by Byron
And wild and high the ‘Cameron’s gathering’ rose!
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: —
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
230
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instils
The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan’s, Donald’s1 fame rings in each clansman’s ears!
XXVII
235
And Ardennes2 waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave, – alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
240
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
Of living valour, rolling on the foe
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
XXVIII
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
245
Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms, — the day
Battle’s magnificently-stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent
250
The earth is cover’d thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heap’d and pent,
Rider and horse, – friend, foe, – in one red burial blent!
XXIX
Their praise is hymn’d by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
255
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And partly that I did his sire some wrong,
And partly that bright names will hallow song;
And his was of the bravest, and when shower’d
The death-bolts deadliest the thinn’d files along,
260
Even where the thickest of war’s tempest lower’d,
They reach’d no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!
XXX
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
265
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
270
I turn’d from all she brought to those she could not bring.1
XXXI
I turn’d to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
275
The Archangel’s trump, not Glory’s, must awake
Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake
The fever of vain longing, and the name
So honour’d but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.
XXXII
280
They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn:
The tree will wither long before it fall;
The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;
The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
In massy hoariness; the ruin’d wall
285Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
The bars survive the captive they enthral;
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
XXXIII
Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
290
In every fragment multiplies; and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shatter’d guise, and still, and cold,
295
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
XXXIV
There is a very life in our despair,
Vitality of poison, — a quick root
300
Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were
As nothing did we die; but Life will suit
Itself to Sorrow’s most detested fruit,
Like to the apples1 on the Dead Sea’s shore,
All ashes to the taste: Did man compute
305
Existence by enjoyment, and count o’er
Such hours ’gainst years of life, — say, would he name threescore?
xxxv
The Psalmist number’d out the years of man:
They are enough; and if thy tale be true,
Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span,
310
More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo!
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children’s lips shall echo them, and say –
‘Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day!’
315
And this is much, and all which will not pass away.
XXXVI
There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose spirit antithetically mixt
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixt,
320
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek’st
Even now to reassume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
XXXVII
325
Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne’er more bruited in men’s minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who woo’d thee once, thy vassal, and became
330
The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
A god unto thyself; nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deem’d thee for a time whate’er thou didst assert.
XXXVIII
Oh, more or less than man – in high or low,
335
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs’ necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
340
However deeply in men’s spirits skill’d,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
XXXIX
Yet well thy soul hath brook’d the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
345
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye; –
350
>
When Fortune fled her spoil’d and favourite child,
He stood unbow’d beneath the ills upon him piled.
XL
Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steel’d thee on too far to show
That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
355
Men and their thoughts; ’twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turn’d unto thine overthrow;
’Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
360
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
XLI
If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had help’d to brave the shock;
But men’s thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
365
Their admiration thy best weapon shone;
The part of Philip’s son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men;
For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.1
XLII
370
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
375
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
XLIII
This makes the madmen who have made men mad
380
By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul’s secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
385
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:
XLIV
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
390
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
395
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
XLV
He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
400
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
405
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.
XLVI
Away with these! true Wisdom’s world will be
Within its own creation, or in thine,
Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,
Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
410
There Harold gazes on a work divine,
A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.
XLVII
415
And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,
Or holding dark communion with the cloud.
There was a day when they were young and proud,
420
Banners on high, and battles pass’d below;
But they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
And those which waved are shredless dust ere now,
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.
XLVIII
Beneath these battlements, within those walls,
425
Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state
Each robber chief upheld his armed halls,
Doing his evil will, nor less elate
Than mightier heroes of a longer date.
What want these outlaws1 conquerors should have?
430
But History’s purchased page to call them great?
A wider space, an ornamented grave?
Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave.
XLIX
In their baronial feuds and single fields,
What deeds of prowess unrecorded died!
435
And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields,
With emblems well devised by amorous pride,
Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide;
But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on
Keen contest and destruction near allied,
440
And many a tower for some fair mischief won,
Saw the discolour’d Rhine beneath its ruin run.
L
But Thou, exulting and abounding river!
Making their waves a blessing as they flow
Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever
445
Could man but leave thy bright creation so,
Nor its fair promise from the surface mow
With the sharp scythe of conflict, — then to see
Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know
Earth paved like Heaven; and to seem such to me,
450
Even now what wants thy stream? – that it should Lethe be.
LI
A thousand battles have assail’d thy banks,
But these and half their fame have pass’d away,
And Slaughter heap’d on high his weltering ranks;
Their very graves are gone, and what are they?
455
Thy tide wash’d down the blood of yesterday,
And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
Glass’d with its dancing light the sunny ray;
But o’er the blacken’d memory’s blighting dream
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.
LII
460
Thus Harold inly said, and pass’d along,
Yet not insensibly to all which here
Awoke the jocund birds to early song
In glens which might have made even exile dear:
Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
465
And tranquil sternness which had ta’en the plac
Of feelings fierier far but less severe,
Joy was not always absent from his face,
But o’er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace.
LIII
Nor was all love shut from him, though his days
470
Of passion had consumed themselves to dust.
It is in vain that we would coldly gaze
On such as smile upon us; the heart must
Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust
Hath wean’d it from all worldlings: thus he felt,
475
For there was soft
remembrance, and sweet trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.
LIV
And he had learn’d to love, – I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood, –
480
The helpless looks of blooming infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
485
Small power the nipp’d affections have to grow,
In him this glow’d when all beside had ceased to glow.
LV
And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the church links withal; and, though unwed,
490
That love was pure, and, far above disguise,
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
495
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!
I
The castled crag of Drachenfels1
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
500
And hills all rich with blossom’d trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scatter’d cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strew’d a scene, which I should see
505
With double joy wert thou with me.
2
And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o’er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
510
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray;
And many a rock which steeply lowers
And noble arch in proud decay
Look o’er this vale of vintage-bowers
But one thing want these banks of Rhine, –
515
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!
3
I send the lilies given to me;
Though long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must wither’d be,
But yet reject them not as such;
520
For I have cherish’d them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold’st them drooping nigh,
And know’st them gather’d by the Rhine,
525
And offer’d from my heart to thine!
4
The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose