Selected Poems

by Byron

  Thy days of health, and nights of sleep; thy toils,

  By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes

  Of cheerful old age and a quiet grave,

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  With cross and garland over its green turf,

  And thy grandchildren’s love for epitaph;

  This do I see – and then I look within –

  It matters not – my soul was scorch’d already!

  CHAMOIS HUNTER: And would’st thou then exchange thy lot for mine?

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  MANFRED: No, friend! I would not wrong thee, nor exchange

  My lot with living being: I can bear –

  However wretchedly, ’tis still to bear —

  In life what others could not brook to dream,

  But perish in their slumber.

  CHAMOIS HUNTER:And with this –

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  This cautious feeling for another’s pain,

  Canst thou be black with evil? – say not so.

  Can one of gentle thoughts have wreak’d revenge

  Upon his enemies?

  MANFRED:Oh! no, no, no!

  My injuries came down on those who loved me –

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  On those whom I best loved: I never quell’d

  An enemy, save in my just defence –

  My wrongs were all on those I should have cherished

  But my embrace was fatal.

  CHAMOIS HUNTER:Heaven give thee rest!

  And penitence restore thee to thyself;

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  My prayers shall be for thee.

  MANFRED:I need them not,

  But can endure thy pity. I depart –

  ’Tis time – farewell! – Here’s gold, and thanks for thee –

  No words – it is thy due. – Follow me not –

  I know my path — the mountain peril’s past:

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  And once again, I charge thee, follow not!

  [Exit MANFRED.]

  SCENE II

  A lower Valley in the Alps. – A Cataract.

  [Enter MANFRED.]

  It is not noon – the sunbow’s rays1 still arch

  The torrent with the many hues of heaven,

  And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column

  O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular,

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  And fling its lines of foaming light along,

  And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,

  The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death,

  As told in the Apocalypse. No eyes

  But mine now drink this sight of loveliness;

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  I should be sole in this sweet solitude,

  And with the Spirit of the place divide

  The homage of these waters. – I will call her.

  [MANFRED takes some of the water into the palm of his hand, and flings it into the air, muttering the adjuration. After a pause, the WITCH OF THE ALPS rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent.]

  Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light,

  And dazzling eyes of glory in whose form

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  The charms of earth’s least mortal daughters grow

  To an unearthly stature, in an essence

  Of purer elements; while the hues of youth, –

  Carnation’d like a sleeping infant’s cheek,

  Rock’d by the beating of her mother’s heart,

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  Or the rose tints, which summer’s twilight leaves

  Upon the lofty glacier’s virgin snow,

  The blush of earth embracing with her heaven, –

  Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame

  The beauties of the sunbow which bends o’er thee.

  25Beautiful Spirit! in thy calm clear brow,

  Wherein is glass’d serenity of soul,

  Which of itself shows immortality,

  I read that thou wilt pardon to a Son

  Of Earth, whom the abstruser powers permit

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  At times to commune with them – if that he

  Avail him of his spells – to call thee thus,

  And gaze on thee a moment.

  WITCH: Son of Earth!

  I know thee, and the powers which give thee power;

  I know thee for a man of many thoughts,

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  And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,

  Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.

  I have expected this – what would’st thou with me?

  MANFRED: To look upon thy beauty – nothing further.

  The face of the earth hath madden’d me, and I

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  Take refuge in her mysteries, and pierce

  To the abodes of those who govern her –

  But they can nothing aid me. I have sought

  From them what they could not bestow, and now

  I search no further.

  WITCH:What could be the quest

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  Which is not in the power of the most powerful,

  The rulers of the invisible?

  MANFRED:A boon;

  But why should I repeat it? ’twere in vain.

  WITCH: I know not that; let thy lips utter it.

  MANFRED: Well, though it torture me, ’tis but the same;

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  My pang shall find a voice. From my youth upwards

  My spirit walk’d not with the souls of men,

  Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes;

  The thirst of their ambition was not mine,

  The aim of their existence was not mine;

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  My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,

  Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,

  I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,

  Nor midst the creatures of clay that girded me

  Was there but one who — but of her anon.

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  I said with men, and with the thoughts of men,

  I held but slight communion; but instead,

  My joy was in the Wilderness, to breathe

  The difficult air of the iced mountain’s top,

  Where the birds dare not build, nor insect’s wing

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  Flit o’er the herbless granite; or to plunge

  Into the torrent, and to roll along

  On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave

  Of river-stream, or ocean, in their flow.

  In these my early strength exulted; or

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  To follow through the night the moving moon,

  The stars and their development; or catch

  The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;

  Or to look, list’ning, on the scatter’d leaves,

  While Autumn winds were at their evening song.

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  These were my pastimes, and to be alone;

  For if the beings, of whom I was one, –

  Hating to be so, – cross’d me in my path,

  I felt myself degraded back to them,

  And was all clay again. And then I dived,

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  In my lone wanderings, to the caves of death,

  Searching its cause in its effect; and drew

  From wither’d bones, and skulls, and heap’d up dust,

  Conclusions most forbidden. Then I pass’d

  The nights of years in sciences untaught,

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  Save in the old time; and with time and toil,

  And terrible ordeal, and such penance

  As in itself hath power upon the air,

  And spirits that do compass air and earth,

  Space, and the peopled infinite, I made

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  Mine eyes familiar with Eternity,

  Such as, before me, did the Magi, and

  He who from out their fountain dwellings raised

  Eros and Anteros,1 at Gadara

  As I do thee; – and with my knowledge grew

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  The thirst of
knowledge, and the power and joy

  Of this most bright intelligence, until —

  WITCH: Proceed.

  MANFRED:Oh! I but thus prolong’d my words,

  Boasting these idle attributes, because

  As I approach the core of my heart’s grief –

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  But to my task. I have not named to thee

  Father or mother, mistress, friend, or being,

  With whom I wore the chain of human ties;

  If I had such they seem’d not such to me –

  Yet there was one —

  WITCH: Spare not thyself – proceed.

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  MANFRED: She was like me in lineaments – her eyes,

  Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone

  Even of her voice, they said were like to mine;

  But soften’d all, and temper’d into beauty;

  She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,

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  The quest of hidden knowledge and a mind

  To comprehend the universe: nor these

  Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine,

  Pity, and smiles, and tears — which I had not;

  And tenderness – but that I had for her;

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  Humility – and that I never had.

  Her faults were mine — her virtues were her own –

  I loved her, and destroy’d her!

  WITCH: With thy hand?

  MANFRED: Not with my hand, but heart – which broke her heart –

  It gazed on mine, and wither’d. I have shed

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  Blood, but not hers — and yet her blood was shed —

  I saw – and could not stanch it.

  WITCH:And for this -

  A being of the race thou dost despise,

  The order which thine own would rise above,

  Mingling with us and ours, thou dost forego

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  The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink’st back

  To recreant mortality — Away!

  MANFRED: Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that hour –

  But words are breath – look on me in my sleep,

  Or watch my watchings — Come and sit by me!

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  My solitude is solitude no more,

  But peopled with the Furies; – I have gnash’d

  My teeth in darkness till returning morn,

  Then cursed myself till sunset; – I have pray’d

  For madness as a blessing – ’tis denied me.

  135 I have affronted death – but in the war

  Of elements the waters shrunk from me,

  And fatal things pass’d harmless – the cold hand

  Of an all-pitiless demon held me back,

  Back by a single hair, which would not break.

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  In fantasy, imagination, all

  The affluence of my soul – which one day was

  A Crœsus in creation – I plunged deep,

  But, like an ebbing wave, it dash’d me back

  Into the gulf of my unfathom’d thought.

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  I plunged amidst mankind — Forgetfulness

  I sought in all, save where ’tis to be found,

  And that I have to learn – my sciences,

  My long pursued and super-human art,

  Is mortal here – I dwell in my despair –

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  And live – and live for ever.

  WITCH:It may be

  That I can aid thee.

  MANFRED:To do this thy power

  Must wake the dead, or lay me low with them.

  Do so – in any shape – in any hour –

  With any torture – so it be the last.

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  WITCH: That is not in my province; but if thou

  Wilt swear obedience to my will, and do

  My bidding, it may help thee to thy wishes.

  MANFRED: I will not swear – Obey! and whom? the spirits

  Whose presence I command, and be the slave

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  Of those who served me — Never!

  WITCH:Is this all?

  Hast thou no gentler answer? – Yet bethink thee,

  And pause ere thou rejectest.

  MANFRED:I have said it.

  WITCH: Enough! – I may retire then – say!

  MANFRED:Retire!

  [The WITCH disappears.]

  MANFRED [alone]:

  We are the fools of time and terror: Days

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  Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,

  Loathing our life and dreading still to die.

  In all the days of this detested yoke –

  This heaving burthen, this accursed breath –

  This vital weight upon the struggling heart,

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  Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,

  Or joy that ends in agony or faintness –

  In all the days of past and future, for

  In life there is no present, we can number

  How few – how less than few – wherein the soul

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  Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back

  As from a stream in winter, though the chill

  Be but a moment’s. I have one resource

  Still in my science – I can call the dead,

  And ask them what it is we dread to be:

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  The sternest answer can but be the Grave,

  And that is nothing – if they answer not –

  The buried Prophet answered to the Hag

  Of Endor; and the Spartan Monarch drew

  From the Byzantine maid’s unsleeping spirit

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  An answer and his destiny – he slew

  That which he loved, unknowing what he slew,

  And died unpardon’d – though he call’d in aid

  The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused

  The Arcadian Evocators to compel

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  The indignant shadow to depose her wrath,

  Or fix her term of vengeance – she replied

  In words of dubious import, but fulfill’d.1

  If I had never lived, that which I love

  Had still been living; had I never loved,

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  That which I love would still be beautiful –

  Happy and giving happiness. What is she?

  What is she now? – a sufferer for my sins –

  A thing I dare not think upon – or nothing.

  Within few hours I shall not call in vain –

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  Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare:

  Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze

  On spirit, good or evil – now I tremble,

  And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart.

  But I can act even what I most abhor,

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  And champion human fears. - The night approaches.

  [Exit.]

  SCENE III

  The Summit of the Jungfrau Mountain.

  [Enter FIRST DESTINY.]

  The moon is rising broad, and round, and bright;

  And here on snows, where never human foot

  Of common mortal trod, we nightly tread,

  And leave no traces; o’er the savage sea,

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  The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,

  We skim its rugged breakers, which put on

  The aspect of a tumbling tempest’s foam,

  Frozen in a moment – a dead whirlpool’s image:

  And this most steep fantastic pinnacle,

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  The fretwork of some earthquake - where the clouds

  Pause to repose themselves in passing by –

  Is sacred to our revels, or our vigils;

  Here do I wait my sisters, on our way

  To the Hall of Arimanes, for to-night

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  Is our great festival – ’ti
s strange they come not.

  A Voice without, singing.

  The Captive Usurper,

  Hurl’d down from the throne,

  Lay buried in torpor,

  Forgotten and lone;

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  I broke through his slumbers,

  I shiver’d his chain,

  I leagued him with numbers –

  He’s Tyrant again!

  With the blood of a million he’ll answer my care,

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  With a nation’s destruction - his flight and despair.

  Second Voice, without.

  The ship sail’d on, the ship sail’d fast,

  But I left not a sail, and I left not a mast;

  There is not a plank of the hull or the deck,

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  And there is not a wretch to lament o’er his wreck;

  Save one, whom I held, as he swam, by the hair,

  And he was a subject well worthy my care;

  A traitor on land, and a pirate at sea -

  But I saved him to wreak further havoc for me!

  FIRST DESTINY, answering.

  The city lies sleeping;

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  The morn, to deplore it,

  May dawn on it weeping:

  Sullenly, slowly,

  The black plague flew o’er it —

  Thousands lie lowly;

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  Tens of thousands shall perish –

  The living shall fly from

  The sick they should cherish;

  But nothing can vanquish

  The touch that they die from.

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  Sorrow and anguish,

  And evil and dread,

  Envelope a nation –

  The blest are the dead,

  Who see not the sight

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  Of their own desolation –

  This work of a night –

  This wreck of a realm – this deed of my doing –

  For ages I’ve done, and shall still be renewing!

  [Enter the SECOND and THIRD DESTINIES.]

  The Three.

  Our hands contain the hearts of men,

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  Our footsteps are their graves;

  We only give to take again

  The spirits of our slaves!

  FIRST DESTINY: Welcome! – Where’s Nemesis?

  SECOND DESTINY:At some great work;

  But what I know not, for my hands were full.

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  THIRD DESTINY: Behold she cometh.

  [Enter NEMESIS.]

  FIRST DESTINY:Say, where hast thou been?

  My sisters and thyself are slow to-night.

  NEMESIS: I was detain’d repairing shatter’d thrones,

  Marrying fools, restoring dynasties,

  Avenging men upon their enemies,

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  And making them repent their own revenge;

  Goading the wise to madness; from the dull

  Shaping out oracles to rule the world

  Afresh, for they were waxing out of date,

  And mortals dared to ponder for themselves,

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  To weigh kings in the balance, and to speak