LXXXIX.

Nor yet, alas ! the dreadful work is done;
Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees :
It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
Fall'n nations gaze on Spain ; if freed, she frees
More than her fell Pizarros once enchain'd:
Strange retribution ! now Columbia's ease

Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustain'd, While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrain'd.

Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight,
Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
Have won for Spain her well asserted right.
When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil ?
How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,

Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
And Freedom's stranger-tree grow native of the soil !

XOL.

66

And thou, my friend !—since unavailing woe
Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain-
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low
Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain :
But thus unlaurel'd to descend in vain,
By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,

While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest ?

XCII.

Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most !67
Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear!
Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
In dreams deny me not to see thee here !
And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier,

Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, and mourn's and mourner lie united in repose.

XCIII.

Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage :
Ye who of him may further seek to know,
Shall find some tidings in a future page,
If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
Is this too much ? stern Critic! say not so:
Patience ! and ye shall hear what he beheld
In other lands, where he was doom'd to go:

Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,
Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were

quell’d.68

NOTES TO CANTO THE FIRST.

1.-Stanza i., line 6. Yes! sigh'd o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine, The little village of Castri stands partly on the site of Delphi. Along the path of the mountain, from Chrysso, are the remains of sepulchres hewn in and from the rock :-"One," said the guide, "of a king who broke his neck hunting." His majesty had certainly chosen the fittest spot for such an achievement. A little above Castri is a cave, siipposed the Pythian, of immense depth; the upper part of it is paved, and now a cowhouse. On the other side of Castri stands a Greek monastery; some way above which is the cleft in the rock, with a range of caverns difficult of ascent, and apparently leading to the interior of the mountain; probably to the Corycian Cavern mentioned by Pansanias. From this part descend the fountain and the “Dews of Castalie."

(The opening stanza is not in the original MS.)

2.-Stanza ii., line 7.
Few earthly things found favour in his sight
[" He cheer'd the bad and did the good affright, .

With concubines," &c.-MS.

3.---Stanza v., line 3.

Had sigh'd to many though he loved but one, [The stanzas written to Mrs. Musters, on leaving England, are the best comment on the allusion in the text

"And I must from this land be gone,
Becanse I cannot love but one."]

4.-Stanza vi., line 5.

Apart he slalk'd in joyless reverie, 1" And straight he fell into a reverie."-MS.]

5.-Stanza vii., line 7. Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile; [The old housekeeper at Newstead told Washington Irving, that the licentious life, and the paramours, were mainly a fiction. The interior at Newstead was often loose and irregular, but it never exhibited the profuse luxury and Satanic revelry which he here seems to indicate.]

6.-Stanza x., line 6. Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel: ["Yet deem him not from this with breast of steel.”—MS.)

7.-Stanza xi., line 2.
The laughing dames in whom he did delight,
["His house, his home, his vassals, and his lands,

The Dalilahs," &c.-MS. The last line of the stanza is an allusion to Lord Byron's original intention to extend his travels to India.]

8.–Page 8, line 9.

" Come hither, hither, my little page! [This "little pago" was Robert Rushton, the son of one of Lord Byron's tenants. " Robert I take with me," says the poet, in a letter to his mother: “I like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal." The boy being sickly, Lord Byron, on reaching Gibraltar, sent him back to England.)

9.–Page 8, line 16.

More merrily along."
("Our best goss-hawk can hardly fly

So merrily along."--MS.)

10.--Page 8, line 18.

I fear not wave nor wind:
(“Oh, master dear! I do not cry

From fear of wave or wind."--MS.]

11.--Page 9, line 8.

Mine oun would not dry. (Here follows in the original MS.:

My Mother is a high-born dame,
And much misliketh me;