Selected Poems

by Byron

  The gazer’s eye with philosophic mirth,

  To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

  CLIII

  But lo! the dome – the vast and wondrous dome,

  1370

  To which Diana’s marvel was a cell –

  Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb!

  I have beheld the Ephesian’s miracle –

  Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell

  The hyæna and the jackall in their shade;

  1375

  I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell

  Their glittering mass i’ the sun, and have survey’d

  Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray’d;

  CLIV

  But thou, of temples old, or altars new,

  Standest alone – with nothing like to thee –

  1380

  Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.

  Since Zion’s desolation, when that He

  Forsook his former city, what could be,

  Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,

  Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

  1385

  Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled

  In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

  CLV

  Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;

  And why? it is not lessen’d; but thy mind,

  Expanded by the genius of the spot,

  1390

  Has grown colossal, and can only find

  A fit abode wherein appear enshrined

  Thy hopes of immortality; and thou

  Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,

  See thy God face to face, as thou dost now

  1395

  His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

  CLVI

  Thou movest – but increasing with the advance,

  Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,

  Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

  Vastness which grows — but grows to harmonise —

  1400

  All musical in its immensities;

  Rich marbles – richer painting – shrines where flame

  The lamps of gold – and haughty dome which vies

  In air with Earth’s chief structures, though their frame

  Sits on the firm-set ground – and this the clouds must claim.

  CLVII

  1405

  Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,

  To separate contemplation, the great whole;

  And as the ocean many bays will make,

  That ask the eve — so here condense thy soul

  To more immediate objects, and control

  1410

  Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart

  Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

  In mighty graduations, part by part,

  The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

  CLVIII

  Not by its fault – but thine: Our outward sense

  1415

  Is but of gradual grasp – and as it is

  That what we have of feeling most intense

  Outstrips our faint expression; even so this

  Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice

  Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great

  1420

  Defies at first our Nature’s littleness,

  Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate

  Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

  CLIX

  Then pause, and be enlighten’d; there is more

  In such a survey than the sating gaze

  1425

  Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore

  The worship of the place, or the mere praise

  Of art and its great masters, who could raise

  What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;

  The fountain of sublimity displays

  1430

  Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man

  Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

  CLX

  Or, turning to the Vatican, go see

  Laocoon’s torture dignifying pain –

  A father’s love and mortal’s agony

  1435

  With an immortal’s patience blending: — Vain

  The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain

  And gripe, and deepening of the dragon’s grasp,

  The old man’s clench; the long envenom’d chain

  Rivets the living links, – the enormous asp

  1440

  Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.

  CLXI

  Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,

  The God of life, and poesy, and light –

  The Sun in human limbs array’d, and brow

  All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

  1445

  The shaft hath just been shot – the arrow bright

  With an immortal’s vengeance; in his eye

  And nostril beautiful disdain, and might

  And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,

  Developing in that one glance the Deity.

  CLXII

  1450

  But in his delicate form – a dream of Love,

  Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast

  Long’d for a deathless lover from above,

  And madden’d in that vision – are exprest

  All that ideal beauty ever bless’d

  1455

  The mind with in its most unearthly mood,

  When each conception was a heavenly guest –

  A ray of immortality — and stood,

  Starlike, around, until they gather’d to a god!

  CLXIII

  And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven

  1460

  The fire which we endure, it was repaid

  By him to whom the energy was given

  Which this poetic marble hath array’d

  With an eternal glory – which, if made

  By human hands, is not of human thought;

  1465

  And Time himself hath hallow’d it, nor laid

  One ringlet in the dust – nor hath it caught

  A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which ’twas wrought.

  CLXIV

  But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,

  The being who upheld it through the past?

  1470

  Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.

  He is no more — these breathings are his last;

  His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,

  And he himself as nothing: – if he was

  Aught but a phantasy, and could be class’d

  1475

  With forms which live and suffer – let that pass –

  His shadow fades away into Destruction’s mass,

  CLXV

  Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all

  That we inherit in its mortal shroud,

  And spreads the dim and universal pall

  1480

  Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud

  Between us sinks and all which ever glow’d,

  Till Glory’s self is twilight, and displays

  A melancholy halo scarce allow’d

  To hover on the verge of darkness; rays

  1485

  Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,

  CLXVI

  And send us prying into the abyss,

  To gather what we shall be when the frame

  Shall be resolved to something less than this

  Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,

  1490

  And wipe the dust from off the idle name

  We never more shall hear, – but never more,

  Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:

  It is enough in sooth that
once we bore

  These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was gore.

  CLXVII

  1495

  Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,

  A long low distant murmur of dread sound,

  Such as arises when a nation bleeds

  With some deep and immedicable wound;

  Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,

  1500

  The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

  Seems royal still, though with her head discrown’d,

  And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief

  She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

  CLXVIII

  Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?

  1505

  Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?

  Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low

  Some less majestic, less beloved head?

  In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,

  The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy,

  1510

  Death hush’d that pang for ever: with thee fled

  The present happiness and promised joy

  Which fill’d the imperial isles so full it seem’d to cloy.

  CLXIX

  Peasants bring forth in safety. – Can it be,

  Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!

  1515

  Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,

  And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard

  Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour’d

  Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head

  Beheld her Iris. – Thou, too, lonely lord,

  1520

  And desolate consort – vainly wert thou wed!

  The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

  CLXX

  Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;

  Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust

  The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid

  1525

  The love of millions! How we did intrust

  Futurity to her! and, though it must

  Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem’d

  Our children should obey her child, and bless’d

  Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d

  1530

  Like stars to shepherds’ eyes: – ’twas but a meteor beam’d.

  CLXXI

  Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:

  The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue

  Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,

  Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung

  1535

  Its knell in princely ears, ’till the o’erstung

  Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate1

  Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung

  Against their blind omnipotence a weight

  Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, –

  CLXXII

  1540

  These might have been her destiny; but no,

  Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,

  Good without effort, great without a foe;

  But now a bride and mother – and now there!

  How many ties did that stern moment tear!

  1545

  From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast

  Is link’d the electric chain of that despair,

  Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and opprest

  The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

  CLXXIII

  Lo, Nemi! navell’d in the woody hills

  1550

  So far, that the uprooting wind which tears

  The oak from his foundation, and which spills

  The ocean o’er its boundary, and bears

  Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares

  The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

  1555

  And, calm as cherish’d hate, its surface wears

  A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,

  All coil’d into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

  CLXXIV

  And near Albano’s scarce divided waves

  Shine from a sister valley; – and afar

  1560

  The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves

  The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war,

  ‘Arms and the Man,’ whose re-ascending star

  Rose o’er an empire: — but beneath thy right

  Tully reposed from Rome; – and where yon bar

  1565

  Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight

  The Sabine farm was till’d, the weary bard’s delight.

  CLXXV

  But I forget. – My Pilgrim’s shrine is won,

  And he and I must part, — so let it be, —

  His task and mine alike are nearly done;

  1570

  Yet once more let us look upon the sea;

  The midland ocean breaks on him and me,

  And from the Alban Mount we now behold

  Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

  Beheld it last by Calpe’s rock unfold

  1575

  Those waves, we follow’d on till the dark Euxine roll’d

  CLXXVI

  Upon the blue Symplegades: long years –

  Long, though not very many, since have done

  Their work on both; some suffering and some tears

  Have left us nearly where we had begun:

  1580

  Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

  We have had our reward – and it is here;

  That we can yet feel gladden’d by the sun,

  And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear

  As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

  CLXXVII

  1585

  Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,

  With one fair Spirit for my minister,

  That I might all forget the human race,

  And, hating no one, love but only her!

  Ye Elements! – in whose ennobling stir

  1590

  I feel myself exalted – Can ye not

  Accord me such a being? Do I err

  In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

  Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

  CLXXVIII

  There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

  1595

  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

  There is society, where none intrudes,

  By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

  I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

  From these our interviews, in which I steal

  1600

  From all I may be, or have been before,

  To mingle with the Universe and feel

  What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.

  CLXXIX

  Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!

  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

  1605

  Man marks the earth with ruin – his control

  Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain

  The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

  A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,

  When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

  1610

  He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

  Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

  CLXXX

  His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fields

  Are not a spoil for him, – thou dost arise

  And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

  1615

  For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,

  Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

  And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray

  And
howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

  His petty hope in some near port or bay,

  1620

  And dashest him again to earth: – there let him lay.

  CLXXXI

  The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

  Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

  And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

  The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

  1625

  Their clay creator the vain title take

  Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

  These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

  They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

  Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

  CLXXXII

  1630

  Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee —

  Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

  Thy waters wasted them while they were free,

  And many a tyrant since; their shores obey

  The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

  1635

  Has dried up realms to deserts: – not so thou,

  Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play –

  Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow –

  Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

  CLXXXIII

  Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form

  1640

  Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

  Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm,

  Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

  Dark-heaving; – boundless, endless, and sublime –

  The image of Eternity – the throne

  1645

  Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

  The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

  Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

  CLXXXIV

  And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

  Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

  1650

  Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

  I wanton’d with thy breakers – they to me

  Were a delight; and if the freshening sea

  Made them a terror – ’twas a pleasing fear,

  For I was as it were a child of thee,

  1655

  And trusted to thy billows far and near,

  And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here.

  CLXXXV

  My task is done – my song hath ceased – my theme

  Has died into an echo; it is fit

  The spell should break of this protracted dream.

  1660

  The torch shall be extinguish’d which hath lit

  My midnight lamp – and what is writ, is writ, –

  Would it were worthier! but I am not now

  That which I have been — and my visions flit

  Less palpably before me – and the glow

  1665

  Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

  CLXXXVI

  Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been –