To hook the reader, you, John Murray
Have publish'd "Anjou's Margaret,"
Which won't be sold off in a hurry
(At least, it has not been as yet);
And then, still further to bewilder 'em,
Without remorse, you set up "Ilderim;"
So mind you don't get into debt,
Because as how, if you should fail,
These books would be but baddish bail.
And mind you do not let escape
These rhymes to Morning Post or Perry, Which would be very treacherous-very, And get me into such a scrape!
For, firstly, I should have to sally,
All in my little boat, against a Galley; And, should I chance to slay the Assyrian wight, Have next to combat with the female knight. March 25, 1817.
THE LAMENT OF TASSO.2
ADVERTISEMENT.
At Ferrara, in the Library, are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house, of the latter. But, as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna, attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed, and depopulated the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon.
Long years! It tries the thrilling frame to bear
And eagle-spirit of a child of Song-
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude,
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
1 The "Missionary" was written by Mr. Bowles, "Ilderim" by Mr. Gally Knight, and "Margaret of Anjou" by Miss Holford.-- E.
nines, April 20, 1817." It was written in consequence of Lord Byron having visited Ferrara, for a single day, on his way to Florence.-E.
2 The original MS. of this poem is dated, "The Apen
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
And bare, at once, Captivity display'd
Stands scoffing through the never-open'd gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
Which is my lair, and it may be
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,
And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;
And revell'd among men and things divine,
And pour'd my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for Him,
The God who was on earth and is in heaven,
For he has strengthen'd me in heart and limb.
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
I have employ'd my penance to record
How Salem's shrine was won and how adored.
But this is o'er-my pleasant task is done :-
My long-sustaining friend of many years!
If I do blot thy final page with tears,
Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight,
Thou too art gone-and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
Thou too art ended what is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear and how?
I know not that- but in the innate force
Of my own spirit shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,
In this vast lazar-house of many woes?
Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor ev'n men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes-
Many, but each divided by the wall,
Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;-
While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call-
None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our Stoical success?
No! still too proud to be vindictive-I
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die.
Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest;
Thou pitiest not-but I can not forsake.
Look on a love which knows not to despair,
But all unquench'd is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud,
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
And thus at the collision of thy name,
The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me; they are gone-I am the same.
And yet my love without ambition grew;
Nor cause for such: they call'd me mad-and why? I knew thy state, my station, and I knew"
Oh Leonora wilt not thou reply?
I was indeed delirious in my heart
To lift my love so lofty as thou art;
But still my frenzy was not of the mind;
I knew my fault, and feel my punishment
Not less because I suffer it unbent.
That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,
Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind;
But let them go, or torture as they will,
My heart can multiply thine image still;
Successful love may sate itself away,
The wretched are the faithful; 't is their fate
To have all feeling save the one decay,
And every passion into one dilate,
As rapid rivers into ocean pour;
But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.
Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry
Of minds and bodies in captivity.
And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!
There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
Some who do still goad on the o'er-labour'd mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind
With needless torture, as their tyrant will
Is wound up to the lust of doing ill:
With these and with their victims am I class'd,
'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have pass'd;
'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:
So let it be-for then I shall repose.
I have been patient, let me be so yet;
I had forgotten half I would forget,
But it revives-Oh! would it were my lot
To be forgetful as I am forgot!
Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
A Princess was no love mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and array'd
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd-
Oh! not dismay'd but awed, like One above!
And in that sweet severity there was
A something which all softness did surpass --
I know not how thy genius master'd mine-
My star stood still before thee: if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me-but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.
It is no marvel from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said,
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow ;-
And then they sinote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into one Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorb'd in thine- the world was past away-
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!
I loved all Solitude but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, sive
The maniac and his tyrant;- had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave:
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him- mine is here,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though he perish, he may lift his eye,
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky-
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 't is clouded by my dungeon roof.
Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,
But with a sense of its decay:-I see
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange demon, who is vexing me
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to One, who long hath suffer'd so,
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,"
And all that may be borne, or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but Man,
But spirits may be leagued with them all Earth
Abandons-Heaven forgets me :- in the dearth
Of such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further, and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved,
Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.
I once was quick in feeling- that is o'er ;-
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd
My brain against these bars, as the sun flash'd
In mockery through them: If I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more
Which hath no words,-'t is that I would not die
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame
Stamp Madness deep into my memory,
And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No-it shall be immortal!- and I make
A future temple of my present cell,
Which nations yet shall visit for my sake.
While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,
A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,-
A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!
And thou, Leonora!-thou who wert ashamed
That such as I could love who blush'd to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,
Go! tell thy brother, that my heart, untamed
By grief, years, weariness-and it may be
A taint of that he would impute to me-
From long infection of a den like this,
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,
Adores thee still; and add that when the towers
And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,
This this shall be a consecrated spot!
But thou when all that Birth and Beauty throws
Of magic round thee is extinct shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.
No power in death can tear our names apart,
As one in life could rend thee from my heart.
Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate
To be entwined for ever - but too late!
EPISTLE FROM MR. MURRAY TO DR.
POLIDORI.
Dear Doctor, I have read your play,
Which is a good one in its way,-
Purges the eyes and moves the bowels,
And drenches handkerchiefs like towels.
With tears, that, in a flux of grief,
Afford hysterical relief
To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses,
Which your catastrophe convulses.
I like your moral and machinery;
Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery;
Your dialogue is apt and smart;
The play's concoction full of art;
Your hero raves, your heroine cries,
All stab, and every body dies.
In short, your tragedy would be
The very thing to hear and see:
And for a piece of publication,
If I decline on this occasion,
It is not that I am not sensible
To merits in themselves ostensible,
But and I grieve to speak it-plays
Are drugs mere drugs, sir-now-a-days.
I had a heavy loss by Manuel,"--
Too lucky if it prove not annual,-
And Sotheby, with his "Orestes,"
(Which, by the by, the author's best is,)
Has lain so very long on hand,
That I despair of all demand."
I've advertised, but see my books,
Or only watch my shopman's looks;-
Still Ivan, Ina, and such lumber,
My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber.
There's Byron too, who once did better,
Has sent me, folded in a letter,
A sort of it's no more a drama
Than Darnley, Ivan, or Kehama;
So alter'd since last year his pen is,
I think he's lost his wits at Venice.
In short, sir, what with one and t' other,
I dare not venture on another.
I write in haste; excuse each blunder;
The coaches through the street so thunder!
My room's so full we've Gifford here
Reading MS., with Hookham Frere,
Pronouncing on the nouns and particles,
Of some of our forthcoming Articles.
The Quarterly - Ah, sir, if you
Had but the genius to review!-
A smart critique upon St. Helena,
Or if you only would but tell in a
Short compass what but, to resume:
As I was saying, sir, the room-
The room's so full of wits and bards,
Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards,
And others, neither bards nor wits: --
My humble tenement admits
All persons in the dress of gent,
From Mr. Hammond to Dog Dent.
A party dines with me to-day, All clever men, who make their way: Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton, and Chantrey, Are all partakers of my pantry. They 're at this moment in discussion On poor De Stael's late dissolution. Her book, they say, was in advance-Pray Heaven, she tell the truth of France! Thus run our time and tongues away,But, to return, sir, to your play: Sorry, sir, but I cannot deal, Unless 't were acted by O'Neill, My hands so full, my head so busy, I'm almost dead, and always dizzy; And so, with endless truth and hurry, Dear Doctor, I am yours,
Upon thy table's baize so green
The last new Quarterly is seen,-
But where is thy new Magazine,
My Murray?
Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine-
The "Art of Cookery," and mine,
My Murray.
Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist,
And Sermons to thy mill bring grist;
And then thou hast the " Navy List,"
My Murray.
And Heaven forbid I should conclude, Without "the Board of Longitude," Although this narrow paper would, My Murray.
Our "Beppo: "- when copied, I'll send it.
Then you've****'s Tour,
No great things, to be sure,
You could hardly begin with a less work; For the pompous rascallion,
Who don't speak Italian
Nor French, must have scribbled by guesswork.
You can make any loss up
With "Spence" and his gossip,
A work which must surely succeed;
Then Queen Mary's Epistle-craft,
With the new "Fytte" of "Whistlecraft,"
Must make people purchase and read.
Then you 've General Gordon,
Who girded his sword on,
To serve with a Muscovite master,
And help him to polish
A nation so owlish,
They thought shaving their beards a disaster.
For the man, "poor and shrewd," 2
With whom you'd conclude
A compact without more delay,
Perhaps some such pen is
Still extant in Venice;
But please, sir, to mention your pay.
Venice, January 8, 1818.
TO MR. MURRAY. Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times, Patron and publisher of rhymes, For thee the bard up Pindus climbs, My Murray.
To thee, with hope and terror dumb, The unfledged MS. authors come; Thou printest all-and sellest someMy Murray.
1 The fourth canto of "Childe Harold."-- E. 2 Vide your letter.
Oh Venice Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?any thing but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers- as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
Oh! agony that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas and to the busy hum
Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
3 This Ode was transmitted from Venice, in 1819, along with "Mazeppa."-- E.
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain; -
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirits soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him-and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,- and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.
There is no hope for nations! - Search the page
Of many thousand years the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought, or little still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air:
For 't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though
slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. What! do not yet the red-hot plough-shares burn, O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal, And deem this proof of royalty the real; Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, And glorying as you tread the glowing bars? All that your sires have left you, all that Time Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime, Spring from a different theme!-Ye see and read, Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed! Save the few spirits who, despite of all, And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd, Gushing from Freedom's fountains when the crowd Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud, And trample on each other to obtain The cup which brings oblivion of a chain Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plough'd The sand,- or if there sprung the yellow grain, 'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bow'd, And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain:Yes! the few spirits who, despite of deeds Which they abhor, confound not with the cause Those momentary starts from Nature's laws, Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth With all her seasons to repair the blight With a few summers, and again put forth Cities and generations fair, when freeFor, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench her spirit-in her fate
All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship; -- even her crimes
Were of the softer order-born to Love,
She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead,
But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And call'd the "kingdom" of a conquering foe,-
But knows what all and, most of all, we know -
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'da heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sous must bow them at a monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science-
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still, for ever
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering: - better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
Than stagnate in our marsh,-- or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!
STANZAS TO THE PO.1
River, that rollest by the ancient walls,2
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;
What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!
What do I say a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.
Time may have somewhat tamed them,-- not for ever;
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!
Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:
1 About the middle of April, 1819, Lord Byron travelled from Venice to Ravenna, at which last city he expected to find the Countess Guiccioli. The above stanzas were composed, according to Madame Guiccioli's statement, during this journey, and while Lord Byron was actually sailing on the Po. They were first printed in 1824.-E.
2 Ravenna a city to which Lord Byron afterwards declared himself more attached than to any other place, except Greece. He resided in it rather more than two years, "and quitted it," says Madame Guiccioli, "with the deepest regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils: he was continually performing generous actions: many families owed to him the few prosperous days they e rer enjoyed; his arrival was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity."-E.
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