Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  Forgetting each omission is a loss to

  The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

  XCVII

  I know that what our neighbours call “longueurs”

  (We’ve not so good a word, but have the thing

  In that complete perfection which ensures

  An epic from Bob Southey every spring),

  Form not the true temptation which allures

  The reader; but ‘t would not be hard to bring

  Some fine examples of the epopée,

  To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

  XCVIII

  We learn from Horace, “Homer sometimes sleeps;”

  We feel without him: Wordsworth sometimes wakes,

  To show with what complacency he creeps,

  With his dear “Waggoners,” around his lakes.

  He wishes for “a boat” to sail the deeps —

  Of ocean? — No, of air; and then he makes

  Another outcry for “a little boat,”

  And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

  XCIX

  If he must fain sweep o’er the ethereal plain,

  And Pegasus runs restive in his “Waggon,”

  Could he not beg the loan of Charles’s Wain?

  Or pray Medea for a single dragon?

  Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain,

  He fear’d his neck to venture such a nag on,

  And he must needs mount nearer to the moon,

  Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

  C

  “Pedlars,” and “Boats,” and “Waggons!” Oh! ye shades

  Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

  That trash of such sort not alone evades

  Contempt, but from the bathos’ vast abyss

  Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades

  Of sense and song above your graves may hiss —

  The “little boatman” and his “Peter Bell”

  Can sneer at him who drew “Achitophel”!

  CI

  T’ our tale. — The feast was over, the slaves gone,

  The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;

  The Arab lore and poet’s song were done,

  And every sound of revelry expired;

  The lady and her lover, left alone,

  The rosy flood of twilight’s sky admired; —

  Ave Maria! o’er the earth and sea,

  That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!

  CII

  Ave Maria! blesséd be the hour!

  The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft

  Have felt that moment in its fullest power

  Sink o’er the earth so beautiful and soft,

  While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,

  Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,

  And not a breath crept through the rosy air,

  And yet the forest leaves seem’d stirr’d with prayer.

  CIII

  Ave Maria! ‘t is the hour of prayer!

  Ave Maria! ‘t is the hour of love!

  Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

  Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!

  Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

  Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove —

  What though ‘t is but a pictured image? — strike —

  That painting is no idol, — ’t is too like.

  CIV

  Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,

  In nameless print — that I have no devotion;

  But set those persons down with me to pray,

  And you shall see who has the properest notion

  Of getting into heaven the shortest way;

  My altars are the mountains and the ocean,

  Earth, air, stars, — all that springs from the great Whole,

  Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.

  CV

  Sweet Hour of Twilight! — in the solitude

  Of the pine forest, and the silent shore

  Which bounds Ravenna’s immemorial wood,

  Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow’d o’er,

  To where the last Caesarean fortress stood,

  Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio’s lore

  And Dryden’s lay made haunted ground to me,

  How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

  CVI

  The shrill cicadas, people of the pine,

  Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,

  Were the sole echoes, save my steed’s and mine,

  And vesper bell’s that rose the boughs along;

  The spectre huntsman of Onesti’s line,

  His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng

  Which learn’d from this example not to fly

  From a true lover, — shadow’d my mind’s eye.

  CVII

  Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things —

  Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,

  To the young bird the parent’s brooding wings,

  The welcome stall to the o’erlabour’d steer;

  Whate’er of peace about our hearthstone clings,

  Whate’er our household gods protect of dear,

  Are gather’d round us by thy look of rest;

  Thou bring’st the child, too, to the mother’s breast.

  CVIII

  Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

  Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

  When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;

  Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way

  As the far bell of vesper makes him start,

  Seeming to weep the dying day’s decay;

  Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?

  Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

  CIX

  When Nero perish’d by the justest doom

  Which ever the destroyer yet destroy’d,

  Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,

  Of nations freed, and the world overjoy’d,

  Some hands unseen strew’d flowers upon his tomb:

  Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void

  Of feeling for some kindness done, when power

  Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

  CX

  But I’m digressing; what on earth has Nero,

  Or any such like sovereign buffoons,

  To do with the transactions of my hero,

  More than such madmen’s fellow man — the moon’s?

  Sure my invention must be down at zero,

  And I grown one of many “wooden spoons”

  Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please

  To dub the last of honours in degrees).

  CXI

  I feel this tediousness will never do —

  ’T is being too epic, and I must cut down

  (In copying) this long canto into two;

  They’ll never find it out, unless I own

  The fact, excepting some experienced few;

  And then as an improvement ‘t will be shown:

  I ‘ll prove that such the opinion of the critic is

  From Aristotle passim. — See poietikes.

  DON JUAN: CANTO THE FOURTH

  I

  Nothing so difficult as a beginning

  In poesy, unless perhaps the end;

  For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning

  The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,

  Like Lucifer when hurl’d from heaven for sinning;

  Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,

  Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,

  Till our own weakness shows us what we are.

  II

  But Time, which brings all beings to their level,

  And sharp Adversity, will teach at
last

  Man, — and, as we would hope, — perhaps the devil,

  That neither of their intellects are vast:

  While youth’s hot wishes in our red veins revel,

  We know not this — the blood flows on too fast;

  But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,

  We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

  III

  As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,

  And wish’d that others held the same opinion;

  They took it up when my days grew more mellow,

  And other minds acknowledged my dominion:

  Now my sere fancy “falls into the yellow

  Leaf,” and Imagination droops her pinion,

  And the sad truth which hovers o’er my desk

  Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

  IV

  And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

  ’T is that I may not weep; and if I weep,

  ‘T is that our nature cannot always bring

  Itself to apathy, for we must steep

  Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe’s spring,

  Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep:

  Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;

  A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.

  V

  Some have accused me of a strange design

  Against the creed and morals of the land,

  And trace it in this poem every line:

  I don’t pretend that I quite understand

  My own meaning when I would be very fine;

  But the fact is that I have nothing plann’d,

  Unless it were to be a moment merry,

  A novel word in my vocabulary.

  VI

  To the kind reader of our sober clime

  This way of writing will appear exotic;

  Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,

  Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,

  And revell’d in the fancies of the time,

  True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic:

  But all these, save the last, being obsolete,

  I chose a modern subject as more meet.

  VII

  How I have treated it, I do not know;

  Perhaps no better than they have treated me

  Who have imputed such designs as show

  Not what they saw, but what they wish’d to see:

  But if it gives them pleasure, be it so;

  This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free:

  Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear,

  And tells me to resume my story here.

  VIII

  Young Juan and his lady-love were left

  To their own hearts’ most sweet society;

  Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft

  With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms; he

  Sigh’d to behold them of their hours bereft,

  Though foe to love; and yet they could not be

  Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,

  Before one charm or hope had taken wing.

  IX

  Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their

  Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail;

  The blank grey was not made to blast their hair,

  But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail

  They were all summer: lightning might assail

  And shiver them to ashes, but to trail

  A long and snake-like life of dull decay

  Was not for them — they had too little day.

  X

  They were alone once more; for them to be

  Thus was another Eden; they were never

  Weary, unless when separate: the tree

  Cut from its forest root of years — the river

  Damm’d from its fountain — the child from the knee

  And breast maternal wean’d at once for ever, —

  Would wither less than these two torn apart;

  Alas! there is no instinct like the heart —

  XI

  The heart — which may be broken: happy they!

  Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould,

  The precious porcelain of human clay,

  Break with the first fall: they can ne’er behold

  The long year link’d with heavy day on day,

  And all which must be borne, and never told;

  While life’s strange principle will often lie

  Deepest in those who long the most to die.

  XII

  ‘Whom the gods love die young,’ was said of yore,

  And many deaths do they escape by this:

  The death of friends, and that which slays even more —

  The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,

  Except mere breath; and since the silent shore

  Awaits at last even those who longest miss

  The old archer’s shafts, perhaps the early grave

  Which men weep over may be meant to save.

  XIII

  Haidée and Juan thought not of the dead —

  The heavens, and earth, and air, seem’d made for them:

  They found no fault with Time, save that he fled;

  They saw not in themselves aught to condemn:

  Each was the other’s mirror, and but read

  Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem,

  And knew such brightness was but the reflection

  Of their exchanging glances of affection.

  XIV

  The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch,

  The least glance better understood than words,

  Which still said all, and ne’er could say too much;

  A language, too, but like to that of birds,

  Known but to them, at least appearing such

  As but to lovers a true sense affords;

  Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd

  To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne’er heard:

  XV

  All these were theirs, for they were children still,

  And children still they should have ever been;

  They were not made in the real world to fill

  A busy character in the dull scene,

  But like two beings born from out a rill,

  A nymph and her beloved, all unseen

  To pass their lives in fountains and on flowers,

  And never know the weight of human hours.

  XVI

  Moons changing had roll’d on, and changeless found

  Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys

  As rarely they beheld throughout their round;

  And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,

  For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound

  By the mere senses; and that which destroys

  Most love, possession, unto them appear’d

  A thing which each endearment more endear’d.

  XVII

  Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful

  But theirs was love in which the mind delights

  To lose itself when the old world grows dull,

  And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,

  Intrigues, adventures of the common school,

  Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,

  Where Hymen’s torch but brands one strumpet more,

  Whose husband only knows her not a wh-re.

  XVIII

  Hard words; harsh truth; a truth which many know.

  Enough. — The faithful and the fairy pair,

  Who never found a single hour too slow,

  What was it made them thus exempt from care?

  Young innate feelings all have felt below,

  Which perish in the rest, but in them were

  Inherent — what we mortals call romantic,

&nb
sp; And always envy, though we deem it frantic.

  XIX

  This is in others a factitious state,

  An opium dream of too much youth and reading,

  But was in them their nature or their fate:

  No novels e’er had set their young hearts bleeding,

  For Haidée’s knowledge was by no means great,

  And Juan was a boy of saintly breeding;

  So that there was no reason for their loves

  More than for those of nightingales or doves.

  XX

  They gazed upon the sunset; ‘t is an hour

  Dear unto all, but dearest to their eyes,

  For it had made them what they were: the power

  Of love had first o’erwhelm’d them from such skies,

  When happiness had been their only dower,

  And twilight saw them link’d in passion’s ties;

  Charm’d with each other, all things charm’d that brought

  The past still welcome as the present thought.

  XXI

  I know not why, but in that hour to-night,

  Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor came,

  And swept, as ‘t were, across their hearts’ delight,

  Like the wind o’er a harp-string, or a flame,

  When one is shook in sound, and one in sight;

  And thus some boding flash’d through either frame,

  And call’d from Juan’s breast a faint low sigh,

  While one new tear arose in Haidée’s eye.

  XXII

  That large black prophet eye seem’d to dilate

  And follow far the disappearing sun,

  As if their last day of a happy date

  With his broad, bright, and dropping orb were gone;

  Juan gazed on her as to ask his fate —

  He felt a grief, but knowing cause for none,

  His glance inquired of hers for some excuse

  For feelings causeless, or at least abstruse.

  XXIII

  She turn’d to him, and smiled, but in that sort

  Which makes not others smile; then turn’d aside:

  Whatever feeling shook her, it seem’d short,

  And master’d by her wisdom or her pride;

  When Juan spoke, too — it might be in sport —

  Of this their mutual feeling, she replied —

  “If it should be so, — but — it cannot be —

  Or I at least shall not survive to see.”

  XXIV

  Juan would question further, but she press’d

  His lip to hers, and silenced him with this,

  And then dismiss’d the omen from her breast,

  Defying augury with that fond kiss;

  And no doubt of all methods ‘t is the best:

  Some people prefer wine — ‘t is not amiss;

  I have tried both; so those who would a part take

  May choose between the headache and the heartache.