by Byron
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart –
1070
The dull satiety which all destroys —
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?
CXX
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert; whence arise
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
1075
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
O’er the world’s wilderness, and vainly pants
1080
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.
CXXI
Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art –
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,
But never yet hath seen, nor e’er shall see
1085
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,
And to a thought such shape and image given,
As haunts the unquench’d soul — parch’d — wearied — wrung — and riven.
CXXII
1090
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation: – where,
Where are the forms the sculptor’s soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
1095
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreach’d Paradise of our despair,
Which o’er-informs the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
CXXIII
Who loves, raves – ’tis youth’s frenzy – but the cure
1100
Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind’s
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
1105
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize – wealthiest when most undone.
CXXIV
We wither from our youth, we gasp away –
Sick – sick; unfound the boon – unslaked the thirst,
1110
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first –
But all too late, – so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice – ’tis the same,
Each idle – and all ill – and none the worst –
1115
For all are meteors with a different name,
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
CXXV
Few — none — find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
1120
Antipathies — but to recur, ere long,
Envenom’d with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
1125
Whose touch turns Hope to dust, – the dust we all have trod.
CXXVI
Our life is a false nature – ’tis not in
The harmony of things, - this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,
1130
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew –
Disease, death, bondage – all the woes we see –
And worse, the woes we see not – which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
CXXVII
1135Yet let us ponder boldly – ’tis a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our right of thought – our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the faculty divine
1140
Is chain’d and tortured – cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.
CXXVIII
Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
1145
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As ’twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
1150
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
CXXIX
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o’er this vast and wondrous monument,
1155
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit’s feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruin’d battlement
1160
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.
CXXX
Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled –
1165
Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love, – sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer —
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
1170
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
CXXXI
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate,
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years – though few, yet full of fate: –
1175
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain – shall they not mourn?
CXXXII
1180
And thou, who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long –
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
1185
For that unnatural retribution – just,
Had it but been from hands less near – in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart? – Awake! thou shalt, and must.
CXXXIII
It is not that I may not have incurr’d
1190
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound
I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr’d
With a just weapon, it had flow’d unbound;
But n
ow my blood shall not sink in the ground;
To thee I do devote it – thou shalt take
1195
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,
Which if I have not taken for the sake—
But let that pass – I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake
CXXXIV
And if my voice break forth, ’tis not that now
I shrink from what is suffer’d: let him speak
1200
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind’s convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
1205
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!
CXXXV
That curse shall be Forgiveness. – Have I not –
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! –
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot!
1210
Have I not suffer’d things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain sear’d, my heart riven,
Hopes sapp’d, name blighted, Life’s life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
1215
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.
CXXXVI
From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few
1220
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.
CXXXVII
1225
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
1230
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remember’d tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their soften’d spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.
CXXXVIII
The seal is set. – Now welcome, thou dread power!
1235
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk’st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
1240
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.
CXXXIX
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmur’d pity, or loud-roar’d applause,
1245
As man was slaughter’d by his fellow man.
And wherefore slaughter’d? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus’ genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. – Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
1250
Of worms – on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.
CXL
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand – his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
1255
And his droop’d head sinks gradually low –
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him – he is gone,
1260
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail’d the wretch who won.
CXLI
He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
1265
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother – he, their sire,
Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday1 —
All this rush’d with his blood – Shall he expire
And unavenged? – Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
CXLII
1270
But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roar’d or murmur’d like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman millions’ blame or praise
1275
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,
My voice sounds much – and fall the stars’ faint rays
On the arena void – seats crush’d – walls bow’d –
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.
CXLIII
A ruin – yet what ruin! from its mass
1280
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear’d;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appear’d.
Hath it indeed been plunder’d, or but clear’d?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
1285
When the colossal fabric’s form is near’d:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.
CXLIV
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmast arch, and gently pauses there;
1290
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar’s head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
1295
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot – ’tis on their dust ye tread.
CXLV
‘While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls – the World.’ From our own land
1300
Thus spake the pilgrims o’er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unalter’d all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption’s skill,
1305
The World, the same wide den – of thieves, or what ye will.
CXLVI
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime —
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time;
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
1310
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes – glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time’s scythe and tyrants’ rods
Shiver upon thee – sanctuary and home
Of art and piety – Pantheon! – pride of Rome!
CXLVII
1315
Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
Despoil’d ye
t perfect, with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts –
To art a model; and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
1320
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads;
And they who feel for genius may repose
Their eyes on honour’d forms, whose busts around them close.
CXLVIII
There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light
1325
What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again!
Two forms are slowly shadow’d on my sight –
Two insulated phantoms of the brain:
It is not so; I see them full and plain –
An old man, and a female young and fair,
1330 Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
The blood is nectar: – but what doth she there,
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?
CXLIX
Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
Where on the heart and from the heart we took
1335
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife,
Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook
1340
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves —
What may the fruit be yet? – I know not – Cain was Eve’s.
CL
But here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift: – it is her sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
1345
Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide
Great Nature’s Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt’s river: – from that gentle side
1350
Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven’s realm holds no such tide.
CLI
The starry fable of the milky way
Has not thy story’s purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
1355
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
Where sparkle distant worlds: – Oh, holiest nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy sire’s heart, replenishing its source
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.
CLII
1360
Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear’d on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt’s piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity,
Whose travell’d phantasy from the far Nile’s
Enormous model, doom’d the artist’s toils
1365
To build for giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles