CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO III. Afin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n'y a, en vérité, de remède que celui-là et le temps.» Lettre du roi de Prusse à d'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776. I. Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! But with a hope. Awaking with a start, The waters heave around me; and on high The winds lift up their voices: I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour 's gone by, When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. II. Once more upon the waters! yet once more! Flung from the rock, on ocean's foam, to sail III. In my youth's summer I did sing of one, Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find Plod the last sands of life,-where not a flower appears. IV. Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain, To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. V." He, who grown aged in this world of woe, Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell. VI. T' is to create, and in creating live Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, VII. Yet must I think less wildly:-I have thought VIII. Something too much of this :-but now 't is past, Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last; He of the breast which fain no more would feel, Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; IX. His had been quaff'd too quickly, and he found The dregs were wormwood; but he fill'd again, And from a purer fount, on holier ground, And deem'd its spring perpetual; but in vain! Still round him clung invisibly a chain Which gall'd for ever, fettering though unseen, And heavy though it clank'd not; worn with pain, Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, Entering with every step he took through many a scene. X. Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix'd He found in wonder-works of God and nature's hand. XI. But who can view the ripen'd rose, nor seek The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, old? Who can contemplate fame through clouds, unfold The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb? Harold, once more within the vortex, roll'd On with the giddy circle, chasing time, Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime. XII. But soon he knew himself the most unfit Of men to herd with man; with whom he held His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd XIII. Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where roll'd the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake. |