by Byron
The palaces of crowned kings – the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
15
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire – but hour by hour
20
They fell and faded – and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash – and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
25
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
30
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 shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
35
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
40
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
45
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,
50
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.
55
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
60
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
65
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,
70
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;
75
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;
80
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.
Diodati, July, 1816.
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
Canto the Third
‘A fin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n’y a en vérité de remède que celui-ll et le temps.’ — Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D’Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776.
I
Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And when we parted, – not as now we part,
5
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; but the hour’s gone by,
When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
II
10
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe’er it lead!
Though the strain’d mast should quiver as a reed,
15
And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
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,
20
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,
25
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,
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,
30
And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing.
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness – so it fling
35
Forgetfulness around me – it shall seem
To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.
V
He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
40
Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
45
Still unimpair’d, though old, in the soul’s haunted cell.
VI
’Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.
50
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mix’d with thy spirit,
blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crush’d feelings’ dearth.
VII
55
Yet must I think less wildly: – I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
60
My springs of life were poison’d. ’Tis too late!
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what time can not abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.
VIII
Something too much of this: – but now ’tis past,
65
And the spell closes with its silent seal.
Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last;
He of the breast which fain no more would feel,
Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne’er heal;
Yet Time, who changes all, had alter’d him
70
In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
IX
His had been quaff’d too quickly, and he found
The dregs were wormwood; but he fill’d again,
75
And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
And deem’d its spring perpetual; but in vain!
Still round him clung invisibly a chain
Which gall’d for ever, fettering though unseen,
And heavy though it clank’d not; worn with pain,
80
Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
Entering with every step he took through many a scene.
X
Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix’d
Again in fancied safety with his kind,
And deem’d his spirit now so firmly fix’d
85
And sheath’d with an invulnerable mind,
That, if no joy, no sorrow lurk’d behind;
And he, as one, might ’midst the many stand
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
Fit speculation; such as in strange land
90
He found in wonder-works of God and Nature’s hand.
XI
But who can view the ripen’d rose, nor seek
To wear it? who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of beauty’s cheek,
Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?
95
Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o’er her steep, nor climb?
Harold, once more within the vortex, roll’d
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth’s fond prime.
XII
100
But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell’d
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell’d
105
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell’d;
Proud though in desolation; which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
XIII
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
110
Where roll’d the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
115
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land’s tongue, which he would oft forsake,
For Nature’s pages glass’d by sunbeams on the lake.
XIV
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
120
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
125
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.
XV
But in Man’s dwellings he became a thing
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
130
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome,
As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat
135
Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.
XVI
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
140
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though ’twere wild, — as on the plunder’d wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck, –
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forebore to check.
XVII
145
Stop! – for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust!
An Earthquake’s spoil is sepulchred below!
Is the spot mark’d with no colossal bust?
Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
None; but the moral’s truth tells simpler so,
150
As the ground was before, thus let it be; –
How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
And is this all the world has gain’d by thee,
Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory?
XVIII
And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
155
The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo;
How in an hour the power which gave annuls
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!
In ’pride of place’1 here last the eagle flew,
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,
160
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through;
Ambition’s life and labours all were vain;
He wears the shatter’d links of the world’s broken chain.
XIX
Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit
And foam in fetters; — but is Earth more free?
165
Did nations combat to make One submit;
Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?
What! shall reviving Thraldom again be
The patch’d-up idol of enlighten’d days?
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we
170
Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
And servile knees to thrones? No; prove before ye praise!
XX
If not, o’er one fallen despot boast no more!
In vain fair cheeks were furrow’d with hot tears
For Europe’s flowers long rooted up before
175
The trampler of her vineyards; in vain years
Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,
Have all been borne, and broken by the
accord
Of roused-up millions: all that most endears
Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword
180
Such as Harmodius1 drew on Athens’ tyrant lord.
XXI
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
185
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;2
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
XXII
190
Did ye not hear it? – No; ’twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet –
195
But, hark! – that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! Arm! it is – it is – the cannon’s opening roar!
XXIII
Within a window’d niche of that high hall
200
Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death’s prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deem’d it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
205
Which stretch’d his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell:
He rush’d into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.
XXIV
Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
210
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blush’d at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne’er might be repeated; who could guess
215
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!
XXV
And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
220
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While throng’d the citizens with terror dumb,
225
Or whispering, with white lips – ‘The foe! they come! they come!’
XXVI