by Lord Byron
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught’st the rest to see.
With might unquestion’d, — power to save, —
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipp’d thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition’s less than littleness!
III.
Thanks for that lesson — It will teach
To after — warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach ‘d before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore
Those Pagod things of sabre sway
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.
IV.
The triumph and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife —
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem’d made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife —
All quell’d! — Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!
V.
The Desolator desolate!
The Victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others’ fate
A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?
To die a prince — or live a slave —
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!
VI.
He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream’d not of the rebound:
Chain’d by the trunk he vainly broke —
Alone — how look’d he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed halt done at length,
And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowlers’ prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!
VII.
The Roman, when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger — dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home —
He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!
His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon’d power.
VIII.
The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot’s shrine, nor despot’s throne.
IX.
But thou — from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung —
Too late thou leav’st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God’s fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean;
X.
And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!
And Monarchs bow’d the trembling limb,
And thank’d him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne’er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!
XI.
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain —
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:
If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again —
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?
XII.
Weigh’d in the balance, hero dust
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away:
But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,
To dazzle and dismay:
Nor deem’d Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.
XIII.
And she, proud Austria’s mournful flower,
Thy still imperial bride;
How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,
Thou throneless Homicide?
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem, —
‘Tisworth thy vanish’d diadem!
XIV.
Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile —
It ne’er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth’s pedagogue hath now
Transferr’d his by-word to thy brow.
XV.
Thou Timour! in his captive’s cage
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prison’d rage?
But one — ’The world was mine!’
Unless, like he of Babylon,
All sense is with thy sceptre gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit pour’d so widely forth-
So long obey’d — so little worth!
XVI.
Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!
Foredoom’d by God — by man accurst,
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very Fiend’s arch mock
He in his fall preserved his pride,
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!
XVII.
There was a day — there was an hour,
While earth was Gaul’s — Gaul thine —
When that immeasurable power
Unsated to resign
Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo’s name,
And gilded thy decline,
Through the long twilight of all time,
Despite some passing clouds of crime.
XVIII.
But thou forsooth must be a king,
And don the purple vest,
As !f that foolish robe could wring
Remembrance from thy breast.
Where is that faded garment? where
The gewgaws thou Overt fond to wear,
The star, the string the crest?
Vain froward child of empire! say,
Are all thy playthings snatched away?
XIX.
Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes — one — the first — the last — the best —
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath’d the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!
I SPEAK NOT, I
TRACE NOT, I BREATHE NOT THY NAME
I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame;
But the tear that now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.
Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace,
Were those hours – can their joy or their bitterness cease?
We repent, we abjure, we will break from our chain, –
We will part, we will fly to – unite it again!
Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!
Forgive me, adored one! – forsake if thou wilt;
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And man shall not break it – whatever thou may’st.
And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee,
This soul in its bitterest blackness shall be;
And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet,
With thee at my side, than with worlds at our feet.
One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love,
Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove.
And the heartless may wonder at all I resign –
Thy lips shall reply, not to them, but to mine.
May, 1814.
ADDRESS INTENDED TO BE RECITED AT THE CALEDONIAN MEETING.
“Who hath not glow’d above the page where Fame
Hath fix’d high Caledon’s unconquer’d name;
The mountain-land which spurn’d the Roman chain,
And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane,
Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand
No foe could tame — no tyrant could command.
“That race is gone — but still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with redoubled wreath:
O’er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine,
And, England! add their stubborn strength to thine.
The blood which flow’d with Wallace flows as free,
But now ‘tis only shed for fame and thee!
Oh! pass not by the Northern veteran’s claim,
But give support — the world hath given him fame!
“The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled
While cheerly following where the mighty led —
Who sleep beneath the undistinguish’d sod
Where happier comrades in their triumph trod,
To us bequeath — ’tis all their fate allows —
The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse:
She on high Albyn’s dusky hills may raise
The tearful eye in melancholy gaze,
Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose
The Highland seer’s anticipated woes,
The bleeding phantom of each martial form
Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm;
While sad, she chants the solitary song,
The soft lament for him who tarries long —
For him, whose distant relics vainly crave
The coronach’s wild requiem to the brave!
“‘Tis Heaven — not man — must charm away the woe
Which bursts when Nature’s feelings newly flow;
Yet tenderness and time may rob the tear
Of half its bitterness for one so dear:
A nation’s gratitude perchance may spread
A thornless pillow for the widow’d head;
May lighten well her heart’s maternal care,
And wean from penury the soldier’s heir.”
May 1814
FRAGMENT OF AN EPISTLE TO THOMAS MOORE
‘What say I?’ — not a syllable further in prose;
I’m your man ‘of all measures,’ dear Tom, — so here goes!
Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time,
On those buoyant supporters, the bladders of rhyme.
If our weight breaks them down, and we sink in the flood,
We are smother’d, at least, in respectable mud,
Where the Divers of Bathos lie drown’d in a heap,
And Southey’s last Pæan has pillow’d his sleep;
That Felo de se,’ who, half drunk with his malmsey,
Walk’d out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea,
Singing ‘Glory to God’ in a spick and span stanza,
The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never man saw.
The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses,
The fetes, and the gapings to get at these Russes, —
Of his Majesty’s suite, up from coachman to Hetman,
And what dignity decks the flat face of the great man.
I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party, —
For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty.
You know we are used to quite different graces,
The Czar’s look, I own, was much brighter and brisker,
But then he is sadly deficient in whisker;
And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey —
Mere breeches whisk’d round, in a waltz with the Jersey,
Who lovely as ever, seem’d just as delighted
With Majesty’s presence as those she invited.
June 1814.
CONDOLATORY ADDRESS TO SARAH
COUNTESS OF JERSEY, ON THE PRINCE REGENT’S RETURNING HER PICTURE TO MRS. MEE
When the vain triumph of the imperial lord,
Whom servile Rome obey’d, and yet abhorr’d,
Gave to the vulgar gaze each glorious bust,
That left a likeness of the brave or just;
What most admired each scrutinising eye
Of all that deck’d that passing pageantry?
What spread from face to face that wondering air?
The thought of Brutus – for his was not there!
That absence proved his worth, – that absence fix’d
His memory on the longing mind, unmix’d;
And more decreed his glory to endure,
Than all a gold Colossus could secure.
If thus, fair Jersey, our desiring gaze
Search for thy form, in vain and mute amaze,
Amidst those pictured charms, whose loveliness,
Bright though they be, thine own had render’d less:
If he, that vain old man, whom truth admits
Heir of his father’s crown, and of his wits,
If his corrupted eye, and wither’d heart,
Could with thy gentle image bear to part;
That tasteless shame be his, and ours the grief,
To gaze on Beauty’s band without its chief:
Yet comfort still one selfish thought imparts,
We lose the ‘portrait, but preserve our hearts.
What can his vaulted gallery now disclose?
A garden with all flowers — except the rose; —
A fount that only wants its living stream;
A night, with every star, save Dian’s beam.
Lost to our eyes the present forms shall be,
That turn from tracing them to dream of thee;
And more on that recall’d resemblance pause,
Than all he shall not force on our applause.
Long may thy yet meridian lustre shine,
With all that Virtue asks of Homage thine:
The symmetry of youth, the grace of mien,
The eye that gladdens, and the brow serene;
The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair!
Each glance that wins us, and the life that throws
A spell which will not let our looks repose,
But turn to gaze again, and find anew
Some charm that well rewards another view.
These are not lessen’d, these are still as brigh
t,
Albeit too dazzling for a dotard’s sight;
And those must wait till ev’ry charm is gone,
To please the paltry heart that pleases none;-
That dull cold sensualist, whose sickly eye
In envious dimness pass’d thy portrait by;
Who rack’d his little spirit to combine
Its hate of Freedom’s loveliness, and thine.
August 1814.
ELEGIAC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART.
There is a tear for all that die,
A mourner o’er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And Triumph weeps above the brave.
For them is Sorrow’s purest sigh
O’er Ocean’s heaving bosom sent:
In vain their bones unburied lie,
All earth becomes their monument!
A tomb is theirs on every page,
An epitaph on every tongue:
The present hours, the future age,
For them bewail, to them belong.
For them the voice of festal mirth
Grows hush’d, their name the only sound;
While deep Remembrance pours to Worth
The goblet’s tributary round.
A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?
And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined
Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be;
And early valour, glowing, find
A model in thy memory.
But there are breasts that bleed with thee
In woe, that glory cannot quell;
And shuddering hear of victory
Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell.
Where shall they turn to mourn thee less?
When cease to hear thy cherish’d name?
Time cannot teach forgetfulness
While Grief’s full heart is fed by Fame.
Alas! for them, though not for thee,
They cannot choose but weep the more;
Deep for the dead the grief must be,
Who ne’er gave cause to mourn before.
October 1814.
TO BELSHAZZAR
Belshazzar! from the banquet turn,
Nor in thy sensual fulness fall;
Behold! while yet before thee burn
The graven words, the glowing wall.
Many a despot men miscall
Crown’d and anointed from on high;
But thou, the weakest, worst of all
Is it not written, thou must die?
Go! dash the roses from thy brow —
Grey hairs but poorly wreathe with them;
Youth’s garlands misbecome thee now,
More than thy very diadem,
Where thou hast tarnish’d every gem:
Then throw the worthless bauble by,
Which, worn by thee, ev’n slaves contemn;