Selected Poems

by Byron

  Save o’er some warrior’s half-forgotten grave,

  815

  Where the gray stones and unmolested grass

  Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,

  While strangers only not regardless pass,

  Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh ‘Alas!’

  LXXXVII

  Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

  820

  Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

  Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,

  And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;

  There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,

  The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air;

  825

  Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,

  Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare;

  Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

  LXXXVIII

  Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground;

  No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,

  830

  But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,

  And all the Muse’s tales seem truly told,

  Till the sense aches with gazing to behold

  The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon;

  Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold

  835

  Defies the power which crush’d thy temples gone:

  Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon.

  LXXXIX

  The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;

  Unchanged in all except its foreign lord –

  Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame

  840

  The Battlefield, where Persia’s victim horde

  First bow’d beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword,

  As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

  When Marathon became a magic word;1

  Which utter’d, to the hearer’s eye appear

  845

  The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career,

  XC

  The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;

  The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;

  Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below;

  Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!

  850

  Such was the scene – what now remaineth here?

  What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground,

  Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear?

  The rifled urn, the violated mound,

  The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

  XCI

  855

  Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past

  Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;

  Long shall the voyager, with th’ Ionian blast,

  Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;

  Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue

  860

  Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;

  Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!

  Which sages venerate and bards adore,

  As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

  XCII

  The parted bosom clings to wonted home,

  865

  If aught that’s kindred cheer the welcome hearth;

  He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

  And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

  Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth:

  But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,

  870

  And scarce regret the region of his birth,

  When wandering slow by Delphi’s sacred side,

  Or gazing o’er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

  XCIII

  Let such approach this consecrated land,

  And pass in peace along the magic waste;

  875

  But spare its relics – let no busy hand

  Deface the scenes, already how defaced!

  Not for such purpose were these altars placed:

  Revere the remnants nations once revered:

  So may our country’s name be undisgraced,

  880

  So may’st thou prosper where thy youth was rear‘d,

  By every honest joy of love and life endear’d!

  XCIV

  For thee, who thus in too protracted song

  Hast soothed thine idlesse with inglorious lays,

  Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng

  885

  Of louder minstrels in these later days:

  To such resign the strife for fading bays –

  Ill may such contest now the spirit move

  Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial praise;

  Since cold each kinder heart that might approve,

  890

  And none are left to please when none are left to love.

  XCV

  Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!

  Whom youth and youth’s affections bound to me;

  Who did for me what none beside have done,

  Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.

  895

  What is my being? thou hast ceased to be!

  Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,

  Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see –

  Would they had never been, or were to come!

  Would he had ne’er return’d to find fresh cause to roam!

  XCVI

  900

  Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!

  How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,

  And clings to thoughts now better far removed!

  But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.

  All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;

  905

  The parent, friend, and now the more than friend:

  Ne’er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,

  And grief with grief continuing still to blend,

  Hath snatch’d the little joy that life had yet to lend.

  XCVII

  Then must I plunge again into the crowd,

  910

  And follow all that Peace disdains to seek?

  Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,

  False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek,

  To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak;

  Still o’er the features, which perforce they cheer,

  915

  To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique;

  Smiles form the channel of a future tear,

  Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.

  XCVIII

  What is the worst of woes that wait on age?

  What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?

  920

  To view each loved one blotted from life’s page,

  And be alone on earth, as I am now.

  Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,

  O’er hearts divided and o’er hopes destroy’d:

  Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,

  925

  Since Time hath reft whate’er my soul enjoy’d,

  And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy’d.

  APPENDIX TO CANTO THE SECOND

  Note [A]

  ‘To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared.’

  STANZA xii. LINE 2.

  At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyræus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen – for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion – thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri, is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek finder of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French
Consul Fauvel, who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which – I wish they were both broken upon it – has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signor Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed as far as Sunium (now Caplonna), till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden speechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities; when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily, in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple, will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without execration.

  On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica.

  Another noble Lord has done better, because he has done less: but some others, more or less noble, yet ‘all honourable men,’ have done best, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed! Lord E. ‘s ‘prig’ – see Jonathan Wild for the definition of ‘priggism’ – quarrelled with another, Gropius* by name (a very good name too for his business), and muttered something about satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me their arbitrator.

  Note [B]

  ‘Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!’

  STANZA xxxvii. LINES 5. AND 6.

  Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella in Macedon, but Mr Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list, in speaking of his exploits.

  Of Albania Gibbon remarks, that a country ‘within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America.’ Circumstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the exception of Major Leake, then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress which he was then besieging: on our arrival at Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his highness’s birthplace, and favourite Serai, only one day’s distance from Berat; at this juncture the Vizier had made it his headquarters. After some stay in the capital, we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every accommodation, and escorted by one of the Vizier’s secretaries, we were nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey which, on our return, barely occupied four. On our route we passed two cities, Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen can ever do justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier village of Epirus and Albania Proper.

  On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as I would to anticipate him. But some few observations are necessary to the text. The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound, and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory – all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous; the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favourably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named Basilius, the Moslem, Dervish Tahiti; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Messalonghi in Ætolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure.

  When in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr Hobhouse for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr Romanelli’s prescriptions, I attributed my recovery. I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself, and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilisation. They had a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the Convent, on the subject of his having taken a woman from the bath – whom he had lawfully bought however – a thing quite contrary to etiquette. Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration for the church, mixed with the highest contempt of churchmen, whom he cuffed upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet he never passed a church without crossing himself; and I remember the risk he ran in entering St Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably answered, ‘Our church is holy, our priests are thieves;’ and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears of the first ‘papas’ who refused to assist in any required operation, as was always found to be necessary where a priest had any influence with the Cogia Bashi of his village. Indeed, a more abandoned race of miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy.

  When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found; at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti, father to the ci-devant Anglo consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money, but on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his
hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, ‘Má φειvει,’ ‘He leaves me.’ Signor Logotheti, who never wept before for any thing less than the loss of a para (about the fourth of a farthing), melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visiters – and I verily believe that even Sterne’s ‘foolish fat scullion’ would have left her ‘fish-kettle,’ to sympathise with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian.

  For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my departure from England, a noble and most intimate associate had excused himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a relation ‘to a milliner’s,’ I felt no less surprised than humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected: when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them. One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow; he spoke not, but sat down leaning his head upon his hands. Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer: – ‘I have been a robber; I am a soldier; no captain ever struck me; you are my master, I have eaten your bread, but by that bread! (an usual oath) had it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog your servant, and gone to the mountains.’ So the affair ended, but from that day forward, he never thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Romaika, the dull round-about of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens.

  The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue.