by Byron
The gazer’s eye with philosophic mirth,
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!
CLIII
But lo! the dome – the vast and wondrous dome,
1370
To which Diana’s marvel was a cell –
Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb!
I have beheld the Ephesian’s miracle –
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyæna and the jackall in their shade;
1375
I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell
Their glittering mass i’ the sun, and have survey’d
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray’d;
CLIV
But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone – with nothing like to thee –
1380
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion’s desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,
1385
Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.
CLV
Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessen’d; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
1390
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
1395
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.
CLVI
Thou movest – but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
Vastness which grows — but grows to harmonise —
1400
All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles – richer painting – shrines where flame
The lamps of gold – and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth’s chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground – and this the clouds must claim.
CLVII
1405
Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eve — so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
1410
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,
CLVIII
Not by its fault – but thine: Our outward sense
1415
Is but of gradual grasp – and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
1420
Defies at first our Nature’s littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.
CLIX
Then pause, and be enlighten’d; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze
1425
Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;
The fountain of sublimity displays
1430
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man
Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.
CLX
Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon’s torture dignifying pain –
A father’s love and mortal’s agony
1435
With an immortal’s patience blending: — Vain
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon’s grasp,
The old man’s clench; the long envenom’d chain
Rivets the living links, – the enormous asp
1440
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.
CLXI
Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light –
The Sun in human limbs array’d, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
1445
The shaft hath just been shot – the arrow bright
With an immortal’s vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
CLXII
1450
But in his delicate form – a dream of Love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Long’d for a deathless lover from above,
And madden’d in that vision – are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever bless’d
1455
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest –
A ray of immortality — and stood,
Starlike, around, until they gather’d to a god!
CLXIII
And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
1460
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble hath array’d
With an eternal glory – which, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought;
1465
And Time himself hath hallow’d it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust – nor hath it caught
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which ’twas wrought.
CLXIV
But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through the past?
1470
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more — these breathings are his last;
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing: – if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be class’d
1475
With forms which live and suffer – let that pass –
His shadow fades away into Destruction’s mass,
CLXV
Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all
That we inherit in its mortal shroud,
And spreads the dim and universal pall
1480
Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud
Between us sinks and all which ever glow’d,
Till Glory’s self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allow’d
To hover on the verge of darkness; rays
1485
Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,
CLXVI
And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
1490
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear, – but never more,
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:
It is enough in sooth that
once we bore
These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was gore.
CLXVII
1495
Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,
1500
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief
Seems royal still, though with her head discrown’d,
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.
CLXVIII
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
1505
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy,
1510
Death hush’d that pang for ever: with thee fled
The present happiness and promised joy
Which fill’d the imperial isles so full it seem’d to cloy.
CLXIX
Peasants bring forth in safety. – Can it be,
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
1515
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour’d
Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head
Beheld her Iris. – Thou, too, lonely lord,
1520
And desolate consort – vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!
CLXX
Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;
Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid
1525
The love of millions! How we did intrust
Futurity to her! and, though it must
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem’d
Our children should obey her child, and bless’d
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d
1530
Like stars to shepherds’ eyes: – ’twas but a meteor beam’d.
CLXXI
Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
1535
Its knell in princely ears, ’till the o’erstung
Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate1
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, –
CLXXII
1540
These might have been her destiny; but no,
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a bride and mother – and now there!
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
1545
From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast
Is link’d the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and opprest
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.
CLXXIII
Lo, Nemi! navell’d in the woody hills
1550
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o’er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
1555
And, calm as cherish’d hate, its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coil’d into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.
CLXXIV
And near Albano’s scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley; – and afar
1560
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war,
‘Arms and the Man,’ whose re-ascending star
Rose o’er an empire: — but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome; – and where yon bar
1565
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was till’d, the weary bard’s delight.
CLXXV
But I forget. – My Pilgrim’s shrine is won,
And he and I must part, — so let it be, —
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
1570
Yet once more let us look upon the sea;
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe’s rock unfold
1575
Those waves, we follow’d on till the dark Euxine roll’d
CLXXVI
Upon the blue Symplegades: long years –
Long, though not very many, since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears
Have left us nearly where we had begun:
1580
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,
We have had our reward – and it is here;
That we can yet feel gladden’d by the sun,
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.
CLXXVII
1585
Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements! – in whose ennobling stir
1590
I feel myself exalted – Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
CLXXVIII
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
1595
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
1600
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.
CLXXIX
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
1605
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
1610
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
CLXXX
His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, – thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
1615
For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And
howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
1620
And dashest him again to earth: – there let him lay.
CLXXXI
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
1625
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
CLXXXII
1630
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee —
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
1635
Has dried up realms to deserts: – not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play –
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow –
Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
CLXXXIII
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form
1640
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; – boundless, endless, and sublime –
The image of Eternity – the throne
1645
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
CLXXXIV
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
1650
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton’d with thy breakers – they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror – ’twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
1655
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here.
CLXXXV
My task is done – my song hath ceased – my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
1660
The torch shall be extinguish’d which hath lit
My midnight lamp – and what is writ, is writ, –
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been — and my visions flit
Less palpably before me – and the glow
1665
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.
CLXXXVI
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been –
