His joy or grief, his weal or woe, Perchance may 'scape the page of fame; Yet nations now unborn will know The record of his deathless name. The patriot's and the poet's frame Assumes the ghastly stare of death; She died, but ne'er will die again. The rolling seasons pass away, And Time, untiring, waves his wing; Whilst honour's laurels ne'er decay, But bloom in fresh unfading spring. All, all must sleep in grim repose, Collected in the silent tomb; The old and young, with friends and foes, Festering alike in shrouds, consume. The mouldering marble lasts its day, Yet falls at length, a useless fane; To ruin's ruthless fangs a prey, The wrecks of pillar'd pride remain. What, though the sculpture be destroy'd, From dark oblivion meant to guard? A bright renown shall be enjoy'd Then do not say the common lot Of all lies deep in Lethe's wave; Some few, who ne'er will be forgot, Shall burst the bondage of the grave. The dew I gather from thy lip Is not so dear to me as this; That I but for a moment sip, And banquet on a transient bliss: This will recall each youthful scene, E'en when our lives are on the wane; In gently waving ringlet curl'd, Not though a thousand more adorn The polish'd brow where once you shone, Like rays which gild a cloudless morn, Beneath Columbia's fervid zone. 1806. [Now first published.] THE DEATH OF CALMAR AND ORLA. AN IMITATION OF MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN. (1) DEAR are the days of youth! Age dwells on their remembrance through the mist of time. In the twilight he recalls the sunny hours of morn. He lifts his spear with trembling hand. "Not thus feebly did I raise the steel before my fathers!" Past is the race of heroes! But their fame rises on the harp; their souls ride on the wings of the wind; they hear the sound through the sighs of the storm, and rejoice in their hall of clouds! Such is Calmar. The grey stone marks his narrow house. He looks down from eddying tempests: he rolls his form in the whirlwind, and hovers on the blast of the mountain. In Morven dwelt the chief; a beam of war to Fingal. His steps in the field were marked in blood. Lochlin's sons had fled before his angry spear; but mild was the eye of Calmar; soft was the flow of his yellow locks: they streamed like the meteor of the night. No maid was the sigh of his soul: his thoughts were given to friendship,-to dark-haired Orla, destroyer of heroes! Equal were their swords in battle; but fierce was the pride of Orla:-gentle alone to Calmar. Together they dwelt in the cave of Oithona., From Lochlin, Swaran bounded o'er the blue waves. Erin's sons fell beneath his might. Fingal roused his chiefs to combat. Their ships cover the ocean. Their hosts throng on the green hills. They come to the aid of Erin. Night rose in clouds. Darkness veils the armies: but the blazing oaks gleam through the valley. The sons of Lochlin slept: their dreams were of blood. They lift the spear in thought, and Fingal flies. Not so the host of Morven. To watch was the post of Orla. Calmar stood by his side. Their spears were in their hands. Fingal called his chiefs: they stood around. The king was in the midst. Grey were his locks, but strong was the arm of the king. Age withered not his powers. "Sons of Morven," said the hero, "to-morrow we meet the foe. But where is Cuthullin, the shield of Erin? He rests in the balls of Tura; he knows not of our coming. Who (I) It may be necessary to observe, that the story, though considerably varied in the catastrophe, is taken from "Nisus and Euryalus," of which episode a translation is already given. will speed through Lochlin to the hero, and call the chief to arms? The path is by the swords of foes; but many are my heroes. They are thunderbolts of war. Speak, ye chiefs! Who will arise?" "Son of Trenmor! mine be the deed," said darkhaired Orla, "and mine alone. What is death to me? I love the sleep of the mighty, but little is the danger. The sons of Lochlin dream. I will seek car-borne Cuthullin. If I fall, raise the song of bards, and lay me by the stream of Lubar." "And shalt thou fall alone?" said fair-haired Calmar. "Wilt thou leave thy friend afar? Chief of Oithona! not feeble is my arm in fight. Could I see thee die, and not lift the spear? No Orla! ours has been the chase of the roebuck, and the feast of shells; ours be the path of danger: ours has been the cave of Oithona; ours be the narrow dwelling on the banks of Lubar." "Calmar," said the chief of Oithona, "why should thy yellow locks be darkened in the dust of Erin? Let me fall alone. My father dwells in his hall of air he will rejoice in his boy; but the blue-eyed Mora spreads the feast for her son in Morven. She listens to the steps of the hunter on the heath, and thinks it is the tread of Calmar. Let him not say, 'Calmar has fallen by the steel of Lochlin: he died with gloomy Orla, the chief of the dark brow.' Why should tears dim the azure eye of Mora? Why should her voice curse Orla, the destroyer of Calmar? Live, Calmar! Live to raise my stone of moss; live to revenge me in the blood of Lochlin. Join the song of bards above my grave. Sweet will be the song of death to Orla, from the voice of Calmar. My ghost shall smile on the notes of praise." "Orla," said the son of Mora, "could I raise the song of death to my friend? Could I give his fam to the winds? No, my heart would speak in sighs: faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow. Orla! our souls shall hear the song together. One cloud shall be ours on high: the bards will mingle the names of Orla and Calmar." They quit the circle of the chiefs. Their steps are to the host of Lochlin. The dying blaze of the oak dim twinkles through the night. The northern star points the path to Tura. Swaran, the king, rests on his lonely hill. Here the troops are mixed: they frown in sleep; their shields beneath their heads. Their swords gleam at distance in heaps. The fires are faint; their embers fail in smoke. All is hushed; but the gale sighs on the rocks above. Lightly wheel the heroes through the slumbering band. Half the journey is past, when Mathon, resting on his shield, meets the eye of Orla. It rolls in flame, and glistens through the shade. His spear is raised on high. "Why dost thou bend thy brow, chief of Oithona?" said fair-haired Calmar: "we are in the midst of foes. Is this a time for delay?" "It is a time for vengeance," said Orla of the gloomy brow. "Mathon of Lochlin sleeps: seest thou his spear? Its point is dim with the gore of my father. The blood of Mathon shall reek on mine; but shall I slay him sleeping, son of Mora? No! he shall feel his wound: my fame shall not soar on the blood of slumber. Rise, Mathon, rise! The son of Connal calls; thy life is his; rise to combat." Mathon starts from sleep; but did he rise alone? No: the gathering chiefs bound on the plain. "Fly! Calmar, fly!" said dark-haired Orla. "Mathon is mine. I shall die in joy: but Lochlin crowds around. Fly through the shade of night." Orla turns. The helm of Mathon is cleft; his shield falls from his arm: he shudders in his blood. He rolls by the side of the blazing oak. Strumon sees him fall: his wrath rises: his weapon glitters on the head of Orla: but a spear pierced his eye. His brain gushes through the wound, and foams on the spear of Calmar. As roll the waves of the ocean on two mighty barks of the north, so pour the men of Lochlin on the chiefs. As, breaking the surge in foam, proudly steer the barks of the north, so rise the chiefs of Morven on the scattered crests of Lochlin. The din of arms came to the ear of Fingal. He strikes his shield; his sons throng around; the people pour along the heath. Ryno bounds in joy. Ossian stalks in his arms. Oscar shakes the spear. The eagle wing of Fillan floats on the wind. Dreadful is the clang of death! many are the widows of Lochlin! Morven prevails in its strength. Morn glimmers on the hills: no living foe is seen! but the sleepers are many; grim they lie on Erin. The breeze of ocean lifts their locks; yet they do not awake. The hawks scream above their prey. Whose yellow locks wave o'er the breast of a chief? Bright as the gold of the stranger, they mingle with the dark hair of his friend. 'Tis Calmar: he lies on the bosom of Orla. Theirs is one stream of blood. Fierce is the look of the gloomy Orla. He breathes not; but his eye is still a flame. It glares in death unclosed. His hand is grasped in Calmar's; but Calmar lives! he lives, though low. "Rise," said the king, "rise, son of Mora: 'tis mine to heal the wounds of heroes. Calmar may yet bound on the hills of Morven.” "Never more shall Calmar chase the deer of Morven with Orla," said the hero. "What were the chase to me alone? Who would share the spoils of battle with Calmar? Orla is at rest! Rough was thy soul, Orla! yet soft to me as the dew of morn. It glared on others in lightning: to me a silver beam of night. Bear my sword to blue-eyed Mora; let it hang in my empty hall. It is not pure from blood: but it could not save Orla. Lay me with my friend. Raise the song when I am dark!" They are laid by the stream of Lubar. Four grey stones mark the dwelling of Orla and Calmar. When Swaran was bound, our sails rose on the blue waves. The winds gave our barks to Morven :- -the bards raised the song. Peace What form rises on the roar of clouds? Whose dark ghost gleams on the red streams of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder. 'Tis Orla, the brown chief of Oithona. He was unmatched in war. to thy soul, Orla! thy fame will not perish. Nor thine, Calmar! Lovely wast thou, son of blue-eyed Mora; but not harmless was thy sword. It hangs in thy cave. The ghosts of Lochlin shriek around its steel. Hear thy praise, Calmar! It dwells on the voice of the mighty. Thy name shakes on the echoes of Morven. Then raise thy fair locks, son of Mora. Spread them on the arch of the rainbow; and smile through the tears of the storm." (1) (1) I fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every hope that Macpherson's Ossian might prove the translation of a series of poems complete in themselves; but. while the imposture is discovered, the merit of the work remains undisputed, though not without faults-particularly, in some parts, turgid and bombastic diction. The present humble imitation will be pardoned by the admirers of the original as an attempt, however inferior, which evinces an attachment to their favourite author. L'AMITIÉ EST L'AMOUR SANS AILES. (1) [Written December, 1806.] WHY should my anxious breast repine, Because my youth is fled? Days of delight may still be mine; Affection is not dead. In tracing back the years of youth, To one idea fondly clings; Which tells the common tale; Round this unconscious schoolboys stray, From yonder studious mansion rings; "Friendship is Love without his wings!" My early vows were paid; My hopes, my dreams, my heart was thine, For thine are pinions like the wind, Except, alas! thy jealous stings. Unless, indeed, without thy wings. My bosom glows with former fire,— Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill, Each flower a double fragrance flings; "Friendship is Love without his wings!" (1) See ante, p. 36, c. I, note. We insert this poem here on account of the date of its composition. It was not however included in the publication of 1807.-L. E. (2) Harrow. (3) The Earl of Clare.-L. E. (4) The young poet had recently received from Lord Clare an epistle containing this passage:-"I think, by your last letter, that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and, if I am not much mistaken, a little so with me. In one part you say, 'there is little or no doubt a few years, or months, will render us as politely indifferent to each other, as if we had never passed a portion of our time together:' indeed, Byron, you wrong me; and I have no doubt-at least I hope-you wrong yourself."-L. E. (5) It is difficult to conjecture for what reason, but these stanzas were not included in the publication of 1807; though few will hesitate to place them higher than any My Lycus! (3) wherefore dost thou weep? But, oh, 't will wake again. (4) Think, think, my friend, when next we meet, Our long-wish'd interview, how sweet! From this my hope of rapture springs; While youthful hearts thus fondly swell, Absence, my friend, can only tell, "Friendship is Love without his wings!" I turn'd to those my childhood knew, Twined with my heart's according strings; Friendship, the power deprived of wings! From smooth deceit and terror sprung, If laurell'd Fame but dwells with lies, Whose heart and not whose fancy sings; THE PRAYER OF NATURE. (5) [Written December 29, 1806.] FATHER of Light! great God of Heaven! Hear'st thou the accents of despair? Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven? Can vice atone for crimes by prayer? Father of Light, on thee I call! Thou see'st my soul is dark within ; Thou, who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin. thing given in that volume. "Written when the author was not nineteen years of age, this remarkable poem shows," says Moore, "how early the struggle between natural piety and doubt began in his mind." In reading the celebrated critique of the Edinburgh Review on the Hours of Idleness, the fact that the volume did not include this "Prayer of Nature" ought to be kept in mind. —L. E. This little poem, on the whole, affords a tolerably correct notion of Lord Byron's religious creed, though the contradictory nature of his writings renders it impossible to set that question positively at rest. He probably had no precise opinion on the subject of religion, and considered it, as he himself says in Don Juan, "--a pleasant voyage, perhaps to float To a memorandum of the writers on Divinity, whose works No shrine I seek, to sects unknown; Let bigots rear a gloomy fane, Let Superstition hail the pile, Shall man confine his Maker's sway To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? Earth, ocean, heaven thy boundless throne.(1) Unless they bend in pompous form; Must perish in the mingling storm? Or doctrines less severe inspire? Shall these, by creeds they can't expound, Whose years float on in daily crime- And live beyond the bounds of Time? Thy laws in Nature's works appear;- Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear! Thou, who canst guide the wandering star Whose hand from pole to pole I trace: he had perused, he is stated by Moore to have subjoined the following remark: "1 abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and thirty-nine articles." In a letter to Mr. Dallas, quoted by that gentleman in his Correspondence, Byron thus vaguely expresses himself: "I hold virtue in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition; each a feeling, not a principle. I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity, and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body." "I remember saying to him," observes Sir Walter Scott, "that I really thought that, if he lived a few years, he would alter his sentiments. He answered, rather sharply, I sup pose yon are one of those who prophesy I will turn methodist?' I replied, 'No-I don't expect your conversion to be of such an ordinary kind. I would rather look to see you retreat upon the Catholic faith, and distinguish yourself by the austerity of your penances. The species of religion to which you must, or may, one day attach yourself, must exercise a strong power on the imagination.' He smiled gravely, and seemed to allow I might be right." "I am no bigot to infidelity," says Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Gifford, "and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be overrated." "To say the truth," Byron, on one occasion, confessed, "I find it equally difficult to know what to believe in this Thou, who in wisdom placed me here, Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence, Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere, Extend to me thy wide defence. To Thee, my God, to thee I call! In thy protection I confide, If, when this dust to dust's restored, With clay the grave's eternal bed, Grateful for all thy mercies past, And hope, my God, to thee again This erring life may fly at last. TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ. (2) Ah! though the present brings but pain, Or if, in melancholy mood, Some lurking envious fear intrude, world, and what not to believe. There are as many plausible reasons for inducing me to die a bigot, as there have been to make me hitherto live a free-thinker." Millington.-P.E. (1) The poet appears to have had in his mind one of Mr. Southey's juvenile pieces, beginning, "Go, thou, unto the house of prayer, I to the woodlands will repair."-L. E. (2) This young gentleman, who was with Lord Byron both at Harrow and Cambridge, afterwards entered the Guards, and served with distinction in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned early in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run foul of in the night by another of the convoy. "Long's father," says Lord Byron, “wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised - but I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good, amiable being as rarely remains long, in this world; with talent and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted." Diary, 1821.-L. E. In the diary from which the above is an extract, Lord Byron gives the following strange instance of the moody melancholy that occasionally preyed on the mind of his old schoolfellow and College companion: "Though a cheerful companion," says his Lordship, "he had strange melancholy thoughts sometimes. I remember once that we were going to his uncle's, I think I went to accompany him to the door merely, in some Upper or Lower Grosvenor or Brook street, I forget which, but it was in a street leading out of some square; he told me that the night before he had taken up a pistol, not knowing or examining whether it was loaded or no, and had snapped it at his bead, leaving it to chance whether it might or might not be charged."-P. E. To check my bosom's fondest thought, And still indulge my wonted theme. In Granta's vale, the pedant's lore; Nor through the groves of Ida chase Our raptured visions as before; Though Youth has fl wn on rosy pinion, And Manhood claims his stern dominionAge will not every hope destroy, But yield some hours of sober joy. Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing Will shed around some dews of spring: But if his scythe must sweep the flowers Which bloom among the fairy bowers, Where smiling Youth delights to dwell, And hearts with early rapture swell; If frowning Age, with cold control, Confines the current of the soul, Congeals the tear of Pity's eye, Or checks the sympathetic sigh, Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan, And bids me feel for self alone; Oh! may my bosom never learn To soothe its wonted heedless flow; Still, still despise the censor stern, But ne'er forget another's woe. Yes, as you knew me in the days O'er which Remembrance yet delays, Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild, And even in age at heart a child. The soul's meridian don't become her, The aid which once improved their light, And bade them burn with fiercer glow, Now quenches all their sparks in night; Thus has it been with passion's fires, As many a boy and girl remembers, While all the force of love expires, Extinguish'd with the dying embers. But now, dear LONG, 't is midnight's noon, Has thrice perform'd her stated round, And chased away the gloom profound, I trust that we, my gentle friend, Shall see her rolling orbit werd Above the dear-loved peaceful seat Which once contain'd our youth's retreat; (1) And then with those our childhood knew, We'll mingle in the festive crew; While many a tale of former day Shall wing the laughing hours away; And all the flow of souls shall pour The sacred intellectual shower, Nor cease till Luna's waning horn Scarce glimmers through the mist of morn. TO A LADY. (2) On! had my fate been join'd with thine, To thee, the wise and old reproving: "T was thine to break the bonds of loving. And spoil the blisses that await him; For thy dear sake I cannot hate him. Ah! since thy angel form is gone, My heart no more can rest with any; But what it sought in thee alone, Attempts, alas! to find in many. Then fare thee well, deceitful maid! "Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee; had been shed by our fathers- it would have joined lands broad and rich it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder), and-and- and what has been the result?" Diary, 1821.-L. E. |