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With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, [shriek'd,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
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
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 devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
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 answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd 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 heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,

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
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, 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,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
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;

(1) "Darkness" is a grand and gloomy sketch of the supposed consequences of the final extinction of the sun and the heavenly bodies; executed, undoubtedly, with great and fearful force, but with something of German exaggeration, and a fantastical solution of incidents. The very conception is terrible above all conception of known calamity, and is too oppressive to the imagination to be contemplated with pleasure, even in the faint reflection of poetry." Jeffrey. -L. E.

(2) On the sheet containing the original draught 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 any thing 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

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.(1)
DIODATI, July, 1816.

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE;

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED. (2)

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 ask'd

The gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answer'd-" 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,
The architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tomb-stone, 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,
Thus spoke he,-"I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er

Your honour pleases," then most pleased I
From out my pocket's avaricious nook [shook (3)
Some certain coins of silver, which as 't were
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently:-Ye smile,

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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 soften'd eye,
On that old sexton's natural homily,

In which there was obscurity and fame,-
The glory and the nothing of a Name. (4)

DIODATI, 1816.

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."-L. E. (3) Originally

-"then most pleased, I shook

My inward pocket's most retired nook,
And out fell five and sixpence."-L. E.

(4) "The Grave of Churchill 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. The satire of Churchill flowed with a more profuse, though not a more embittered, stream; while, on the other hand, he cannot be compared to Lord Byron in point of tenderness or imagination. But 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

PROMETHEUS.

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?
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,

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.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
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,
But would not to appease him tell;
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.
Thy godlike crime was to be kind,

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,
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,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his spirit may oppose
Itself and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry

I's own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory.

DIODATI, July, 1816.

to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness. Both died in the flower of their age in a foreign land." Walter Scott.-L. E.

(1) These verses, of which the opening lines are given in Moore's Life, were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation already alluded to, antè, p.877, but were not

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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,
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;
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?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude?-O 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
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

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ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL. (1) 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 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.

intended for the public eye: as, however, they have recently found their way into circulation, we must include them, though with reluctance, in this collection.-L. E.

These lines "were written," says Lady Blessington, "with deep feelings of pain, and should be judged as the outpourings of a wounded spirit demanding pity more than anger. While to the public they are of that value that any,

I am too well avenged!-but 't was my right; Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent To be the Nemesis who should requite

Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
Mercy is for the merciful!-if thou

Hast been of such, 't 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,
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 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,
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,

reasons for their suppression ought to be extremely strong; so, on the other hand, I trust, they cannot hurt either her feelings to whom they are addressed, or his memory by whom they are written:-to her, because the very bitterness of reproach proves that unconquerable affection which cannot but heal the wound it causes: to him, because who, in the shattered feelings they betray, will not acknowledge the grief that hurries into error, and (may we add in cha rity) atones for it!”—P. E.

(1) "Lord Byron had at least this much to say for himself, that he was not the first to make his domestic differ ences 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 bad 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 publishing 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 enough to compre. hend what he suffered, under circumstances such as these? -have we been tried in similar circumstances, whether we could feel the wound unflinchingly, and keep the weapon quiescent in the hand that trembled with all the excite. ments of insulted privacy, honour, and faith?

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STANZAS TO HER WHO CAN BEST UNDER-
STAND THEM.

BE it so!-we part for ever!
Let the past as nothing be:
Had I only loved thee, never

Hadst thou been thus dear to me.
Had I loved, and thus been slighted,
That I better could have borne:
Love is quell'd-when unrequited-
By the rising pulse of scorn.
Pride may cool what passion heated,
Time will tame the wayward will;
But the heart in friendship cheated
Throbs with woe's most maddening thrill:
Had I loved-I now might hate thee,
In that hatred solace seek,

Might exult to execrate thee,

And, in words, my vengeance wreak.

But there is a silent sorrow

Which can find no vent in speech,
Which disdains relief to borrow

From the heights that song can reach.

"Let people consider, for a moment, what it is that they demand when they insist upon a poet of Byron's class abstaining altogether from expressing in his works any thing of his own feelings in regard to any thing that immediately concerns his own history. We tell him, in every possible form and shape, that the great and distinguishing merit of his poetry is the intense truth with which that poetry expresses his own personal feelings. We encourage him, in every possible way, to dissect his own heart for our entertainment-we tempt him, by every bribe most likely to act powerfully on a young and imaginative man, to plunge into the darkest depths of self-knowledge; to madden his brain with eternal self-scrutinies, to find his pride and his pleasure in what others shrink from as torture-we tempt him to indulge in these dangerous exercises, until they obviously acquire the power of leading him to the very brink of frenzy-we tempt him to find, and to see in this perilous vocation, the staple of his existence, the food of his ambition, the very essence of his glory;-and the moment that, by habits of our own creating, at least of our own encouraging and confirming, he is carried one single step beyond what we happen to approve of, we turn round with all the bitterness of spleen, and reproach him with the unmanliness of entertaining the public with his feelings in regard to his separation from his wife. This was truly the conduct of a fair and liberal public! To our view of the matter, Lord Byron, treated as he had been, tempted as he had been, and tortured and insulted as he was at the moment, did no more forfeit his character by writing what he did write upon that unhappy occasion, than another man. under circumstances of the same nature, would have done, by telling something of his mind about it to an intimate friend across the fire. The public had forced him into the habits of familiarity, and they received his confidence with nothing but anger and scorn." Lockhart.-L. E.

Like a clankless chain enthralling

Like the sleepless dreams that mockLike the frigid ice-drops falling

From the surf-surrounded rock

Such the cold and sickening feeling

Thou hast caused this heart to know; Stabb'd the deeper by concealing

From the world its bitter woe!

Once it fondly, proudly, deem'd thee
All that fancy's self could paint;
Once it honour'd and esteem'd thee
As its idol and its saint!

More than woman thou wast to me;
Not as man I look'd on thee:
Why, like woman, then undo me?

Why heap man's worst curse on me?

Wast thou but a fiend, assuming

Friendship's smile and woman's art, And, in borrow'd beauty blooming,

Trifling with a trusting heart?

By that eye, which once could glisten
With opposing glance to me;
By that ear, which once could listen
To each tale I told to thee;

By that lip, its smile bestowing,
Which could soften sorrow's gush;
By that cheek, once brightly glowing
With pure friendship's well-feign'd blush:

By all those false charms united,

Thou hast wrought thy wanton will, And, without compunction, blighted What thou wouldst not kindly kill!

Yet I curse thee not--in sadness

Still I feel how dear thou wert;
Oh! I could not-e'en in madness-
Doom thee to thy just desert!
Live! and when my life is over,
Should thine own be lengthen'd long,
Thou mayst then too late discover,

By thy feelings, all my wrong.
When thy beauties all are faded--

When thy flatterers fawn no more—
Ere the solemn shroud hath shaded

Some regardless reptile's store-
Ere that hour-false syren! hear me!—
Thou mayst feel what I do now,
While my spirit, hovering near thee,
Whispers friendship's broken vow!

But 'tis useless to upbraid thee

With thy past or present state: What thou wast-my fancy made thee; What thou art-I know too late!

(1) Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne-[See antè, p. 120.] "I have" says Lord Byron, "traversed all Roussean's ground with the Heloise before me, and am struck, to a degree that I cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. I enclose you a sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some rose-leaves from his garden, which, with part of his house, I have just seen. You will find honourable mention, in his Life, made of this acacia, when he walked out on the night of concluding his history. Madame de Staël has made Copet as agree

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.
ROUSSEAU-Voltaire our Gibbon-and De Staël-
Leman! (1) 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,
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.

EPIGRAM FROM MARTIAL.

PIERIOS vatis Theodori flamma Penates
Abstulit: hoc Musis, hoc tibi, Phoebe, placet?
O scelus, o magnum facinus, crimenque deorum,
Non arsit pariter quod domus et dominus!
Láb. xi. Epig. 94.
THE Laureate's house hath been on fire: the Nine
All smiling saw that pleasant bonfire shine.
But, cruel fate! O damnable disaster!
The house-the house is burnt, and not the master.

TO MR. HOBHOUSE. "Mors janua vitæ." WOULD you get to the House through the true gate Much quicker than ever Whig Charley went, Let Parliament send you to-NewgateAnd Newgate will send you to-Parliament.

TO MR. HOBHOUSE,

ON HIS IMPRISONMENT IN NEWGATE.

WHAT made you in Lob's Pound to go,
My boy, Hobby?

Because I bade the people throw

The House into the lobby.
You hate the House-why canvass then,
My boy Hobby?

Because I would reform the den,

As member for the mobby.
And who are now the people's men,
My boy, Hobby?

There's I and Burdett, gentlemen,

And blackguards Hunt and Cobby.
And when amid your friends you speak,
My boy, Hobby,

How is 't that you contrive to keep
Your watch within your fobby?
Now tell me why you hate the Whigs,
My boy, Hobby!

Because they want to run their rigs
As under Walpole Bobby.

able as society can make any place on earth." B. Leiters, 1816.-L. E.]

the

The numerous notices left by Lord Byron upon appearance, conduct, and opinions of Madame de Stacl present, with much that is amusing, such a medley of marks, that but for his tribute to her memory in the net to the fourth Canto of Childe Harold, it would be dific to decide whether she was most an object of his fear, h envy, or his admiration.-P. E.

i

ROMANCE MUY DOLOROSO

DEL

SITIO Y TOMA DE ALHAMA.

El qual dezia en Aravigo assi.

PASSEAVASE el Rey Moro
Por la ciudad de Granada,
Desde las puertas de Elvira
Hasta las de Bivarambla.

Ay de mi, Alhama!

Cartas le fueron venidas

Que Alhama era ganada.
Las cartas echo en el fuego,
Y al mensagero matava.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Descavalga de una mula,

Y en un cavallo cavalga.
Por el Zacatin arriba
Subido se avia al Alhambra.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Como en el Alhambra estuvo,
Al mismo punto mandava

Que se toquen las trompetas
Con añafiles de plata.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Y que atambores de guerra
Apriessa toquen alarma;
Por que lo oygan sus Moros,
Los de la Vega y Granada.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Los Moros que el son oyeron,
Que al sangriento Marte llama,
Uno a uno, y dos a dos,
Un gran esquadron formavan.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Alli hablò un Moro viejo;
Desta manera hablava :-

"Para que nos llamas, Rey?
Para que es este llamada?"
Ay de mi, Alhama!

"Aveys de saber, amigos, Una nueva desdichada:

Que Christianos, con braveza,
Ya nos han tomado Alhama."
Ay de mi, Alhama!

Alli habló un viejo Alfaqui,
De barba crecida y cana:-
"Bien se te emplea, buen Rey,
Buen Rey; bien se te empleava.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

"Mataste los Bencerrages,
Que era la flor de Granada;
Cogiste los tornadizos

De Cordova la nombrada.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

"Por esso mereces, Rey,
Una pene bien doblada;
Que te pierdas tu y el reyno,
Y que se pierda Granada.
Ay de mi, Alhama!

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD

ON THE SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA. Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport. [The effect of the original ballad-which existed both in Spanish and Arabic-was such, that it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death, within Granada.]

THE Moorish King rides up and down
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's gates to those
Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama!

Letters to the monarch tell
How Alhama's city fell:
In the fire the scroll he threw,
And the messenger he slew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

He quits his mule, and mounts his horse, And through the street directs his course; Through the street of Zacatin

To the Alhambra spurring in.

Woe is me, Alhama!

When the Alhambra walls he gain'd,

On the moment he ordain'd

That the trumpet straight should sound
With the silver clarion round.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And when the hollow drums of war
Beat the loud alarm afar,

That the Moors of town and plain
Might answer to the martial strain,
Woe is me, Alhama!

Then the Moors, by this aware
That bloody Mars recall'd them there,
One by one, and two by two,
To a mighty squadron grew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

Out then spake an aged Moor
In these words the king before :
"Wherefore call on us, O King?
What may mean this gathering?"

Woe is me, Alhama!

"Friends! ye have, alas! to know
Of a most disastrous blow,
That the Christians, stern and bold,
Have obtain'd Alhama's hold."

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