But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances. 69.-Stanza Ixxxvii., line 9. Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. [The following passage, in Harris's Philosophical Inquiries, contains the pith of this stanza:-" Notwithstanding the various fortunes of Athens as a city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey. Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent." I once pointed out the coincidence to Lord Byron, but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of Harris.-Moore.] 70.-Stanza Ixxxix., line 7. When Marathon became a magic word; "Siste Viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, &c. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-"Expende-quot libras in duce summo-invenies!"was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight. 71.-Stanza xcii., line 9. Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died. [The original MS. closes with this stanza. the canto was passing through the press.] The rest was added while 72. Stanza xcviii., line 4. And be alone on earth, as I am now. [This stanza was composed October 11, 1811; upon which day the poet writes thus to a friend: "I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my, youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families: I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my friends. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility."] CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE THIRD. "Afin que cette application vous forçat 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 INTRODUCTION TO CANTO III. 66 In a month from the appearance of "The Siege of Corinth," and "Parasina," Lord Byron wrote to Moore (March 8, 1816) that his poetical feelings began and ended with eastern countries, and that having exhausted the subject, he could make nothing of any other. When a restless spirit, satiated with the monotony of a stationary life, and, above all, anguish at the marriage of his early love, Miss Chaworth, sent him to rove in 1809, the effect was to inspire the two first Cantos of Childe Harold-the earliest poem worthy of his present name. Another domestic catastrophe-the refusal of his wife in Jan. 1816, to live with him any longer-and the consequent clamour which was raised against him, drove him, at the end of April, into a second and final exile. The poetical result was the same as before. The soil which, on the eve of starting, he declared to be exhausted, immediately threw out the richest vintage it had hitherto produced. He travelled through Flanders and the Rhine country to Switzerland, and there completed, before the end of June, the third canto of Childe Harold. "It is," he says, a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies." All these subjects are depicted in his stanzas, which may be considered the poetical autobiography of perhaps the most melancholy period of his not less melancholy than glorious life. The notes of woe were extorted by his domestic misery; the metaphysics, which imparted an occasional mysticism to his strains, he owed to Shelley, whom he met at Geneva; and the admiration of this companion for Wordsworth, was also the cause why Lord Byron wrote of the lakes and mountains in a spirit akin to that of the Rydal bard, though expressed in nobler and more animating terms. The third canto was bought by Mr. Murray for 1500 guineas, and published in August 1816. Since the appearance of its precursors, the mind of Lord Byron had gained in depth and energy. The descriptions of nature are grander the reflections profounder and more impassioned, the words more burning and concise. The stanzas upon Waterloo, those on the thunderstorm in the mountains, and the characters of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon, are among the very finest passages in English verse. Yet so difficult is it to rekindle by a continuation the original enthusiasm, that many gave the palm to the previous cantos, and even Jeffrey did no more than express his confidence, that it would not be thought inferior and might probably be preferred. But a generous article by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, did justice both to the poem and its author-turned back the tide of obloquy which had set in against Lord Byron, and convinced the world that his genius was still on the ascendant. CANTO THE THIRD.' L 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;3 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 Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. III. In my youth's summer I did sing of One, The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; Again I seize the theme, then but begun, And bear it with me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years 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. |