If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
2 These stanzas were also written at Diodati, and sent home at the time for publication, in case Mrs. Leigh should sanction it. But as she objected, the lines were not published until 1830.--E.
3 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."
"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 subsequently circumnavigated the world, many years after, as commander of a similar expe
And is it thus ?-it is as I foretold,
And shall be more so; for the mind recoils Upon itself, and the wreck'd heart lies cold,
While heaviness collects the shatter'd spoils.
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumb'd, 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 't was my right;
Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent
Tole the Nemesis who should requite-
Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
Mercy is for the merciful!- if thou
Hast been of such, 'I will be accorded now.
Thy nights are banish'd from the realms of sleep!-
Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel
A hollow agony which will not heal,
For thou art pillow'd 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,
DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERI.
DAN, 2
Spoken at Drury-Lane Theatre.
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,
A holy concord- and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set?
'T is 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,
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain,
And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare-Shea without shame and secret without pain.
And thus upon the world trust in thy truth
And the wild fame of my ungovern'd 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,
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And hew'd 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 other's grief at any price.
And thus once enter'd into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
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
Of prudence, with advantages annex'd
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! 1
Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When Summer's day declines along the hills,
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 pass'd from day to darkness to whose hour
Of light no likeness is bequeath'd - 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;
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 lighten'd over all,
To cheer-to pierce- to please-or to appal.
From the charm'd 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.
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 vanquish'd senates trembled as they praised.
And here, oh! here, where yet all young and warm,
The gay creations of his spirit charm,
The matchless dialogue-the deathless wit,
Which knew not what it was to intermit;
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,
Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone
Jar in the music which was born their own,
1"Lord Byron had at least this much to say for himself, that he was not the first to make his domestic differences a topic of public discussion. On the contrary, he saw himself, ere any fact but the one undisguised and tangible one was or could be known, held up every where, and by every art of malice, as the most infamous of men,--because he had parted from his wife. He was exquisitely sensitive: he was wounded at once by a thousand arrows; and all this with the most perfect and indignant knowledge, that of all who were assailing him not one knew any thing of the real merits of the case. Did he right, then, in pub lishing those squibs and tirades? No, certainly it would have been nobler, better, wiser far, to have utterly scorned the assaults of such enemies, and taken no notice, of any kind, of them. But, because this young, hot-blooded, proud, patrician poet did not, amidst the exacerbation of feelings which he could not control, act in precisely the most dignified and wisest of all possible manners of action, --are we entitled, is the world at large entitled, to issue a broad sentence of vituperative condemnation? Do we know all that he had suffered?-have we imagination trembled with all the excitements of insulted privacy, hoenough to comprehend what he suffered under circum- nour, and faith."-- LOCKHART.-E.
stances such as these ?--have we been tried in similar cir- 2 Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this eumstances, whether we could feel the wound unflinch-monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request ingly, and keep the weapon quiescent in the hand that of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. -- E.
Still let them pause-ah! little do they know
That what to them seem'd Vice might be but Woe.
Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise;
Repose denies her requiem to his nime,
And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel-accuser-judge- and spy,
The foe the fool - the jealous-and the vain,
The envious who but brea he in others' 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,
If the high Spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,1
To soothe Indignity and face to face
Meet sordid Rige-and wrestle with Disgrace,
To find in Hope but the renew'd 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,
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 turn'd to thunder-scorch-
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 vanish'd beam-and add our mite
Of praise in payment of a long delight.
Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield,
Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field!
The worthy rival of the wondrous Three! 2
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!
He was your brother bear his ashes hence!
While Powers of mind almost of boundless range,
Complete in kind—as various in their change,
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 form'd but one such man,
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan!
Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
1 This was not fiction. Only a few days before his death, Sheridan wrote thus to Mr. 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: 150l. will remove all difficulty. For God's sake let me see you!" Mr. Moore was the immediate bearer of the required sum. This was written on the 15th of May. On the 14th of July, Sheridan's remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey,-- his pall-bearers being the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, the Lord Bishop of London, Lord Holland, and Earl Spencer.-E.
9 In the first draught of this poem, Lord Byron had entitled it "The Destiny." Mr. Moore says, " it cost him
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; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
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,
The dread of vanish'd 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
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such,
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
Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,
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
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 beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him: he had look'd
Upon it till it could not pass away;
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,
For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers,
Which colour'd all his objects: - he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously his heart
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: 't was much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Herself the solitary scion left
Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him;
Of a time-honour'd race. It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not-and
why?
Time taught him a deep answer when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
many a tear in writing," and justly characterises it a "the most mournful as well as picturesque story of a wandering life' that ever came from the pen and heart of man." It was composed at Diodati ir July, 1816.-E
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was au ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparison'd:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;
he was alone, And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 't were
With a convulsion- then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.1
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-enter'd there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all. 2
He rose, and with a cold and gen le 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 dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he pass'd
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more.
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
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,
Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names
Of those who rear'd them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fasten'd near a fountain; and a man
Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumber'd around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.
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,
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.
1 The picture which Lord Byron has here drawn of his youthful love shows how genius and feeling can elevate the realities of this life, and give to the commonest events and objects an undying lustre. The old hall at Annesley under the name of the "antique oratory," will long call up to fancy the "maiden and the youth" who once stood in it; while the image of the "lover's steed," though suggested by the unromantic race-ground of Nottingham, will not the less conduce to the general charm of the scene, and share a portion of that light which only genius could shed over it.-MOORE.-E.
"I had long been in love with M. A. C., and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as Well"-Byron Diary, 1822.-E.
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,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd
Upon her mind - a spectre of the past.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was return'd.-I saw him stand
Before an Altar with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood; -- as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect, and the quivering shock
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 reel'd around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have
But the old mansion, and the accustom'd hall,
And the remember'd 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? 3
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 wander'd from its dwelling, and her eyes
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?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!
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, compass'd round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix'd
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, 4
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: with the stars
3 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 weddingsuit 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 and that he was--married.-- MOORE.--E.
4 Mithridates of Pontus.-E.
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