Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  In mockery of man’s art; and these withal

  A race of faces happy as the scene,

  Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,

  Still springing o’er thy banks, though empires near them fall.

  LXII.

  But these recede. Above me are the Alps,

  The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls

  Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,

  And throned Eternity in icy halls

  Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls

  The avalanche – the thunderbolt of snow!

  All that expands the spirit, yet appals,

  Gathers around these summits, as to show

  How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.

  LXIII.

  But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,

  There is a spot should not be passed in vain, –

  Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man

  May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,

  Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain;

  Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host,

  A bony heap, through ages to remain,

  Themselves their monument; – the Stygian coast

  Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.

  LXIV.

  While Waterloo with Cannæ’s carnage vies,

  Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;

  They were true Glory’s stainless victories,

  Won by the unambitious heart and hand

  Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band,

  All unbought champions in no princely cause

  Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land

  Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws

  Making king’s rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

  LXV.

  By a lone wall a lonelier column rears

  A grey and grief-worn aspect of old days

  ‘Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,

  And looks as with the wild bewildered gaze

  Of one to stone converted by amaze,

  Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands,

  Making a marvel that it not decays,

  When the coeval pride of human hands,

  Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.

  LXVI.

  And there – oh! sweet and sacred be the name! –

  Julia – the daughter, the devoted – gave

  Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim

  Nearest to Heaven’s, broke o’er a father’s grave.

  Justice is sworn ‘gainst tears, and hers would crave

  The life she lived in; but the judge was just,

  And then she died on him she could not save.

  Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,

  And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.

  LXVII.

  But these are deeds which should not pass away,

  And names that must not wither, though the earth

  Forgets her empires with a just decay,

  The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;

  The high, the mountain-majesty of worth,

  Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,

  And from its immortality look forth

  In the sun’s face, like yonder Alpine snow,

  Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

  LXVIII.

  Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,

  The mirror where the stars and mountains view

  The stillness of their aspect in each trace

  Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:

  There is too much of man here, to look through

  With a fit mind the might which I behold;

  But soon in me shall Loneliness renew

  Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,

  Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.

  LXIX.

  To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind;

  All are not fit with them to stir and toil,

  Nor is it discontent to keep the mind

  Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

  In one hot throng, where we become the spoil

  Of our infection, till too late and long

  We may deplore and struggle with the coil,

  In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong

  Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

  LXX.

  There, in a moment, we may plunge our years

  In fatal penitence, and in the blight

  Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,

  And colour things to come with hues of Night;

  The race of life becomes a hopeless flight

  To those that walk in darkness: on the sea,

  The boldest steer but where their ports invite,

  But there are wanderers o’er Eternity

  Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne’er shall be.

  LXXI.

  Is it not better, then, to be alone,

  And love Earth only for its earthly sake?

  By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,

  Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,

  Which feeds it as a mother who doth make

  A fair but froward infant her own care,

  Kissing its cries away as these awake; –

  Is it not better thus our lives to wear,

  Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?

  LXXII.

  I live not in myself, but I become

  Portion of that around me; and to me,

  High mountains are a feeling, but the hum

  Of human cities torture: I can see

  Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be

  A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

  Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,

  And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

  Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

  LXXIII.

  And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:

  I look upon the peopled desert Past,

  As on a place of agony and strife,

  Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,

  To act and suffer, but remount at last

  With a fresh pinion; which I felt to spring,

  Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast

  Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,

  Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.

  LXXIV.

  And when, at length, the mind shall be all free

  From what it hates in this degraded form,

  Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be

  Existent happier in the fly and worm, –

  When elements to elements conform,

  And dust is as it should be, shall I not

  Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?

  The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?

  Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

  LXXV.

  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part

  Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

  Is not the love of these deep in my heart

  With a pure passion? should I not contemn

  All objects, if compared with these? and stem

  A tide of suffering, rather than forego

  Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm

  Of those whose eyes are only turned below,

  Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?

  LXXVI.

  But this is not my theme; and I return

  To that which is immediate, and require

  Those who find contemplation in the urn,

  To look on One
whose dust was once all fire,

  A native of the land where I respire

  The clear air for awhile – a passing guest,

  Where he became a being, – whose desire

  Was to be glorious; ‘twas a foolish quest,

  The which to gain and keep he sacrificed all rest.

  LXXVII.

  Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,

  The apostle of affliction, he who threw

  Enchantment over passion, and from woe

  Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew

  The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew

  How to make madness beautiful, and cast

  O’er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue

  Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past

  The eyes, which o’er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

  LXXVIII.

  His love was passion’s essence – as a tree

  On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame

  Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be

  Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.

  But his was not the love of living dame,

  Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,

  But of Ideal beauty, which became

  In him existence, and o’erflowing teems

  Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.

  LXXIX.

  This breathed itself to life in Julie, this

  Invested her with all that’s wild and sweet;

  This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss

  Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,

  From hers, who but with friendship his would meet:

  But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast

  Flashed the thrilled spirit’s love-devouring heat;

  In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest,

  Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.

  LXXX.

  His life was one long war with self-sought foes,

  Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind

  Had grown Suspicion’s sanctuary, and chose

  For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

  ‘Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.

  But he was frenzied, – wherefore, who may know?

  Since cause might be which skill could never find;

  But he was frenzied by disease or woe

  To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

  LXXXI.

  For then he was inspired, and from him came,

  As from the Pythian’s mystic cave of yore,

  Those oracles which set the world in flame,

  Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more:

  Did he not this for France, which lay before

  Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?

  Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore,

  Till by the voice of him and his compeers

  Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o’ergrown fears?

  LXXXII.

  They made themselves a fearful monument!

  The wreck of old opinions – things which grew,

  Breathed from the birth of time: the veil they rent,

  And what behind it lay, all earth shall view.

  But good with ill they also overthrew,

  Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild

  Upon the same foundation, and renew

  Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled,

  As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed.

  LXXXIII.

  But this will not endure, nor be endured!

  Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.

  They might have used it better, but, allured

  By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt

  On one another; Pity ceased to melt

  With her once natural charities. But they,

  Who in Oppression’s darkness caved had dwelt,

  They were not eagles, nourished with the day;

  What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?

  LXXXIV.

  What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?

  The heart’s bleed longest, and but heal to wear

  That which disfigures it; and they who war

  With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear

  Silence, but not submission: in his lair

  Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour

  Which shall atone for years; none need despair:

  It came, it cometh, and will come, – the power

  To punish or forgive – in one we shall be slower.

  LXXXV.

  Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,

  With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing

  Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake

  Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.

  This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

  To waft me from distraction; once I loved

  Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring

  Sounds sweet as if a sister’s voice reproved,

  That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.

  LXXXVI.

  It is the hush of night, and all between

  Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,

  Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen.

  Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear

  Precipitously steep; and drawing near,

  There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,

  Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear

  Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

  Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;

  LXXXVII.

  He is an evening reveller, who makes

  His life an infancy, and sings his fill;

  At intervals, some bird from out the brakes

  Starts into voice a moment, then is still.

  There seems a floating whisper on the hill,

  But that is fancy, for the starlight dews

  All silently their tears of love instil,

  Weeping themselves away, till they infuse

  Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.

  LXXXVIII.

  Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,

  If in your bright leaves we would read the fate

  Of men and empires, – ‘tis to be forgiven,

  That in our aspirations to be great,

  Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,

  And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

  A beauty and a mystery, and create

  In us such love and reverence from afar,

  That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

  LXXXIX.

  All heaven and earth are still – though not in sleep,

  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;

  And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep: –

  All heaven and earth are still: from the high host

  Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,

  All is concentered in a life intense,

  Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

  But hath a part of being, and a sense

  Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

  XC.

  Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt

  In solitude, where we are least alone;

  A truth, which through our being then doth melt,

  And purifies from self: it is a tone,

  The soul and source of music, which makes known

  Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,

  Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone,

  Binding all things with beauty; – ‘twould disarm

  The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.


  XCI.

  Nor vainly did the early Persian make

  His altar the high places and the peak

  Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take

  A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek

  The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,

  Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare

  Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,

  With Nature’s realms of worship, earth and air,

  Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!

  XCII.

  The sky is changed! – and such a change! O night,

  And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,

  Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

  Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

  From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

  Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,

  But every mountain now hath found a tongue;

  And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,

  Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

  XCIII.

  And this is in the night: – Most glorious night!

  Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be

  A sharer in thy fierce and far delight –

  A portion of the tempest and of thee!

  How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,

  And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

  And now again ‘tis black, – and now, the glee

  Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,

  As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.

  XCIV.

  Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between

  Heights which appear as lovers who have parted

  In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,

  That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;

  Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,

  Love was the very root of the fond rage

  Which blighted their life’s bloom, and then departed:

  Itself expired, but leaving them an age

  Of years all winters – war within themselves to wage.

  XCV.

  Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,

  The mightiest of the storms hath ta’en his stand;

  For here, not one, but many, make their play,

  And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,

  Flashing and cast around: of all the band,

  The brightest through these parted hills hath forked

  His lightnings, as if he did understand

  That in such gaps as desolation worked,

  There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.

  XCVI.

  Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,

  With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul

  To make these felt and feeling, well may be

  Things that have made me watchful; the far roll