Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  In swifter ripples stream aside the seas,

  Which her bold bow flings off with dashing ease.

  Thus Argo ploughed the Euxine’s virgin foam,

  But those she wafted still looked back to home; 230

  These spurn their country with their rebel bark,

  And fly her as the raven fled the Ark;

  And yet they seek to nestle with the dove,

  And tame their fiery spirits down to Love.

  End of Canto 1st, Jn 14.

  CANTO THE SECOND.

  I.

  How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai,

  When Summer’s Sun went down the coral bay!

  Come, let us to the islet’s softest shade,

  And hear the warbling birds! the damsels said:

  The wood-dove from the forest depth shall coo,

  Like voices of the Gods from Bolotoo;

  We’ll cull the flowers that grow above the dead,

  For these most bloom where rests the warrior’s head;

  And we will sit in Twilight’s face, and see

  The sweet Moon glancing through the Tooa tree, 10

  The lofty accents of whose sighing bough

  Shall sadly please us as we lean below;

  Or climb the steep, and view the surf in vain

  Wrestle with rocky giants o’er the main,

  Which spurn in columns back the baffled spray.

  How beautiful are these! how happy they,

  Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives,

  Steal to look down where nought but Ocean strives!

  Even He too loves at times the blue lagoon,

  And smooths his ruffled mane beneath the Moon. 20

  II.

  Yes — from the sepulchre we’ll gather flowers,

  Then feast like spirits in their promised bowers,

  Then plunge and revel in the rolling surf,

  Then lay our limbs along the tender turf,

  And, wet and shining from the sportive toil,

  Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil,

  And plait our garlands gathered from the grave,

  And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave.

  But lo! night comes, the Mooa woos us back,

  The sound of mats are heard along our track; 30

  Anon the torchlight dance shall fling its sheen

  In flashing mazes o’er the Marly’s green;

  And we too will be there; we too recall

  The memory bright with many a festival,

  Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes

  For the first time were wafted in canoes.

  Alas! for them the flower of manhood bleeds;

  Alas! for them our fields are rank with weeds:

  Forgotten is the rapture, or unknown,

  Of wandering with the Moon and Love alone. 40

  But be it so: — they taught us how to wield

  The club, and rain our arrows o’er the field:

  Now let them reap the harvest of their art!

  But feast to-night! to-morrow we depart.

  Strike up the dance! the Cava bowl fill high!

  Drain every drop! — to-morrow we may die.

  In summer garments be our limbs arrayed;

  Around our waists the Tappa’s white displayed;

  Thick wreaths shall form our coronal, like Spring’s,

  And round our necks shall glance the Hooni strings; 50

  So shall their brighter hues contrast the glow

  Of the dusk bosoms that beat high below.

  III.

  But now the dance is o’er — yet stay awhile;

  Ah, pause! nor yet put out the social smile.

  To-morrow for the Mooa we depart,

  But not to-night — to-night is for the heart.

  Again bestow the wreaths we gently woo,

  Ye young Enchantresses of gay Licoo!

  How lovely are your forms! how every sense

  Bows to your beauties, softened, but intense, 60

  Like to the flowers on Mataloco’s steep,

  Which fling their fragrance far athwart the deep! —

  We too will see Licoo; but — oh! my heart! —

  What do I say? — to-morrow we depart!

  IV.

  Thus rose a song — the harmony of times

  Before the winds blew Europe o’er these climes.

  True, they had vices — such are Nature’s growth —

  But only the barbarian’s — we have both;

  The sordor of civilisation, mixed

  With all the savage which Man’s fall hath fixed. 70

  Who hath not seen Dissimulation’s reign,

  The prayers of Abel linked to deeds of Cain?

  Who such would see may from his lattice view

  The Old World more degraded than the New, —

  Now new no more, save where Columbia rears

  Twin giants, born by Freedom to her spheres,

  Where Chimborazo, over air, — earth, — wave, —

  Glares with his Titan eye, and sees no slave.

  V.

  Such was this ditty of Tradition’s days,

  Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys 80

  In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign

  Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;

  Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,

  But yields young History all to Harmony;

  A boy Achilles, with the Centaur’s lyre

  In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.

  For one long-cherished ballad’s simple stave,

  Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,

  Or from the bubbling streamlet’s grassy side,

  Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, 90

  Hath greater power o’er each true heart and ear,

  Than all the columns Conquest’s minions rear;

  Invites, when Hieroglyphics are a theme

  For sages’ labours, or the student’s dream;

  Attracts, when History’s volumes are a toil, —

  The first, the freshest bud of Feeling’s soil.

  Such was this rude rhyme — rhyme is of the rude —

  But such inspired the Norseman’s solitude,

  Who came and conquered; such, wherever rise

  Lands which no foes destroy or civilise, 100

  Exist: and what can our accomplished art

  Of verse do more than reach the awakened heart?

  VI.

  And sweetly now those untaught melodies

  Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,

  The sweet siesta of a summer day,

  The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,

  When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,

  And the first breath began to stir the palm,

  The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave

  All gently to refresh the thirsty cave, 110

  Where sat the Songstress with the stranger boy,

  Who taught her Passion’s desolating joy,

  Too powerful over every heart, but most

  O’er those who know not how it may be lost;

  O’er those who, burning in the new-born fire,

  Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,

  With such devotion to their ecstacy,

  That Life knows no such rapture as to die:

  And die they do; for earthly life has nought

  Matched with that burst of Nature, even in thought; 120

  And all our dreams of better life above

  But close in one eternal gush of Love.

  VII.

  There sat the gentle savage of the wild,

  In growth a woman, though in years a child,

  As childhood dates within our colder clime,

  Where nought is ripened rapidly save crime;

  The
infant of an infant world, as pure

  From Nature — lovely, warm, and premature;

  Dusky like night, but night with all her stars;

  Or cavern sparkling with its native spars; 130

  With eyes that were a language and a spell,

  A form like Aphrodite’s in her shell,

  With all her loves around her on the deep,

  Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;

  Yet full of life — for through her tropic cheek

  The blush would make its way, and all but speak;

  The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw

  O’er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,

  Like coral reddening through the darkened wave,

  Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. 140

  Such was this daughter of the southern seas,

  Herself a billow in her energies,

  To bear the bark of others’ happiness,

  Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:

  Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew

  No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne’er drew

  Aught from Experience, that chill touchstone, whose

  Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:

  She feared no ill, because she knew it not,

  Or what she knew was soon — too soon — forgot: 150

  Her smiles and tears had passed, as light winds pass

  O’er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,

  Whose depths unsearched, and fountains from the hill,

  Restore their surface, in itself so still,

  Until the Earthquake tear the Naiad’s cave,

  Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,

  And crush the living waters to a mass,

  The amphibious desert of the dank morass!

  And must their fate be hers? The eternal change

  But grasps Humanity with quicker range; 160

  And they who fall but fall as worlds will fall,

  To rise, if just, a Spirit o’er them all.

  VIII.

  And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child

  Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;

  The fair-haired offspring of the Hebrides,

  Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas;

  Rocked in his cradle by the roaring wind,

  The tempest-born in body and in mind,

  His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam,

  Had from that moment deemed the deep his home, 170

  The giant comrade of his pensive moods,

  The sharer of his craggy solitudes,

  The only Mentor of his youth, where’er

  His bark was borne; the sport of wave and air;

  A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance,

  Nursed by the legends of his land’s romance;

  Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,

  Acquainted with all feelings save despair.

  Placed in the Arab’s clime he would have been

  As bold a rover as the sands have seen, 180

  And braved their thirst with as enduring lip

  As Ishmael, wafted on his Desert-Ship;

  Fixed upon Chili’s shore, a proud cacique:

  On Hellas’ mountains, a rebellious Greek;

  Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane;

  Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.

  For the same soul that rends its path to sway,

  If reared to such, can find no further prey

  Beyond itself, and must retrace its way,

  Plunging for pleasure into pain: the same 190

  Spirit which made a Nero, Rome’s worst shame,

  A humbler state and discipline of heart,

  Had formed his glorious namesake’s counterpart;

  But grant his vices, grant them all his own,

  How small their theatre without a throne!

  IX.

  Thou smilest: — these comparisons seem high

  To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;

  Linked with the unknown name of one whose doom

  Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,

  With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby; — 200

  Thou smilest? — Smile; ‘tis better thus than sigh;

  Yet such he might have been; he was a man,

  A soaring spirit, ever in the van,

  A patriot hero or despotic chief,

  To form a nation’s glory or its grief,

  Born under auspices which make us more

  Or less than we delight to ponder o’er.

  But these are visions; say, what was he here?

  A blooming boy, a truant mutineer.

  The fair-haired Torquil, free as Ocean’s spray, 210

  The husband of the bride of Toobonai.

  X.

  By Neuha’s side he sate, and watched the waters, —

  Neuha, the sun-flower of the island daughters,

  Highborn, (a birth at which the herald smiles,

  Without a scutcheon for these secret isles,)

  Of a long race, the valiant and the free,

  The naked knights of savage chivalry,

  Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore;

  And thine — I’ve seen — Achilles! do no more.

  She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came, 220

  In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame,

  Topped with tall trees, which, loftier than the palm,

  Seemed rooted in the deep amidst its calm:

  But when the winds awakened, shot forth wings

  Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,

  And swayed the waves, like cities of the sea,

  Making the very billows look less free; —

  She, with her paddling oar and dancing prow,

  Shot through the surf, like reindeer through the snow,

  Swift-gliding o’er the breaker’s whitening edge, 230

  Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge,

  And gazed and wondered at the giant hulk,

  Which heaved from wave to wave its trampling bulk.

  The anchor dropped; it lay along the deep,

  Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,

  While round it swarmed the Proas’ flitting chain,

  Like summer bees that hum around his mane.

  XI.

  The white man landed! — need the rest be told?

  The New World stretched its dusk hand to the Old;

  Each was to each a marvel, and the tie 240

  Of wonder warmed to better sympathy.

  Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires,

  And kinder still their daughters’ gentler fires.

  Their union grew: the children of the storm

  Found beauty linked with many a dusky form;

  While these in turn admired the paler glow,

  Which seemed so white in climes that knew no snow.

  The chace, the race, the liberty to roam,

  The soil where every cottage showed a home;

  The sea-spread net, the lightly launched canoe, 250

  Which stemmed the studded archipelago,

  O’er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles;

  The healthy slumber, earned by sportive toils;

  The palm, the loftiest Dryad of the woods,

  Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods,

  While eagles scarce build higher than the crest

  Which shadows o’er the vineyard in her breast;

  The Cava feast, the Yam, the Cocoa’s root,

  Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit;

  The Bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields 260

  The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields,

  And bakes its unadulterated loaves

  Without a furnace in unpurchased groves,

&
nbsp; And flings off famine from its fertile breast,

  A priceless market for the gathering guest; —

  These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,

  The airy joys of social solitudes,

  Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies

  Of those who were more happy, if less wise,

  Did more than Europe’s discipline had done, 270

  And civilised Civilisation’s son!

  XII.

  Of these, and there was many a willing pair,

  Neuha and Torquil were not the least fair:

  Both children of the isles, though distant far;

  Both born beneath a sea-presiding star;

  Both nourished amidst Nature’s native scenes,

  Loved to the last, whatever intervenes

  Between us and our Childhood’s sympathy,

  Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.

  He who first met the Highlands’ swelling blue 280

  Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,

  Hail in each crag a friend’s familiar face,

  And clasp the mountain in his Mind’s embrace.

  Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine,

  Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,

  Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep

  Jove’s Ida and Olympus crown the deep:

  But ‘twas not all long ages’ lore, nor all

  Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;

  The infant rapture still survived the boy, 290

  And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o’er Troy,

  Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,

  And Highland linns with Castalie’s clear fount.

  Forgive me, Homer’s universal shade!

  Forgive me, Phœbus! that my fancy strayed;

  The North and Nature taught me to adore

  Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before.

  XIII.

  The love which maketh all things fond and fair,

  The youth which makes one rainbow of the air,

  The dangers past, that make even Man enjoy 300

  The pause in which he ceases to destroy,

  The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel

  Strike to their hearts like lightning to the steel,

  United the half savage and the whole,

  The maid and boy, in one absorbing soul.

  No more the thundering memory of the fight

  Wrapped his weaned bosom in its dark delight;

  No more the irksome restlessness of Rest

  Disturbed him like the eagle in her nest,

  Whose whetted beak and far-pervading eye 310

  Darts for a victim over all the sky:

  His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state,

  At once Elysian and effeminate,

  Which leaves no laurels o’er the Hero’s urn; —