Macbeth_, act V. sc. 5, lines 38-40.
Fruit is said to be "clung" when the skin shrivels, and a corpse when the face becomes wasted and gaunt.]
[58] {45}[So, too, Vathek and Nouronihar, in the Hall of Eblis, waited "in direful suspense the moment which should render them to each other ... objects of terror."--Vathek, by W. Beckford, 1887, p. 185.]
[59] [Charles Churchill was born in February, 1731, and died at Boulogne, November 4, 1764. The body was brought to Dover and buried in the churchyard attached to the demolished church of St. Martin-le-Grand ("a small deserted cemetery in an obscure lane behind [i.e. above] the market"). See note by Charles De la Pryme, Notes and Queries, 1854, Series I. vol. x. p. 378. There is a tablet to his memory on the south wall of St. Mary's Church, and the present headstone in the graveyard (it was a "plain headstone" in 1816) bears the following inscription:--
"1764.
Here lie the remains of the celebrated
C. Churchill.
'Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies.'"
Churchill had been one of Byron's earlier models, and the following lines from The Candidate, which suggested the epitaph (lines 145-154), were, doubtless, familiar to him:--
"Let one poor sprig of Bay around my head
Bloom whilst I live, and point me out when dead;
Let it (may Heav'n indulgent grant that prayer)
Be planted on my grave, nor wither there;
And when, on travel bound, some rhyming guest
Roams through the churchyard, whilst his dinner's drest,
Let it hold up this comment to his eyes;
Life to the last enjoy'd, _here_ Churchill lies;
Whilst (O, what joy that pleasing flatt'ry gives)
Reading my Works he cries--_here_ Churchill lives."
Byron spent Sunday, April 25, 1816, at Dover. He was to sail that night for Ostend, and, to while away the time, "turned to Pilgrim" and thought out, perhaps began to write, the lines which were finished three months later at the Campagne Diodati.
"The Grave of Churchill," writes Scott (Quarterly Review, October, 1816), "might have called from Lord Byron a deeper commemoration; for, though they generally differed in character and genius, there was a resemblance between their history and character.... both these poets held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness."
Save for the affectation of a style which did not belong to him, and which in his heart he despised, Byron's commemoration of Churchill does not lack depth or seriousness. It was the parallel between their lives and temperaments which awoke reflection and sympathy, and prompted this "natural homily." Perhaps, too, the shadow of impending exile had suggested to his imagination that further parallel which Scott deprecated, and deprecated in vain, "death in the flower of his age, and in a foreign land."]
[60] {46}[On the sheet containing the original draft of these lines Lord Byron has written, "The following poem (as most that I have endeavoured to write) is founded on a fact; and this detail is an attempt at a serious imitation of the style of a great poet--its beauties and its defects: I say the style; for the thoughts I claim as my own. In this, if there be anything ridiculous, let it be attributed to me, at least as much as to Mr. Wordsworth: of whom there can exist few greater admirers than myself. I have blended what I would deem to be the beauties as well as defects of his style; and it ought to be remembered, that, in such things, whether there be praise or dispraise, there is always what is called a compliment, however unintentional." There is, as Scott points out, a much closer resemblance to Southey's "English Eclogues, in which moral truths are expressed, to use the poet's own language, 'in an almost colloquial plainness of language,' and an air of quaint and original expression assumed, to render the sentiment at once impressive and piquant."]
[61] {47}[Compare--
"The under-earth inhabitants--are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?"
_A Fragment_, lines 23, 24, _vide post_, p. 52.
It is difficult to "extricate" the meaning of lines 19-25, but, perhaps, they are intended to convey a hope of immortality. "As I was speaking, the sexton (the architect) tried to answer my question by taxing his memory with regard to the occupants of the several tombs. He might well be puzzled, for 'Earth is but a tombstone,' covering an amalgam of dead bodies, and, unless in another life soul were separated from soul, as on earth body is distinct from body, Newton himself, who disclosed 'the turnpike-road through the unpaved stars' (Don Juan, Canto X. stanza ii. line 4), would fail to assign its proper personality to any given lump of clay."]
[62] {48}[Compare--
"But here [i.e. in 'the realm of death'] all is
So shadowy and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past."
_Cain_, act ii. sc. 2.
[63] ["Selected," that is, by "frequent travellers" (vide supra, line 12).]
[l]
----_then most pleased, I shook_
_My inmost pocket's most retired nook,_
_And out fell five and sixpence_.--[MS.]
[64] [Byron was a lover and worshipper of Prometheus as a boy. His first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase of a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus, line 528, sq. (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 14). Referring to a criticism on Manfred (Edinburgh Review, vol xxviii. p. 431) he writes (October 12, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 174): "The Prometheus, if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its influence over all or any thing that I have written." The conception of an immortal sufferer at once beneficent and defiant, appealed alike to his passions and his convictions, and awoke a peculiar enthusiasm. His poems abound with allusions to the hero and the legend. Compare the first draft of stanza xvi. of the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 312, var. ii.); The Prophecy of Dante, iv. 10, seq.; the Irish Avatar, stanza xii. line 2, etc.]
[65] {49}[Compare--
Τοιαῦτ' ἐπηύρου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου τρόπου
_P. V._, line 28.
Compare, too--
Θνητὸυς δ' ἐν οἴ.κtῳ προθέμενος, τούτου τυχεῖν
Οὐκ ἠξιώθην αὐτὸς
Ibid., lines 241, 242.]
[66] [Compare--
Διὸς γὰρ δυσπαραίτητοι φρένες.
Ibid., line 34.
Compare, too--
...γιγνώσκονθ' ὅτι
Τὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐστ' ἀδήριτον σθένος
Ibid., line 105.]
[67] {50}[Compare--
"The maker--call him
Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy."
_Cain_, act i. sc. 1.
Compare, too--
"And the Omnipotent, who makes and crushes."
_Heaven and Earth_, Part I. sc. 3.]
[68] [Compare--
Ὄτῳ θανεῖν μέν ἐστιν οὐ πεπρωμένον
_P. V._, line 754.]
[69][Compare--
...πάντα προὐξεπίσταμαι
Σκεθρῶς τά μέλλοντα
Ibid., lines 101, 102.]
[70] [Compare--
Θνητοῖς δ' ἀήγων αὐτὸς εὑρόμην πόνους.
Ibid., line 269.]
[71] {51}[Compare--
"But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity."
_Manfred_, act i. sc. 2, lines 39, 40, _vide post_, p. 95.]
[m] ----and equal to all woes.--[Editions 1832, etc.]
[72] [The edition of 1832 and subsequent issues read "and equal." It is clear that the earlier reading, "an equal," is correct. The spirit opposed by the spirit is an equal, etc. The spirit can also oppose to "its own funereal destiny" a firm will, etc.]
[73] [A Fragment, which remained unpublished till 1830, was written at the same time as Churchill's Grave (July, 1816), and is closely allied to it in purport and in sentiment. It is a questioning of Death! O Death, what is thy sting? There is an analogy between exile end death. As Churchill lay in his forgotten grave at Dover, one of "many millions decomposed to clay," so he the absent is dead to the absent, and the absent are dead to him. And what are the dead? the aggregate of nothingness? or are they a multitude of atoms having neither part nor lot one with the other? There is no solution but in the grave. Death alone can unriddle death. The poet's questioning spirit would plunge into the abyss to bring back the answer.]
[74] {52}[Compare--
"'Tis said thou holdest converse with the things
Which are forbidden to the search of man;
That with the dwellers of the dark abodes,
The many evil and unheavenly spirits
Which walk the valley of the Shade of Death,
Thou communest."
_Manfred_, act iii. sc. 1, lines 34, seq., _vide post_, p. 121.]
[75] {53}Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne. [For Rousseau, see Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 277, note 1, 300, 301, note 18; for Voltaire and Gibbon, vide ibid., pp. 306, 307, note 22; and for De Staël, see Letters, 1898, ii. 223, note 1. Byron, writing to Moore, January 2, 1821, declares, on the authority of Monk Lewis, "who was too great a bore ever to lie," that Madame de Staël alleged this sonnet, "in which she was named with Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.," as a reason for changing her opinion about him--"she could not help it through decency" (Letters, 1901, v. 213). It is difficult to believe that Madame de Staël was ashamed of her companions, or was sincere in disclaiming the compliment, though, as might have been expected, the sonnet excited some disapprobation in England. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine (February, 1818, vol. 88, p. 122) relieved his feelings by a "Retort Addressed to the Thames"--
"Restor'd to my dear native Thames' bank,
My soul disgusted spurns a Byron's lay,--
* * * * *
Leman may idly boast her Staël, Rousseau,
Gibbon, Voltaire, whom Truth and Justice shun--
* * * * *
Whilst meekly shines midst Fulham's bowers the sun
O'er Sherlock's and o'er Porteus' honour'd graves,
Where Thames Britannia's choicest meads exulting laves."]
[76] [Compare--
"Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face."
_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxviii. line 1,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 257.]
[n] {54}Stanzas To----.--[Editions 1816-1830.]
"Though the Day."--[MS. in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting.]
[77] [The "Stanzas to Augusta" were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva. "Be careful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, 'Though the day of my Destiny's,' etc., which I think well of as a composition."--Letter to Murray, October 5, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 371.]
[o]
_Though the days of my Glory are over,_
_And the Sun of my fame has declined._--[Dillon MS.]
[p] ----had painted.--[MS.]
[78] [Compare--
"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still!...
To me by day or night she ever smiled."
_Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxxvii. lines 1, 7,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 122.]
[q] I will not----.--[MS. erased.]
[r] {55}As the breasts I reposed in with me.--[MS.]
[s]
_Though the rock of my young hope is shivered,_
_And its fragments lie sunk in the wave._--[MS. erased.]
[t]
_There is many a pang to pursue me,_
_And many a peril to stem;_
_They may torture, but shall not subdue me;_
_They may crush, but they shall not contemn._--[MS. erased.]
_And I think not of thee but of them._--[MS. erased.]
[u] Though tempted----.--[MS.]
[79] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanzas liii., lv., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 247, 248, note 1.]
[v]
_Though watchful, 'twas but to reclaim me,_
_Nor, silent, to sanction a lie._--[MS.]
[80] {56}[Compare--
"Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be."
_Epistle to Augusta_, stanza xii. lines 5, 6, _vide post_, p. 61.
Compare, too--
"But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man."
_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xii. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 223.]
[w]
_And more than I then could foresee._
_I have met but the fate that hath crost me._--[MS.]
[x] In the wreck of the past--[MS.]
[y]
_In the Desert there still are sweet waters,_
_In the wild waste a sheltering tree._--[MS.]
[81] [Byron often made use of this illustration. Compare--
"My Peri! ever welcome here!
Sweet, as the desert fountain's wave."
_The Bride of Abydos_, Canto I. lines 151, 152,
_Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 163.]
[82] [For Hobhouse's parody of these stanzas, see Letters, 1900, iv. 73,74.]
[83] {57}[These stanzas--"than which," says the Quarterly Review for January, 1831, "there is nothing, perhaps, more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry," were also written at Diodati, and sent home to be published, if Mrs. Leigh should consent. She decided against publication, and the "Epistle" was not printed till 1830. Her first impulse was to withhold her consent to the publication of the "Stanzas to Augusta," as well as the "Epistle," and to say, "Whatever is addressed to me do not publish," but on second thoughts she decided that "the least objectionable line will be to let them be published."--See her letters to Murray, November 1, 8, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 366, note 1.]
[z]
_Go where thou wilt thou art to me the same_--
_A loud regret which I would not resign_.--[MS.]
[84] [Compare--
"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister!"
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxvii. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 456.]
[aa] But other cares----.--[MS.]
[ab] A strange doom hath been ours, but that is past.--[MS.]
[85] ["Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather Jack' [or 'Hardy Byron'].
"'But, though it were tempest-toss'd,
Still his bark could not be lost.'
He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's voyage), and many years after circumnavigated the world, as commander of a similar expedition" (Moore). Admiral the Hon. John Byron (1723-1786), next brother to William, fifth Lord Byron, published his Narrative of his shipwreck in the Wager in 1768, and his Voyage round the World in the Dolphin, in 1767 (Letters, 1898, i. 3).]
[ac] {58}
_I am not yet o'erwhelmed that I shall ever lean_
_A thought upon such Hope as daily mocks_.--[MS. erased.]
[86] [For Byron's belief in predestination, compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. line 9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 74, note 1.]
[ad] {59}For to all such may change of soul refer.--[MS.]
[ae]
_Have hardened me to this--but I can see_
_Things which I still can love--but none like thee_.--[MS. erased.]
[af]
{Before I had to study far more useless books.--[MS. erased,] {Ere my young mind was fettered down to books.
[ag] Some living things-----.--[MS.]
[87] [Compare--
"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, when we are _least_ alone."
_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xc. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 272]
[88] {60}[For a description of the lake at Newstead, see Don Juan, Canto XIII. stanza lvii.]
[ah] And think of such things with a childish eye.--[MS.]
[89] {61}[Compare--
"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."
_The Island_, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.
His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.
Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for association to consecrate the vision (Life, p. 8).]
[ai]
_The earliest were the only paths for me._
_The earliest were the paths and meant for me._--[MS. erased.]
[aj]
_Yet could I but expunge from out the book_
_Of my existence all that was entwined._--[MS. erased.]
[ak]
_My life has been too long--if in a day_
_I have survived_----.--[MS. erased.]
[90] {62}[Byron often insists on this compression of life into a yet briefer span than even mortality allows. Compare--
"He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life," etc.
_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 218, note 1.
Compare, too--
"My life is not dated by years--
There are moments which act as a plough," etc.
_Lines to the Countess of Blessington_, stanza 4.]
[al] And for the remnants----.--[MS.]
[am] Whate'er betide----.--[MS.]
[an] We have been and we shall be----.--[MS. erased.]
[91] {63}["These verses," says John Wright (ed. 1832, x. 207), "of which the opening lines (1-6) are given in Moore's Notices, etc. (1830, ii. 36), were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation ... [i.e. the intervention] of Madame de Staël, who had persuaded Byron 'to write a letter to a friend in England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady Byron' (Life, p. 321), but were not intended for the public eye." The verses were written in September, and it is evident that since the composition of The Dream in July, another "change had come over" his spirit, and that the mild and courteous depreciation of his wife as "a gentle bride," etc., had given place to passionate reproach and bitter reviling. The failure of Madame de Staël's negotiations must have been to some extent anticipated, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was a rumour or report of the "one serious calumny" of Shelley's letter of September 29, 1816, which provoked him to fury, and drove him into the open maledictions of The Incantation (published together with the Prisoner of Chillon, but afterwards incorporated with Manfred, act i. sc. 1, vide post, p. 91), and the suppressed "lines," written, so he told Lady Blessington (Conversations, etc., 1834, p. 79) "on reading in a newspaper" that Lady Byron had been ill.]
[92] [Compare--
" ... that unnatural retribution--just,
Had it but been from hands less near."
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxxii. lines 6, 7,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 427.]
[93] {64}[Compare--
"Though thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy Spirit shall not sleep.
* * * * *
Nor to slumber nor to die,
Shall be in thy destiny."
_The Incantation_, lines 201, 202, 254, 255, _Manfred_,
act i. sc. 1, _vide post_, pp. 92, 93.]
[94] [Compare "I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public imagination, more particularly since my moral ... [Clytemnestra?] clove down my fame" (Letter to Moore, March 10, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 72). The same expression, "my moral Clytemnestra," is applied to his wife in a letter to Lord Blessington, dated April 6, 1823. It may be noted that it was in April, 1823, that Byron presented a copy of the "Lines," etc., to Lady Blessington (Conversations, etc., 1834, p. 79).]
[95] {65}[Compare--
"By thy delight in others' pain."
_Manfred_, act i. sc. i, line 248, _vide post_, p. 93.]
[96] [Compare--
" ... but that high Soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear."
_A Sketch_, lines 18, 19, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 541.]
[97] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cxxxvi. lines 6-9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 430.]
MONODY ON THE DEATH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.
INTRODUCTION TO MONODY ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.
When Moore was engaged on the Life of Sheridan, Byron gave him some advice. "Never mind," he says, "the angry lies of the humbug Whigs. Recollect that he was an Irishman and a clever fellow, and that we have had some very pleasant days with him. Don't forget that he was at school at Harrow, where, in my time, we used to show his name--R. B. Sheridan, 1765--as an honour to the walls. Depend upon it that there were worse folks going, of that gang, than ever Sheridan was" (Letter to Moore, September 19, 1818, Letters, 1900, iv. 261).
It does not appear that Byron had any acquaintance with Sheridan when he wrote the one unrejected Address which was spoken at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, October 10, 1812, but that he met him for the first time at a dinner which Rogers gave to Byron and Moore, on or before June 1, 1813. Thenceforward, as long as he remained in England (see his letter to Rogers, April 16, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii 281, note 1), he was often in his company, "sitting late, drinking late," not, of course, on terms of equality and friendship (for Sheridan was past sixty, and Byron more than thirty years younger), but of the closest and pleasantest intimacy. To judge from the tone of the letter to Moore (vide supra) and of numerous entries in his diaries, during Sheridan's life and after his death, he was at pains not to pass judgment on a man whom he greatly admired and sincerely pitied, and whom he felt that he had no right to despise. Body and soul, Byron was of different stuff from Sheridan, and if he "had lived to his age," he would have passed over "the red-hot ploughshares" of life and conduct, not unscathed, but stoutly and unconsumed. So much easier is it to live down character than to live through temperament.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (born October 30, 1751) died July 7, 1816. The Monody was written at the Campagne Diodati, on July 17, at the request of Douglas Kinnaird. "I did as well as I could," says Byron; "but where I have not my choice I pretend to answer for nothing" (Letter to Murray, September 29, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 366). He told Lady Blessington, however, that his "feelings were never more excited than while writing it, and that every word came direct from the heart" (Conversations, etc., p. 241).
The MS., in the handwriting of Claire, is headed, "Written at the request of D. Kinnaird, Esq., Monody on R. B. Sheridan. Intended to be spoken at Dy. L^e.^ T. Diodati, Lake of Geneva, July 18^th^, 1816. Byron."
The first edition was entitled Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable R.B. Sheridan. Written at the request of a Friend. To be spoken at Drury Lane Theatre, London. Printed for John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1816.
It was spoken by Mrs. Davison at Drury Lane Theatre, September 7, and published September 9, 1816.
When the Monody arrived at Diodati Byron fell foul of the title-page: "'The request of a Friend:'--
'Obliged by Hunger and request of friends.'
"I will request you to expunge that same, unless you please to add, 'by a person of quality, or of wit and honour about town.' Merely say, 'written to be spoken at D[rury] L[ane]'" (Letter to Murray, September 30, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 367). The first edition had been issued, and no alteration could be made, but the title-page of a "New Edition," 1817, reads, "Monody, etc. Spoken at Drury Lane Theatre. By Lord Byron."]
MONODY ON THE DEATH
OF THE
RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN,
SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE, LONDON.
When the last sunshine of expiring Day
In Summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While Nature makes that melancholy pause--
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime--
Who hath not shared that calm, so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep, 10
A holy concord, and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set?[98]
'Tis not harsh sorrow, but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness--but full and clear,
A sweet dejection--a transparent tear,
Unmixed with worldly grief or selfish stain--
Shed without shame, and secret without pain.
Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When Summer's day declines along the hills, 20
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes
When all of Genius which can perish dies.
A mighty Spirit is eclipsed--a Power
Hath passed from day to darkness--to whose hour
Of light no likeness is bequeathed--no name,
Focus at once of all the rays of Fame!
The flash of Wit--the bright Intelligence,
The beam of Song--the blaze of Eloquence,
Set with their Sun, but still have left behind
The enduring produce of immortal Mind; 30
Fruits of a genial morn, and glorious noon,
A deathless part of him who died too soon.
But small that portion of the wondrous whole,
These sparkling segments of that circling Soul,
Which all embraced, and lightened over all,
To cheer--to pierce--to please--or to appal.
From the charmed council to the festive board,
Of human feelings the unbounded lord;
In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied,
The praised--the proud--who made his praise their pride. 40
When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan
Arose to Heaven in her appeal from Man,
His was the thunder--his the avenging rod,
The wrath--the delegated voice of God!
Which shook the nations through his lips, and blazed
Till vanquished senates trembled as they praised.[99]
And here, oh! here, where yet all young and warm,
The gay creations of his spirit charm,[100]
The matchless dialogue--the deathless wit,
Which knew not what it was to intermit; 50
The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring;
These wondrous beings of his fancy, wrought
To fulness by the fiat of his thought,
Here in their first abode you still may meet,
Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat;
A Halo of the light of other days,
Which still the splendour of its orb betrays.
But should there be to whom the fatal blight
Of failing Wisdom yields a base delight, 60
Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone
Jar in the music which was born their own,
Still let them pause--ah! little do they know
That what to them seemed Vice might be but Woe.
Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fixed for ever to detract or praise;
Repose denies her requiem to his name,
And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
The secret Enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel--accuser--judge--and spy. 70
The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain,
The envious who but breathe in other's pain--
Behold the host! delighting to deprave,
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave,
Watch every fault that daring Genius owes
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie,
And pile the Pyramid of Calumny!
These are his portion--but if joined to these
Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease, 80
If the high Spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,[101]
To soothe Indignity--and face to face
Meet sordid Rage, and wrestle with Disgrace,
To find in Hope but the renewed caress,
The serpent-fold of further Faithlessness:--
If such may be the Ills which men assail,
What marvel if at last the mightiest fail?
Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given
Bear hearts electric-charged with fire from Heaven, 90
Black with the rude collision, inly torn,
By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne,
Driven o'er the lowering atmosphere that nurst
Thoughts which have turned to thunder--scorch, and burst.[ao]
But far from us and from our mimic scene
Such things should be--if such have ever been;
Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task,
To give the tribute Glory need not ask,
To mourn the vanished beam, and add our mite
Of praise in payment of a long delight. 100
Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield,
Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field!
The worthy rival of the wondrous _Three!_[102]
Whose words were sparks of Immortality!
Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is dear,
He was your Master--emulate him _here_!
Ye men of wit and social eloquence![103]
He was your brother--bear his ashes hence!
While Powers of mind almost of boundless range,[104]
Complete in kind, as various in their change, 110
While Eloquence--Wit--Poesy--and Mirth,
That humbler Harmonist of care on Earth,
Survive within our souls--while lives our sense
Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence,
Long shall we seek his likeness--long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die--in moulding Sheridan![105]
FOOTNOTES:
[98] {71}[Compare--
"As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun."
_Churchill's Grave,_ line 26, _vide ante,_ p. 48.]
[99] {72}[Sheridan's first speech on behalf of the Begum of Oude was delivered February 7, 1787. After having spoken for five hours and forty minutes he sat down, "not merely amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of hands, in which the Lords below the bar and the strangers in the Gallery joined" (Critical ... Essays, by T. B. Macaulay, 1843, iii. 443). So great was the excitement that Pitt moved the adjournment of the House. The next year, during the trial of Warren Hastings, he took part in the debates on June 3,6,10,13, 1788. "The conduct of the part of the case relating to the Princesses of Oude was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded.... It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived ... to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous admiration" (_ibid.,_iii 451, 452).]
[100] [The Rivals, The Scheming Lieutenant, and The Duenna were played for the first time at Covent Garden, January 17, May 2, and November 21, 1775. A Trip to Scarborough and the School for Scandal were brought out at Drury Lane, February 24 and May 8, 1777; the Critic, October 29, 1779; and Pizarro, May 24, 1799.]
[101] {73}[Only a few days before his death, Sheridan wrote thus to Rogers: "I am absolutely undone and broken-hearted. They are going to put the carpets out of window, and break into Mrs. S.'s room and take me. For God's sake let me see you!" (Moore's Life of Sheridan, 1825, ii. 455).
The extent and duration of Sheridan's destitution at the time of his last illness and death have been the subject of controversy. The statements in Moore's Life (1825) moved George IV. to send for Croker and dictate a long and circumstantial harangue, to the effect that Sheridan and his wife were starving, and that their immediate necessities were relieved by the (then) Prince Regent's agent, Taylor Vaughan (Croker's Correspondence and Diaries, 1884, i. 288-312). Mr. Fraser Rae, in his Life of Sheridan (1896, ii. 284), traverses the king's apology in almost every particular, and quotes a letter from Charles Sheridan to his half-brother Tom, dated July 16, 1816, in which he says that his father "almost slumbered into death, and that the reports ... in the newspapers (vide, e.g., Morning Chronicle, July, 1816) of the privations and want of comforts were unfounded."
Moore's sentiments were also expressed in "some verses" (Lines on the Death of SH--R--D--N), which were published in the newspapers, and are reprinted in the Life, 1825, ii. 462, and Poetical Works, 1850, p. 400--
"How proud they can press to the funeral array
Of one whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow!
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow.
* * * * *
Was _this_, then, the fate of that high-gifted man,
The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall,
The orator--dramatist--minstrel, who ran
Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all?"]
[ao] {74}
_Abandoned by the skies, whose teams have nurst_
_Their very thunders, lighten--scorch, and burst_.--[MS.]
[102] {75}Fox--Pitt--Burke. ["I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly; but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit: he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length."--Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 413.]
[103] ["In society I have met Sheridan frequently: he was superb!... I have seen him cut up Whitbread, quiz Madame de Staël, annihilate Colman, and do little less by some others ... of good fame and abilities.... I have met him in all places and parties, ... and always found him very convivial and delightful."--Ibid., pp. 413, 414.]
[104] ["The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him, ... and mine was this:--'Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggars Opera), the best farce (the Critic--it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address ('Monologue on Garrick'), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.'"--Journal, December 17, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 377.]
[105] [It has often been pointed out (e.g. Notes and Queries, 1855, Series I. xi. 472) that this fine metaphor may be traced to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The subject is Zerbino, the son of the King of Scotland--
"Non è vu si bello in tante altre persone:
Natura il fece e poi ruppe la stampa."
Canto X. stanza lxxxiv. lines 5, 6.]
MANFRED:
A DRAMATIC POEM.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
[_Hamlet,_ Act i. Scene 5, Lines 166, 167.
[Manfred, a choral tragedy in three acts, was performed at Covent Garden Theatre, October 29-November 14, 1834 [Denvil (afterwards known as "Manfred" Denvil) took the part of "Manfred," and Miss Ellen Tree (afterwards Mrs. Charles Kean) played "The Witch of the Alps"]; at Drury Lane Theatre, October 10, 1863-64 [Phelps played "Manfred," Miss Rosa Le Clercq "The Phantom of Astarte," and Miss Heath "The Witch of the Alps"]; at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, March 27-April 20, 1867 [Charles Calvert played "Manfred"]; and again, in 1867, under the same management, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool; and at the Princess's Theatre Royal, London, August 16, 1873 [Charles Dillon played "Manfred;" music by Sir Henry Bishop, as in 1834].
Overtures, etc.
"Music to Byron's Manfred" (overture and incidental music and choruses), by R. Schumann, 1850.
"Incidental Music," composed, in 1897, by Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (at the request of Sir Henry Irving); heard (in part only) at a concert in Queen's Hall, May, 1899.
"Manfred Symphony" (four tableaux after the Poem by Byron), composed by Tschaikowsky, 1885; first heard in London, autumn, 1898.]
INTRODUCTION TO _MANFRED_
Byron passed four months and three weeks in Switzerland. He arrived at the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Sécheron, on Saturday, May 25, and he left the Campagne Diodati for Italy on Sunday, October 6, 1816. Within that period he wrote the greater part of the Third Canto of Childe Harold, he began and finished the Prisoner of Chillon, its seven attendant poems, and the Monody on the death of Sheridan, and he began Manfred.
A note to the "Incantation" (Manfred, act i. sc. 1, lines 192-261), which was begun in July and published together with the Prisoner of Chillon, December 5, 1816, records the existence of "an unfinished Witch Drama" (First Edition, p. 46); but, apart from this, the first announcement of his new work is contained in a letter to Murray, dated Venice, February 15, 1817 (Letters, 1900, iv. 52). "I forgot," he writes, "to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue (in blank verse) or drama ... begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind." The letter is imperfect, but some pages of "extracts" which were forwarded under the same cover have been preserved. Ten days later (February 25) he reverts to these "extracts," and on February 28 he despatches a fair copy of the first act. On March 9 he remits the third and final act of his "dramatic poem" (a definition adopted as a second title), but under reserve as to publication, and with a strict injunction to Murray "to submit it to Mr. G[ifford] and to whomsoever you please besides." It is certain that this third act was written at Venice (Letter to Murray, April 14), and it may be taken for granted that the composition of the first two acts belongs to the tour in the Bernese Alps (September 17-29), or to the last days at Diodati (September 30 to October 5, 1816), when the estro (see Letter to Murray, January 2, 1817) was upon him, when his "Passions slept," and, in spite of all that had come and gone and could not go, his spirit was uplifted by the "majesty and the power and the glory" of Nature.
Gifford's verdict on the first act was that it was "wonderfully poetical" and "merited publication," but, as Byron had foreseen, he did not "by any means like" the third act. It was, as its author admitted (Letter to Murray, April 14) "damnably bad," and savoured of the "dregs of a fever," for which the Carnival (Letter to Murray, February 28) or, more probably, the climate and insanitary "palaces" of Venice were responsible. Some weeks went by before there was either leisure or inclination for the task of correction, but at Rome the estro returned in full force, and on May 5 a "new third act of Manfred--the greater part rewritten," was sent by post to England. Manfred, a Dramatic Poem, was published June 16, 1817.
Manfred was criticized by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (No. lvi., August, 1817, vol. 28, pp. 418-431), and by John Wilson in the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (afterwards Blackwood's, etc.) (June, 1817, i. 289-295). Jeffrey, as Byron remarked (Letter to Murray, October 12, 1817), was "very kind," and Wilson, whose article "had all the air of being a poet's," was eloquent in its praises. But there was a fly in the ointment. "A suggestion" had been thrown out, "in an ingenious paper in a late number of the Edinburgh Magazine [signed H. M. (John Wilson), July, 1817], that the general conception of this piece, and much of what is excellent in the manner of its execution, have been borrowed from the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus of Marlow (sic);" and from this contention Jeffrey dissented. A note to a second paper on Marlowe's Edward II. (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October, 1817) offered explanations, and echoed Jeffrey's exaltation of Manfred above Dr. Faustus; but the mischief had been done. Byron was evidently perplexed and distressed, not by the papers in Blackwood, which he never saw, but by Jeffrey's remonstrance in his favour; and in the letter of October 12 he is at pains to trace the "evolution" of Manfred. "I never read," he writes, "and do not know that I ever saw the Faustus of Marlow;" and, again, "As to the Faustus of Marlow, I never read, never saw, nor heard of it." "I heard Mr. Lewis translate verbally some scenes of Goethe's Faust ... last summer" (see, too, Letter to Rogers, April 4, 1817), which is all I know of the history of that magical personage; and as to the germs of Manfred, they may be found in the Journal which I sent to Mrs. Leigh ... when I went over first the Dent, etc., ... shortly before I left Switzerland. I have the whole scene of Manfred before me."
Again, three years later he writes (à propos of Goethe's review of Manfred, which first appeared in print in his paper Kunst und Alterthum, June, 1820, and is republished in Goethe's Sämmtliche Werke ... Stuttgart, 1874, xiii. 640-642; see Letters, 1901, v. Appendix II. "Goethe and Byron," pp. 503-521): "His Faust I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis (sic), in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Staubach (sic) and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus are very similar" (Letter to Murray, June 7, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 36). Medwin (Conversations, etc., pp. 210, 211), who of course had not seen the letters to Murray of 1817 or 1820, puts much the same story into Byron's mouth.
Now, with regard to the originality of Manfred, it may be taken for granted that Byron knew nothing about the "Faust-legend," or the "Faust-cycle." He solemnly denies that he had ever read Marlowe's Faustus, or the selections from the play in Lamb's Specimens, etc. (see Medwin's Conversations, etc., pp. 208, 209, and a hitherto unpublished Preface to Werner, vol. v.), and it is highly improbable that he knew anything of Calderon's El Mágico Prodigioso, which Shelley translated in 1822, or of "the beggarly elements" of the legend in Hroswitha's Lapsus et Conversio Theophrasti Vice-domini. But Byron's Manfred is "in the succession" of scholars who have reached the limits of natural and legitimate science, and who essay the supernatural in order to penetrate and comprehend the "hidden things of darkness." A predecessor, if not a progenitor, he must have had, and there can be no doubt whatever that the primary conception of the character, though by no means the inspiration of the poem, is to be traced to the "Monk's" oral rendering of Goethe's Faust, which he gave in return for his "bread and salt" at Diodati. Neither Jeffrey nor Wilson mentioned Faust, but the writer of the notice in the Critical Review (June, 1817, series v. vol. 5, pp. 622-629) avowed that "this scene (the first) is a gross plagiary from a great poet whom Lord Byron has imitated on former occasions without comprehending. Goethe's Faust begins in the same way;" and Goethe himself, in a letter to his friend Knebel, October, 1817, and again in his review in Kunst und Alterthum, June, 1820, emphasizes whilst he justifies and applauds the use which Byron had made of his work. "This singular intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strangest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius." Afterwards (see record of a conversation with Herman Fürst von Pückler, September 14, 1826, Letters, v. 511) Goethe somewhat modified his views, but even then it interested him to trace the unconscious transformation which Byron had made of his Mephistopheles. It is, perhaps, enough to say that the link between Manfred and Faust is formal, not spiritual. The problem which Goethe raised but did not solve, his counterfeit presentment of the eternal issue between soul and sense, between innocence and renunciation on the one side, and achievement and satisfaction on the other, was not the struggle which Byron experienced in himself or desired to depict in his mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else," not the influence of Faust on a receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh well-spring of the imagination. The motif of Manfred is remorse--eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for ever buoyed up with the hope that there is relief somewhere in nature, beyond nature, above nature, and experience replies with an everlasting No! As the sunshine enhances sorrow, so Nature, by the force of contrast, reveals and enhances guilt. Manfred is no echo of another's questioning, no expression of a general world-weariness on the part of the time-spirit, but a personal outcry: "De profundis clamavi!"
No doubt, apart from this main purport and essence of his song, his sensitive spirit responded to other and fainter influences. There are "points of resemblance," as Jeffrey pointed out and Byron proudly admitted, between Manfred and the Prometheus of Æschylus. Plainly, here and there, "the tone and pitch of the composition," and "the victim in the more solemn parts," are Æschylean. Again, with regard to the supernatural, there was the stimulus of the conversation of the Shelleys and of Lewis, brimful of magic and ghost-lore; and lastly, there was the glamour of Christabel, "the wild and original" poem which had taken Byron captive, and was often in his thoughts and on his lips. It was no wonder that the fuel kindled and burst into a flame.
For the text of Goethe's review of Manfred, and Hoppner's translation of that review, and an account of Goethe's relation with Byron, drawn from Professor A. Brandl's Goethes Verhältniss zu Byron (Goethe-Jahrbuch, Zwanzigster Band, 1899), and other sources, see Letters, 1901, v. Appendix II. pp. 503-521.
For contemporary and other notices of Manfred, in addition to those already mentioned, see Eclectic Review, July, 1817, New Series, vol. viii. pp. 62-66; Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1817, vol. 87, pp. 45-47; Monthly Review, July, 1817, Enlarged Series, vol. 83, pp. 300-307; Dublin University Magazine, April, 1874, vol. 83, pp. 502-508, etc.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
Manfred.
Chamois Hunter.
Abbot of St. Maurice.
Manuel.
Herman.
Witch of the Alps.
Arimanes.
Nemesis.
The Destinies.
Spirits, etc.
_The Scene of the Drama is amongst the Higher Alps--partly in the
Castle of Manfred, and partly in the Mountains._
MANFRED.[106]