The Poetry Of Lord Byron
Life:
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man. Brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.
And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair, first published in 1812
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.
I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I lov'd, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell,
'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well.
Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,
Who didst not change through all the past,
And canst not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have pass'd away,
I might have watch'd through long decay.
The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow'd such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.
As once I wept, if I could weep,
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.
Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity
Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.
By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept, 1815
1
We sat down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters,
Made Salem's high places his prey;
And ye, oh her desolate daughters!
Were scattered all weeping away.
2
While sadly we gazed on the river
Which rolled on in freedom below,
They demanded the song; but, oh never
That triumph the stranger shall know!
May this right hand be withered for ever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!
3
On the willow that harp is suspended,
Oh Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were
ended
But left me that token of thee:
And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended
With the voice of the spoiler by me!
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth
I
1 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
2 A palace and a prison on each hand:
3 I saw from out the wave her structures rise
4 As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
5 A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
6 Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
7 O'er the far times, when many a subject land
8 Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
9 Where Venice sate in state, thron'd on her hundred isles!
II
10 She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
11 Rising with her tiara of proud towers
12 At airy distance, with majestic motion,
13 A ruler of the waters and their powers:
14 And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
15 From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
16 Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
17 In purple was she rob'd, and of her feast
18 Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increas'd.
III
19 In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
20 And silent rows the songless gondolier;
21 Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
22 And music meets not always now the ear:
23 Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here.
24 States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
25 Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
26 The pleasant place of all festivity,
27 The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
IV
28 But unto us she hath a spell beyond
29 Her name in story, and her long array
30 Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
31 Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway;
32 Ours is a trophy which will not decay
33 With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
34 And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away--
35 The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
36 For us repeopl'd were the solitary shore.
V
37 The beings of the mind are not of clay;
38 Essentially immortal, they create
39 And multiply in us a brighter ray
40 And more belov'd existence: that which Fate
41 Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
42 Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
43 First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
44 Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
45 And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
VI
46 Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
47 The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
48 And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
49 And, maybe, that which grows beneath mine eye:
50 Yet there are things whose strong reality
51 Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
52 More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
53 And the strange constellations which the Muse
54 O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:
VII
55 I saw or dream'd of such--but let them go;
56 They came like truth--and disappear'd like dreams;
57 And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so:
58 I could replace them if I would; still teems
59 My mind with many a form which aptly seems
60 Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
61 Let these too go--for waking Reason deems
62 Such overweening fantasies unsound,
63 And other voices speak, and other sights surround.
VIII
64 I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes
65 Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
66 Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
67 Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
68 A country with--ay, or without mankind;
69 Yet was I born where men are proud to be--
70 Not without cause; and should I leave behind
71 The inviolate island of the sage and free,
72 And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,
IX
73 Perhaps I lov'd it well: and should I lay
74 My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
75 My spirit shall resume it--if we may
76 Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
77 My hopes of being remember'd in my line
78 With my land's language: if too fond and far
79 These aspirations in their scope incline,
80 If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
81 Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar
X
82 My name from out the temple where the dead
83 Are honour'd by the nations--let it be--
84 And light the laurels on a loftier head!
85 And be the Spartan's epitaph on me--
86 "Sparta hath many a worthier son than he."
87 Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
88 The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
89 I planted: they have torn me, and I bleed:
90 I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
XI
91 The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
92 And annual marriage now no more renew'd,
93 The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestor'd,
94 Neglected garment of her widowhood!
95 St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
96 Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power,
97 Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
98 And monarchs gaz'd and envied in the hour
99 When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower.
XII
100 The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--
101 An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
102 Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
103 Clank over sceptred cities, nations melt
104 From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
105 The sunshine for a while, and downward go
106 Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt:
107 Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
108 Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!
XIII
109 Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,
110 Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
111 But is not Doria's menace come to pass?
112 Are they not bridled?--Venice, lost and won,
113 Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
114 Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose!
115 Better be whelm'd beneath the waves, and shun,
116 Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes,
117 From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.
XIV
118 In youth she was all glory, a new Tyre,
119 Her very by-word sprung from victory,
120 The "Planter of the Lion," which through fire
121 And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;
122 Though making many slaves, herself still free,
123 And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite;
124 Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye
125 Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!
126 For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.
XV
127 Statues of glass--all shiver'd--the long file
128 Of her dead Doges are declin'd to dust;
129 But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
130 Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
131 Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
132 Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
133 Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
134 Too oft remind her who and what enthralls,
135 Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.
XVI
136 When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
137 And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war,
138 Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,
139 Her voice their only ransom from afar:
140 See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
141 Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins
142 Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar
143 Starts from its belt--he rends his captive's chains,
144 And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.
XVII
145 Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,
146 Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
147 Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
148 Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
149 Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
150 Is shameful to the nations--most of all,
151 Albion, to thee: the Ocean queen should not
152 Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
153 Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.
XVIII
154 I loved her from my boyhood; she to me
155 Was as a fairy city of the heart,
156 Rising like water-columns from the sea,
157 Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
158 And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,
159 Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so,
160 Although I found her thus, we did not part;
161 Perchance even dearer in her day of woe,
162 Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show....
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.Darkness, first published in 1816
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB, first published in 1815
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Don Juan: Dedication, first published in 1818
Difficile est proprie communia dicere
HOR. Epist. ad Pison
I
Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;
II
"Which pye being open'd they began to sing"
(This old song and new simile holds good),
"A dainty dish to set before the King,"
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--
I wish he would explain his Explanation.
III
You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!
IV
And Wordsworth, in a rather long
"Excursion"
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages;
'Tis poetry--at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages--
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.
V
You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continu'd fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for Ocean.
VI
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still,
And duly seated on the Immortal Hill.
VII
Your bays may hide the baldness of your
brows--
Perhaps some virtuous blushes--let them go--
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs--
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Crabbe, will try
'Gainst you the question with posterity.
VIII
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian
Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect, a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.
IX
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injur'd by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go
To--God knows where--for no one else can know.
X
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean " sublime ,"
He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But clos'd the tyrant-hater he begun.
XI
Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old
Man--arise
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies
Or be alive again--again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
And heartless daughters--worn--and pale--and poor;
Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
XII
Cold-blooded, smooth-fac'd, placid
miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fix'd,
And offer poison long already mix'd.
XIII
An orator of such set trash of phrase
Ineffably--legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile,
Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
XIV
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confin'd,
Conspiracy or Congress to be made--
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind--
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
With God and Man's abhorrence for its gains.
XV
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow It
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
Eutropius of its many masters, blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to Wit,
Fearless--because no feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
XVI
Where shall I turn me not to view its
bonds,
For I will never feel them?--Italy!
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this State-thing breath'd o'er thee--
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds,
Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still,
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.
XVII
Meantime--Sir Laureate--I proceed to
dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you,
And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?
Epistle to Augusta, published 1830
1 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
2 Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
3 Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
4 No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
5 Go where I will, to me thou art the same
6 A lov'd regret which I would not resign.
7 There yet are two things in my destiny--
8 A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
9 The first were nothing--had I still the last,
10 It were the haven of my happiness;
11 But other claims and other ties thou hast,
12 And mine is not the wish to make them less.
13 A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
14 Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
15 Revers'd for him our grandsire's fate of yore--
16 He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.
17 If my inheritance of storms hath been
18 In other elements, and on the rocks
19 Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
20 I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
21 The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
22 My errors with defensive paradox;
23 I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
24 The careful pilot of my proper woe.
25 Mine were my faults, and mine be their
reward.
26 My whole life was a contest, since the day
27 That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
28 The gift--a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
29 And I at times have found the struggle hard,
30 And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
31 But now I fain would for a time survive,
32 If but to see what next can well arrive.
33 Kingdoms and empires in my little day
34 I have outliv'd, and yet I am not old;
35 And when I look on this, the petty spray
36 Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
37 Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
38 Something--I know not what--does still uphold
39 A spirit of slight patience; not in vain,
40 Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.
41 Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
42 Within me--or perhaps a cold despair,
43 Brought on when ills habitually recur,
44 Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air
45 (For even to this may change of soul refer,
46 And with light armour we may learn to bear),
47 Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
48 The chief companion of a calmer lot.
49 I feel almost at times as I have felt
50 In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
51 Which do remember me of where I dwelt
52 Ere my young mind was sacrific'd to books,
53 Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
54 My heart with recognition of their looks;
55 And even at moments I could think I see
56 Some living thing to love--but none like thee.
57 Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
58 A fund for contemplation; to admire
59 Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
60 But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
61 Here to be lonely is not desolate,
62 For much I view which I could most desire,
63 And, above all, a lake I can behold
64 Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.
65 Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow
66 The fool of my own wishes, and forget
67 The solitude which I have vaunted so
68 Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
69 There may be others which I less may show;
70 I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
71 I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
72 And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.
73 I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,
74 By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
75 Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
76 The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
77 Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
78 Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
79 Though, like all things which I have lov'd, they are
80 Resign'd for ever, or divided far.
81 The world is all before me; I but ask
82 Of Nature that with which she will comply--
83 It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
84 To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
85 To see her gentle face without a mask,
86 And never gaze on it with apathy.
87 She was my early friend, and now shall be
88 My sister--till I look again on thee.
89 I can reduce all feelings but this one;
90 And that I would not; for at length I see
91 Such scenes as those wherein my life begun,
92 The earliest--even the only paths for me--
93 Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
94 I had been better than I now can be;
95 The passions which have torn me would have slept;
96 I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.
97 With false Ambition what had I to do?
98 Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
99 And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
100 And made me all which they can make--a name,
101 Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
102 Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
103 But all is over--I am one the more
104 To baffled millions which have gone before.
105 And for the future, this world's future may
106 From me demand but little of my care;
107 I have outliv'd myself by many a day,
108 Having surviv'd so many things that were;
109 My years have been no slumber, but the prey
110 Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
111 Of life which might have fill'd a century,
112 Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.
113 And for the remnant which may be to come
114 I am content; and for the past I feel
115 Not thankless, for within the crowded sum
116 Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
117 And for the present, I would not benumb
118 My feelings further. Nor shall I conceal
119 That with all this I still can look around,
120 And worship Nature with a thought profound.
121 For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
122 I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
123 We were and are--I am, even as thou art--
124 Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
125 It is the same, together or apart,
126 From life's commencement to its slow decline
127 We are entwin'd--let death come slow or fast,
128 The tie which bound the first endures the last!
Fare Thee Well
"Alas! they had been friends in youth:
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain;
________
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining.
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been."
Coleridge, Christabel
Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well:
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared
before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee
glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou wouldst at last discover
'Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend
thee -
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praise must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe:
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thine own its life
retaineth,
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;
And the undying thought which paineth
Is - that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou wouldst solace
gather,
When our child's first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!"
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press
thee,
When her lip to thine is pressed,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
Think of him thy love had blessed!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more may'st see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.
All my faults perchance thou
knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee - by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now:
But 'tis done - all words are
idle -
Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well! thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie.
Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.
The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept
1
The harp the monarch minstrel swept,
The King of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music hallow'd while she wept
O'er tones her heart of hearts had given,
Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven!
It soften'd men of iron mould,
It gave them virtues not their own;
No ear so dull, no soul so cold,
That felt not, fired not to the tone,
Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne!
2
It told the triumphs of our King,
It wafted glory to our God;
It made our gladden'd valleys ring,
The cedars bow, the mountains nod;
Its sound aspired to heaven and there abode!
Since then, though heard on earth no more,
Devotion and her daughter Love
Still bid the bursting spirit soar
To sounds that seem as from above,
In dreams that day's broad light can not remove.
Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull, 1808
Start not - nor deem my spirit fled;
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.
I lived, I loved, I quaffed, like
thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up - thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.
Better to hold the sparkling
grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy
brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of gods, than reptile's food.
Where once my wit, perchance,
hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?
Quaff while thou canst: another
race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.
Why not? since through life's
little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.
My Soul is Dark
My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence, long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
And break at once - or yield to song.
Oh! Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom
Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year;
And the wild cypress wave in tender
gloom:
And oft by yon blue gushing
stream
Shall sorrow lean her drooping head,
And feed deep thought with many a dream,
And lingering pause and lightly tread;
Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the
dead!
Away! we know that tears are
vain,
That death nor heeds nor hears distress:
Will this unteach us to complain?
Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou - who tell'st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.
Prometheus, first published in 1816
1 Titan! to whose immortal eyes
2 The sufferings of mortality,
3 Seen in their sad reality,
4 Were not as things that gods despise;
5 What was thy pity's recompense?
6 A silent suffering, and intense;
7 The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
8 All that the proud can feel of pain,
9 The agony they do not show,
10 The suffocating sense of woe,
11 Which speaks but in its loneliness,
12 And then is jealous lest the sky
13 Should have a listener, nor will sigh
14 Until its voice is echoless.
15 Titan! to thee the strife was given
16 Between the suffering and the will,
17 Which torture where they cannot kill;
18 And the inexorable Heaven,
19 And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
20 The ruling principle of Hate,
21 Which for its pleasure doth create
22 The things it may annihilate,
23 Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
24 The wretched gift Eternity
25 Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
26 All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
27 Was but the menace which flung back
28 On him the torments of thy rack;
29 The fate thou didst so well foresee,
30 But would not to appease him tell;
31 And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
32 And in his Soul a vain repentance,
33 And evil dread so ill dissembled,
34 That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
35 Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
36 To render with thy precepts less
37 The sum of human wretchedness,
38 And strengthen Man with his own mind;
39 But baffled as thou wert from high,
40 Still in thy patient energy,
41 In the endurance, and repulse
42 Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
43 Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
44 A mighty lesson we inherit:
45 Thou art a symbol and a sign
46 To Mortals of their fate and force;
47 Like thee, Man is in part divine,
48 A troubled stream from a pure source;
49 And Man in portions can foresee
50 His own funereal destiny;
51 His wretchedness, and his resistance,
52 And his sad unallied existence:
53 To which his Spirit may oppose
54 Itself--and equal to all woes,
55 And a firm will, and a deep sense,
56 Which even in torture can descry
57 Its own concenter'd recompense,
58 Triumphant where it dares defy,
59 And making Death a Victory.