Selected Poems
Page 53
Whither? I dread to think – but he is gone.
So, we’ll go no more a roving
I
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
II
5
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
III
Though the night was made for loving,
10
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE
Canto the Fourth
Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna,
Quel Monte che divide, e quel che serra
Italia, e un mare e l’ altro, che la bagna.
Ariosto, Satira iii.
Venice, January 2, 1818.
TO JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ. A.M. F.R.S. &c. &c. &c.
MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,
After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better, – to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than – though not ungrateful – I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet, – to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, – to a friend often tried and never found wanting; – to yourself.
In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years’ intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voices of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence, but which cannot poison my future while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience, without thinking better of his species and of himself.
It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable – Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects.
With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith’s ‘Citizen of the World,’ whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether – and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are now a matter of indifference; the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.
In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within these limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.
It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us — though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode — to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language — ‘Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vante la lingua la piú nobile ed insieme la piú dolce, tutte tutte la vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l’antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima.’ Italy has great names still — Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscalo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some the very highest — Europe —the World — has but one Canova.
It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that ’La pianta uomo nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra – e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova.’ Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and, amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched ‘longing after immortality’ – the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers’ chorus, ‘Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non è più come era prima,’ it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me, –
‘Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda.’
What Italy has gained by the late transfe
r of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, ‘Verily they will have their reward,’ and at no very distant period.
Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever,
Your obliged
And affectionate friend,
BYRON.
I
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
5
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O’er the far times, when many a subject land
Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
II
10
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,1
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; – her daughters had their dowers
15
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deem’d their dignity increased.
III
In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,
20
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone – but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade - but Nature doth not die,
25
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The leasant lace of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
IV
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
30
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city’s vanish’d sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, can not be swept or worn away—
35
The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
V
The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
40
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
45
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
VI
Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
And may be that which grows beneath mine eye:
50
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
And the strange constellations which the Muse
O’er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:
VII
55
I saw or dream’d of such, – but let them go, –
They came like truth, and disappear’d like dreams;
And whatsoe’er they were – are now but so:
I could replace them if I would; still teems
My mind with many a form which aptly seems
60
Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
Let these too go – for waking Reason deems
Such over-weening phantasies unsound,
And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
VIII
I’ve taught me other tongues – and in strange eyes
65
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with – ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
70
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea.
IX
Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine
75
My spirit shall resume it – if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remember’d in my line
With my land’s language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline, –
80
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar
X
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honour’d by the nations – let it be –
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
85
And be the Spartan’s epitaph on me –
‘Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.’1
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted, — they have torn me, — and I bleed:
90
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a
seed.
XI
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And, annual marriage, now no more renew’d,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
95
St Mark yet sees his lion where he stood,
Stand, but in mockery of his wither’d power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequall’d dower.
XII
100
The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns –
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt
105
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like lauwine loosen’d from the mountain’s belt;
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
Th’ octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe.
XIII
Before St Mark still glow his steeds of brass,
110
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?
Are they not bridled? — Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks like a sea-weed into whence she rose!
115
Better be whelm’d beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.
XIV
In youth she was all glory, —
a new Tyre, —
Her very by-word sprung from victory,
120
The ‘Planter of the Lion,’1 which through fire
And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea;
Though making many slaves, herself still free,
And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite;
Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye
125
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight!
For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.
XV
Statues of glass – all shiver’d – the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
130
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
135
Have flung a desolate cloud o’er Venice’ lovely walls.
XVI
When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,
And fetter’d thousands bore the yoke of war
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,2
Her voice their only ransom from afar:
140
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o’ermaster’d victor stops, the reins
Fall from his hands – his idle scimitar
Starts from its belt – he rends his captive’s chains,
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.
XVII
145
Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
150
Is shameful to the nations, – most of all,
Albion! to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean’s children; in the fall
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.
XVIII
I loved her from my boyhood – she to me
155
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea,
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare’s art,1
Had stam’d her imae in me and even so
160
Although I found her thus, we did not part,