By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy ;
By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel (1)
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!

And on thy head I pour the vial
Which doth devote thee to this trial;
Nor to slumber, nor to die,

Shall be in thy destiny;

Though thy death shall still seem near

To thy wish, but as a fear;

Lo! the spell now works around thee,

And the clankless chain hath bound thee;
O'er thy heart and brain together

Hath the word been pass'd-now wither!

SCENE II.

The Mountain of the Jungfrau.-Time, Morning.--
MANFRED alone upon the Cliff's.

Man. The spirits I have raised abandon me
The spells which I have studied baffle me—
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me;
I lean no more on super-human aid,
It hath no power upon the past, and for

(1) [MS."I do adjure thee to this spell."-E.]

The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,
It is not of my search.-My mother Earth!

And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight—thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever-wherefore do I pause?
I feel the impulse-yet I do not plunge;
I see the peril-yet do not recede ;

And my brain reels—and yet my foot is firm:
There is a power upon me which withholds,
And makes it my fatality to live;

If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of spirit, and to be ↑
My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased.
To justify my deeds unto myself—
The last infirmity of evil. Ay,

Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,

[An eagle passes.

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me—I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,

With a pervading vision.- Beautiful!

How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are- - what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,

[The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.

The natural music of the mountain reed-
For here the patriarchal days are not

A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air,
Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;(1)
My soul would drink those echoes.—Oh, that I were
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,

(1) [The germs of this, and of several other passages in Manfred, may be found in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which Lord Byron transmitted to his sister: e. g. "Sept. 19. Arrived at a lake in the very bosom of the mountains; left our quadrupeds, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dents as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hohhouse went to the highest pinnacle. The whole of the mountains superb. A shepherd on a steep and very high cliff playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia. The music of the cows' bells (for their wealth, like the patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain, and the shepherds shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realised all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence- much more so than Greece or Asia Minor; for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musket order, and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other; but this was pure and unmixed — solitary, savage, and patriarchal. As we went, they played the 'Ranz des Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with nature."-E]

A living voice, a breathing harmony,

A bodiless enjoyment-born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!

Enter from below a CHAMOIS HUNTER.
Chamois Hunter.
Even so

This way the chamois leapt : her nimble feet
Have baffled me; my gains to-day will scarce
Repay my break-neck travail.—What is here?
Who seems not of my trade, and yet hath reach'd
A height which none even of our mountaineers,
Save our best hunters, may attain: his garb
Is goodly, his mien manly, and his air

Proud as a free-born peasant's, at this distance
I will approach him nearer.

Man. (not perceiving the other.) To be thus-
Grey-hair'd with anguish, (1) like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless, (2)
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to decay
And to be thus, eternally but thus,

Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er

(1) [See the opening lines to the "Prisoner of Chillon," antè, Vol. X. p. 227. Speaking of Marie Antoinette, "I was struck," says Madame Campan," with the astonishing change misfortune had wrought upon her features her whole head of hair had turned almost white, during her transit from Varennes to Paris." The same thing occurred to the unfortunate Queen Mary. "With calm but undaunted fortitude," says her historian," she laid her neck upon the block; and while one executioner held her hands, the other, at the second stroke, cut off her head, which, falling out of its attire, discovered her hair, already grown quite grey with cares and sorrows." The hair of Mary's grandson, Charles I., turned quite grey, in like manner, during his stay at Carisbrooke - E]

(2) ["Passed whole woods of withered pines, all withered,- trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless, done by a single winter: their appearance reminded me of me and my family."-Swiss Journal.]

With wrinkles, plough'd by moments, not by years
And hours-all tortured into ages-hours
Which I outlive! — Ye toppling crags of ice!

Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,

Crash with a frequent conflict; (1) but ye pass,
And only fall on things that still would live;
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut
And hamlet of the harmless villager.

C. Hun. The mists begin to rise from up the valley;
I'll warn him to descend, or he may chance
To lose at once his way and life together.

Man. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell, (2) Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, Heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles.—I am giddy. (3) C. Hun. I must approach him cautiously; if near, A sudden step will startle him, and he Seems tottering already.

(1) [" Ascended the Wengen mountain; left the horses, took off my coat, and went to the summit. On one side, our view comprised the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like truth; then the Little Giant, and the Great Giant; and last, not least, the Wetterhorn. The height of the Jungfrau is thirteen thousand feet above the sea, and eleven thousand above the valley. Heard the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly."-Swiss Journal.]

(2) [MS.—“Like foam from the roused ocean of old Hell."-E]

(3) ["The clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring tide- it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance. The side we ascended was not of so precipitous a nature; but, on arriving at the summit, we looked down upon the other side upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood these crags on one side quite perpendicular. In passing the masses of snow, I made a snowball and pelted Hobhouse with it."-Swiss Journal.]