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Selected Poems

Page 93

by Byron


  1. Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other mountain tree.

  1. The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira.

  1. The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our own unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude.

  1. The two stanzas XLII and XLIII are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja: – ‘Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte!’

  2. The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages. ‘On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Ægina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left: all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view.’ – See Middleton’s Cicero, vol. ii, p. 371.

  1. It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, ‘Ut hunc omni: nudata, prostrata jacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi.’

  1. ’Οθμ0στιav ‘Atque oculos pascat uterque suso.’ – OVID. Amor. lib. ii.

  2. This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage, the Mecca of Italy, but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. CORINNA is no more, and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist. – The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman – she is only an author: and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity, for to the latest posterity they will surely descend, will have to pronounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen: some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends, and more dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna.

  1. I saw the ‘Cascata del marmore’ of Terni twice, at different periods; once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichen-bach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, &c. are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhaussen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it.

  1. Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris, the reader will see a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like ‘the hell of waters,’ that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough, that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial – this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake, called Pie’ di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe (Cicer. Epist. ad Attic. xv. lib. iv.), and the ancient naturalist (Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ii. cap. lxii), amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. Ald. Manut de Reatina Urbe Agroque, ap. Sallengre, Thesaur. tom. i. p. 773.

  2. In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine.

  1. These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton’s remarks, ‘D – n Homo,’ &c; but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason, we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakespeare (‘To be, or not to be,’ for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy the’, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason; – a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr Joseph Drury, was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late, when I have erred, – and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of
one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration – of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor.

  1. On the 3d of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar: a year afterwards he obtained ‘his crowning mercy’ of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

  1. The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brickwork. Nothing has been told, nothing can be told, to satisfy the belief of any but a Roman antiquary.

  1. Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conditions; – from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition: at last even knights and senators were exhibited, – a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and to this species a Christian writer justly applies the epithet ‘innocent’ to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one after his triumph, and the other on the pretext of a rebellion. No war, says Lipsius, was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, gladiatorial shows survived the old established religion more than seventy years; but they owed their final extinction to the courage of a Christian. In the year 404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibiting the shows in the Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense concourse of people. Almachius, or Telemachus, an eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst of the area, and endeavoured to separate the combatants. The Præctor Alypius, a person incredibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished the shows, which were never afterwards revived. The story is told by Theodoret and Cassiodorus, and seems worthy of credit notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology. Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests. Yet Lipsius permits himself to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident degeneracy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abolition of these bloody spectacles.

  1. Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth of a broken heart; Charles V a hermit; Louis XIV a bankrupt in means and glory; Cromwell of anxiety; and, ‘the greatest is behind,’ Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added of names equally illustrious and unhappy.

  1. ‘Quæ septem dici sex tamen esse solent.’ – OVID.

  1. Cortejo is pronounced Corteho, with an aspirate, according to the Arabesque guttural. It means what there is as yet no precise name for in England, though the practice is as common as in any tramontane country whatever.

  1. For the received accounts of the cause of Raphael’s death, see his lives.

  2. (In talking thus, the writer, more especiallyOf women, would be understood to say,He speaks as a spectator, not officially,And always, reader, in a modest way;Perhaps, too, in no very great degree shall heAppear to have offended in this lay,Since, as all know, without the sex, our sonnetsWould seem unfinish’d, like their untrimm’d bonnets.)(Signed) PRINTER’S DEVIL.

  1. This comparison of a ‘salt mine’ may, perhaps, be permitted to a Pole, as the wealth of the country consists greatly in the salt mines.

  1. Ravenna.

  1. Grange is or was a famous pastry-cook and fruiterer in Piccadilly.

  1. Fact from life, with the words.

  1. See ‘Life of Henry Kirke White.’

  1. Alfonso, speaking of the Ptolomean system, said, that ‘had he been consulted at the creation of the world, he would have spared the Maker some absurdities.’

  2. See Aubrey’s account of the apparition which disappeared ‘with a curious perfume and a most melodious twang;’ or see the ‘Antiquary,’ vol. i. p. 225.

  1. A drowned body lies at the bottom till rotten; it then floats, as most people know.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Table of Dates

  Further Reading

  A Note on This Edition

  Selected Poems

  A Fragment (‘When, to their airy hall, my fathers’ voice’)

  To Woman

  The Cornelian

  To Caroline (‘You say you love, and yet your eye’)

  ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS: A Satire

  Lines to Mr Hodgson (Written on Board the Lisbon Packet)

  Maid of Athens, ere we part

  Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

  To Thyrza (‘Without a stone to mark the spot’)

  CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE: A Romaunt, Cantos I-II

  Preface to the First and Second Canto

  To Ianthe

  Canto the First

  Canto the Second

  Appendix to Canto the Second

  An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill

  Lines to a Lady Weeping

  THE WALTZ: An Apostrophic Hymn

  Remember Thee! Remember Thee!

  THE GIAOUR: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale

  THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS: A Turkish Tale

  THE CORSAIR: A Tale

  Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte

  Stanzas for Music

  She walks in beauty

  LARA: A Tale

  The Destruction of Sennacherib

  Napoleon’s Farewell (From the French)

  From the French (‘Must thou go, my glorious Chief’)

  THE SIEGE OF CORINTH

  When we two parted

  Fare thee well!

  Prometheus

  THE PRISONER OF CHILLON: A Fable and Sonnet on Chillon

  Darkness

  CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE: A Romaunt Canto III

  Epistle to Augusta (‘My sister! my sweet sister!’ &c.)

  Lines (On Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill)

  MANFRED: A Dramatic Poem

  So, we’ll go no more a roving

  CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE: A Romaunt, Canto IV

  Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori (‘Dear Doctor, I have read your play’)

  BEPPO: A Venetian Story

  Epistle to Mr Murray (‘My dear Mr Murray’)

  MAZEPPA

  Stanzas to the Po

  The Isles of Greece

  Francesca of Rimini. From the Inferno of Dante Canto the Fifth

  Stanzas (‘When a man hath no freedom’)

  SARDANAPALUS: A Tragedy

  Who kill’d John Keats?

  THE BLUES: A Literary Eclogue

  THE VISION OF JUDGMENT

  On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

  NOTES

  WORKS CITED IN THE NOTES

  INDEX OF TITLES

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  Footnotes

  ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS

  A Satire

  Page 6

  Page 7

  Page 8

  Page 9

  Page 10

  Page 11

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  Page 1
8

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  Maid of Athens, ere we part

  Page 52

  Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

  Page 53

  CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

  A Romaunt Cantos

  Page 61

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  Page 78

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  Page 81

  Page 82

  Page 83

  Page 85

  Page 89

  Page 91

  Page 92

  Page 93

  Canto the Second

  Page 94

  Page 95

  Page 96

  Page 98

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  Page 100

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  Page 109

  Page 110

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  Page 115

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  Page 119

  Page 120

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  Page 123

  Page 124

  Page 125

  APPENDIX TO CANTO THE SECOND

  Page 129

  Page 134

  Page 143

  Page 146

  Page 148

  An Apostrophic Hymn

  Page 156

  Page 157

  Page 159

  Page 161

  Page 163

  Page 164

  Page 165

  THE GIAOUR A Fragment of a Turkish Tale

  Page 168

  Page 169

  Page 171

  Page 170

  Page 172

 

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