Selected Poems of Byron (Wordsworth Poetry) (Wordsworth Poetry Library)

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WORDSWORTH

POETRY

LIBRARY

Selected Poems of

Lord Byron Including Don Juan and Other Poems With an Introduction, Bibliography and Glossary by Dr Paul Wright, Trinity College, Carmarthen.

'I mean to show things really as they are, not as they ought to be'. wrote Byron (1788-1824) in his comic masterpiece Don Juan, which follows the adventures of the hero across

the Europe and near East which Byron knew so well, touching on the major political, cultural and social concerns of the day. This selection includes all of that poem, and selections from

a

wide range of Byron's work, including lyrics, the

Tales, extracts from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the

satirical poems English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and

A Vision of Judgement. Paul Wright's detailed introductions place Byron's colourful life and work within their broader: social and political contexts, and demonstrate that Byron both fostered and critiqued the notorious 'Byronic myth' of heroic adventure, political action and sexual scandal. visit our website at www.wordsworth-editions.com

WORDSWORTH

POETRY

LIBRARY

Selected Poems of Lord Byron including Don Juan other poems

&

Introductions, Bibliography, Notes and Glossary by PAUL WRIGHT

Wordsworth Poetry Library

2 Readers who are interested in other titles from Wordsworth Editions are invited to visit our website at www.wordsworth-editions.com For our latest list and a full mail-order service contact Bibliophile Books,S Thomas Road, London E14 7BN Tel: +44 0207515 9222 Fax: +44 0207538 4115 E-mail: [email protected] First published in 1995 by Wordsworth Editions Limited 8B East Street, Ware, Hertfordshire SG12 9HJ Reset with additional material in 2006 ISBN 1 85326 406 7 Text © Wordsworth Editions Limited 1995,2006 Introductions and Notes © Paul Wright 2006 Wordsworth® is a registered trademark of Wordsworth Editions Limited All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Typeset in Great Britain by Antony Gray Printed by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Contents

vii

General Introduction

C H IL DE HAROLD'S PILG RIMAGE &: DON JUAN Introduction to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage md D� J Mn

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

-

extracts

Notes to extracts from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Don Juan

-

the complete text

Notes to Don Juan

3 9 47 51 557

TALES Introduction to the Tales

597

The Giaour

601

Notes to The Gaiour

637

The Corsair

639

Notes to The Corsair

689

S A TIR E S Introduction to the Satires

693

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

697

Notes to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

729

The Vision ofJudgement

735

Notes to The Vision ofJudgment

763

LYR I C S A N D S H OR T ER P O E M S Introduction to the Lyrics and Shorter Poems

767

To Caroline (l)

771

To Caroline (2)

772

To Caroline (3)

773

lachin Y Gair

77 4

Darkness

775

To Thyrza

778

The Cornelian

780

When We Two Parted

781

Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

782

On this Day I Complete my Thirty Sixth Year

783

Notes to the Lyrics and Shorter Poems

785

Glossary

787

Index of first lines

807

General Introduction

The appearance of the anti-hero of a scandalous novel published in 1816 is described thus: It was one of those faces which,having once beheld,we never often times forget. It seemed as if the soul of passion had been stained and printed on every feature. The eye beamed into life as it threw up its dark ardent gaze,with a look of ready inspiration,while the proud curl of the upper lip expressed haughtiness and bitter contempt; yet,even mixed with these fierce characteristic feelings, an air of melancholy and dejection shaded and softened every harsh expression. Such a countenance spoke to the heart. The novel is Glenarvon. * Its eponymous central character, who turns out tellingly to have at least two identities, is both a seducer murderer and political radical. Its author was Lady Caroline Lamb, wife of the man who was to become Lord Melbourne, and one of Queen Victoria's prime pinisters. She was also for a time one of Byron's many lovers. That Byron should have enjoyed such an affair reveals something of his celebrity status at the time: as the enigmatically attractive twenty­ eight-year-old author of bestselling poetry he occupied a position not dissimilar to that of a modem pop star. Yet,the very grounds of this celebrity, rooted in sexual scandal and gossip, explain his uneasy relationship with what would become Victorian respectability. The portrait itself is a picture of Byron as he was perceived by his

*

Lamb, 2: 31-2. For full details of this and all other references turn to the Bibliography at the end of this Introduction. Byron's

Letters and Journals

will

be cited by volume and page number; McGann's edition of the poetry as CPW; quotations from poems by initials, canto, verse and line number where appropriate; critical and other material will be given by surname, if necessary date and volume, and page number, in parenthesis after the quotation.

viii

LORD BYRON

contemporaries; it is a picture he did much to cultivate. Indeed, it still haunts our own understanding of Romanticism, the European movement around the turn of the nineteenth century which Byron perhaps more than any other single individual came to epitomise. In its concentration on 'passion', 'feeling' and 'inspiration' it captures the Romantic insistence on subjective engagement with the world; yet in its 'melancholy and dejection' it highlights the possibility, always present within Romanticism, that such engagement might fail, on a political as well as a personal level. Most of all,it suggests that the Romantic embodies this dilemma directly for his audience with 'a countenance' that speaks 'to the heart', whilst, paradoxically, cultivating 'haughtiness and bitter contempt' for that very audience. As Frances Wilson reminds us such a picture is 'not Byron him­ self . .. but his myth'(Wilson,1999,p. 9). This myth is very powerful. It is,as Byron himself recognised,to some extent the subject matter of the poems, from the self-conscious early lyrics, to the loosely bio­ graphical travels of Childe Harold and Don Juan, to the personally motivated satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and The Vision ofJudgement. It resonates throughout the nineteenth century in,for example,the figure of the vampire first written about by Byron's own doctor,Polidori,made famous by Bram Stoker's Dracula and still with us in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And it can be traced in the sexually charged anti-hero found as much in pop-culture figures, such as James Dean, Mick Jagger and Kurt Cobain, as in the brooding protagonists of the nineteenth-century novel,like Heathcliff and Mr Rochester. However, as always, the man and the work are rather different. George Gordon Byron was born in London in 1788 the year before the French Revolution, the date from which the Romantic period itself is often said to have started. His mother, Catherine, was a Scottish heiress,and he spent the first ten years of his life in Aberdeen, roaming the very countryside that was to become representatively Romantic in the works of Walter Scott and others. Throughout his life he would enjoy the kind of distance from an essentially English metropolitan establishment granted him in these early years,whilst, echOing the Glenarvon paradox,seeking to be at its very centre. He felt further marginalised by an accident of birth that left him with a club, or deformed, foot and a constant need to prove himself in physical activity,notably boxing and swimming; a need explored in

I NTRODUCTION

ix

many of his poetic inventions. He was also imbued with a kind of Presbyterian morality, a sense of being tormented by remorse, a '[wloe without name,or hope,or end' (G 1276),which might be said to be characteristic of both the man and the myth. In a sequence of events worthy of one of his own tales, Byron's initial prospects were compromised in that his father Captain John C ' Mad Jack') Byron,who had only married his mother for her fortune, abandoned her as soon as he had spent it. He died in France in 1791. Three years later Byron's cousin, the heir to the title of Byron, was killed by a canon ball,and in 1798 the incumbent fifth Lord Byron (the 'wicked lord') died, unexpectedly leaving Byron the title, the crumbling gothic seat of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire, and many debts. The house provides something of a model for Norman Abbey in the English cantos of Don Juan, which explore Byron's own ambivalence at becoming part of a landed English aristocracy. Fittingly, in 1801 aged thirteen, Byron went to the public school Harrow,and began the 'deliberate self-fashioning' ( Elledge,p. 1) that would transform him into the society figure by developing an interest in the theatre and in public speaking. His chosen texts for speech days, the villainous Zanga the Moor from Edward Young's Revenge (1721) and Lear on the heath,for example,suggest an interest in the persona fully captured in Caroline Lamb's portrait. As if living up to the role of the sneering medieval lord,he would go on to keep a bear in his rooms at Cambridge. Yet, he could be equally critical of the need to hark back to some imagined feudal past,so much a part of Romanticism. The bear episode alone might also be said to epitomise the playfulness,the wilful challenge of the conventions of utilitarian and bourgeois values from which many nineteenth-century norms were derived, which characterises so much of Byron's writing. He famously dismissed these values,which he saw as essentially hypo­ critical,in a letter written in 1821: 'The truth is that in these days the grand primum mobile [prime mover] of England is cant; cant political, cant poetical,cant religious,cant moral' (5:542). Byron began writing seriously whilst at Cambridge in 1805 - though, unlike many of his contemporaries,he often felt that writing could never really be the serious undertaking of a gentleman and a man of action manque: 'Who would write who had anything better to do?' (4:62) he once only half jo kingly asked. His first efforts were privately circulated. He published Hours of Idleness in 1807. Negative critical

x

LORD BYRON

response to this - an early indication, for him at least, of 'cant poetical' - in the powerful journal The Edinburgh Review occasioned his first sustained satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1809, which was his first popular success going through four editions. It is considered at greater length,along with some of Byron's other satirical work,later in this volume. Soon after the publication of English Bards, Byron turned twenty­ one and took his seat in the House of Lords. Much has been written about Byron's politics. * Here, it can only be noted that he lived through the period of revolutionary hope suggested by the French Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars,and the oppressive regimes estab­ lished throughout Europe after the Congress of Vienna (1815); and the stirrings of popular rebellion in the 1820s, not least in Greece, whose rule by Turkey was tacitly accepted by the European powers. Many of these events are touched on directly in his long narrative poems, Chi/de Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan, which, again, are considered at greater length later. Indeed,much of his poetry can be seen as Jerome McGann sees The Corsair (1814),as 'partly a symbolic formation of the political situation of the day,as Byron saw it,with its contest between the equivocal forces of revolt and the established powers of the old and corrupt order' ( C PW 3,p. 445). Byron could certainly take part in this contest on what might be seen as the liberal side. His major speeches as an actual politician took the side of what might be seen as 'the forces of revolt': he spoke in support of oppressed workers,at a time when they had no political power, and against anti-Catholic discrimination. He could look hopefully towards the end of what he called 'the King-times' (5: 173). Yet, again remembering the complexities of Glenarvon - the political activist and self-serving cynic - he could also declare: ' Born an aristocrat . . . with the greater part of my property in [government] funds,what have I to gain by a revolution?' (6:338). To some extent,of course,whilst holding it up as some kind of ideal, or at least the best of possible worlds (see DJ 10), Byron simply got bored with the British parliamentary system as he did with much else. As befitting a 'born' aristocrat,shortly after entering the Lords for *

For competing views of Byron's politics compare Kelsall, who argues that Byron was to some extent a disillusioned liberal, with Foot, who sees him as retaining strong connections to causes of political reform throughout his life.

xi

I NTRODUCTION

the first time, Byron left England to go on the then customary Grand Tour. Between 1809 and 1811 he took in Spain, Malta, Greece and Turkey. He travelled, as the privileged classes had done in the eighteenth century, as part of an education. He also travelled as a Romantic, enjoying in particular what he imagined was the simple life of the Noble Savage - what he called the 'brute' (3:97) - and the solitary wanderer communing with nature and the exotic. Something of this is captured, for example, in his description of Venice: Venice pleases me as much as I expected - and I expected much­ it is one of those places which I know before I see them - and has always haunted me the most - after the East - I like the gloomy gaiety of the gondolas - and the silence of the canals . . [5: 132] .

Like all educated travellers he knew what to expect as his reading had equipped him with certain assumptions about the culture centres of Europe and beyond. As a brooding Romantic he could also enjoy 'the silence of the canals', as he could the decay of many of these sites and the exotic appeal of 'the East' beyond. Yet his dual perspective allowed him to ironise both of these positions, particularly in his narrative voice. Indeed, it is irony more than anything - what Lillian Furst calls 'the tension between spontaneity and self-consciousness' ( Furst, p. 9) - which might be said to characterise the Byronic voice. His travels provided Byron with much of the raw material for Childe Harold, the first two cantos of which were published on his return to England in 181l. It was this poem and the verse tales, The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and others, which secured Byron's fame. It is in his popularity as much as his personality that Byron can be seen as anticipating the modem pop star: for the rest of his life he remained not only a bestseller, when narrative verse in particular was a form of popular entertainment, but regularly outsold the combined efforts of the next half dozen poets, both alive and dead ( Harvey, p. 115). Such fame, of course, gave him entry to the kind of social world that he criticised, and yet to which he was very much drawn, not least for the sexual opportunities offered. For four years he was at the centre of social, theatrical and literary circles in fashionable London. In 1815 Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke who moved in these fashionable circles. Capturing his ambivalence towards the fragile respectability that she came to represent, he called her 'that virtuous monster' (5: 140). She bore him a daughter who was to inherit her

xii

/

LORD BYRON

interest in maths; but the marriage foundered on rumours of Byron's infidelities,his bisexuality,and a possible incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh - many rumours,again as if playing up to the Glenarvon role, encouraged by Byron himself. These rumours fuelled a public scandal,an example of the kind of cant Byron sought to target; and he was forced,like one of his heroes, to flee England, never to return,in April 1816. He took to travelling around Europe once more,and it was again as an outsider that Byron could write. In Switzerland he met Shelley 'the best and least selfish man I ever knew' (9: 189) - and his circle; he had an affair and a child with Shelley's sister-in-law, Claire Clairmont; and he continued to write material which was still popularly received at home. When the Shelleys returned to England in 1817, Byron took responsibility for his daughter and moved to Venice. Italy proved more of a home. Byron had always been influenced by its literature,from the classical works he studied as a schoolboy,to Dante and Pulci. Under this influence, he began Don Juan and produced many dramatic works. Politically, Italy's emerging, if ultimately unsuccessful, freedom movement against the rule of the Austrians received his support. Encapsulating his own peculiar sense of how freedom was bound up with a sense of nationhood derived from cultural traditions, sustained not least in poetry,he wrote: It is no great matter,supposing that Italy could be liberated,who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object - the very poetry of politics. Only think a free Italy! [8:47] He was also attracted by the more relaxed attitude to sexual relations. In Venice,and later Ravenna, he began a lasting relation­ ship with the married Teresa, Countess of Guiccioli. From Italy too he kept up a quarrel with the prevailing poets of the day,which had begun in English Bards. It is yet another paradox that despite being in many ways typically Romantic, Byron himself valued the neo-classical poetry of the eighteenth century and particularly Pope above so much of that produced by his contemporaries (5:256). This dislike was fuelled by the belief that key Romantic figures, Wordsworth and the Poet Laureate,Southey - 'the vainest and most intolerant of men' (9:62) had rejected the once radical position which Byron believed he shared with them. It culminated in the writing of the satirical A Vision ofJudgement (1822). -

I NTRODUCTION

xiii

The failure of the Italian freedom movement led Byron to tum his attention to Greece's struggle for independence. Greece had always represented for him the most extreme case of an oppressed nation, and, perhaps more importantly, a people who had lost contact with their own cultural heritage, represented for Byron in the very neo­ classical values he sought to defend. As always, he expressed an ambivalence towards the Greeks and his owp political idealism (for example, 11:32,83,54-55,and not least in passages in Cantos Two and Three of DJ); but, equally, he worked tirelessly for the cause. In July 1823 he armed a ship and sailed for Greece. Such was his fame that there were rumours that he might even be made king of a free Greece. However, in Missolonghi in April 1824,preparing his troops for an attack on the Turks, Byron died, not in an heroic action, but from rheumatic fever caught in a downpour. This was the kind of irony that would not be lost on him. Considering mortality in Don Juan, Byron wrote: . . . and so our life exhales, A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame, Fighting, devotion, dust - perhaps a name.

[DJ 2:4]

He might also have been amused that it took another hundred and fifty years after the life, which reflected many of these priorities, 'exhale [dl' for him to be accepted by the establishment. He was granted a plaque in Westminster Abbey in 1968. The establishment of his day refused to bury him there. Despite this rejection, something that he felt coloured his colourful life, he could not be denied a name. The fame he sought is secured in part by the Byron myth, but ultimately by the poetry.

Bibiliography

Primary texts: Jerome McGann (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works, 7 vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980-3 Leslie Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters and Joumals, 12 vols, John Murray, London, 1973-82

xiv

LORD BYRON

Background material

S. T Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), Bolligen Press, Princeton,1983 Caroline Lamb, Glenarvon (1816), Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, New York, 1972 William Southey, Poetical Works, Longman, London, 1844 M. H Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, Oxford University Press, Oxford,1972 Fred Botting, Gothic, Routledge, London,1995 Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981 Stuart Curran, Poetic Fonn and British Romanticism, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1986 Lilian Furst, Fictions of Romantic Irony, Macmillan, London, 1980 Geoffrey Hartman, 'Romanticism and Anti-Self-Consciousness' in Beyond Fonnalism, Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 1970 A. D. Harvey, English Poetry in a Changing Society, Allison &: Busby, London,1980 Andrew Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage, Routledge, London, 1970 Biographies

Leslie Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols,John Murray, London, 1957 Thomas Moore,Life of Lord Byron, 6vols,John Murray,London, 1830 Fiona MacCarthy,Byron: Life and Legend, John Murray,London,2002 Introductory studies

Andrew Rutherford, Byron: A Critical Study, Oliver &: Boyd, Edinburgh,1961 Bernard Blackstone, Writers and Their Work: Byron, 3 vols, Longman, London,1971

xv

I NTRODUCTION

Specialist critical studies

Frederick Beaty, Byron the Satirist, Northern Illinois University Press,De Kalb,1985 Michael Cooke, The Blind Man Traces the Circle, Princeton University Press, Princeton,1969 Richard Cronin,' Mapping Chi/de Harold I and I I', The Byron Journal, 22,1994,pp. 14-20 Paul Elledge, Lord Byron at Harrow School, Johns Hopkins University Press,London and Baltimore,2000 Michael Foot, The Politics of Paradise, Harper Collins,London,1988 Caroline Franklin,Byron's Heroines, Clarendon Press, Oxford,1992 Peter Graham, Don Juan and Regency England, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville,1992 Myra Haslett, Byron's Don Juan and the Don Juan Legend, Clarendon Press, Oxford,1997 Malcolm Kelsall, Byron's Politics, Harvester, Brighton, 1987 Philip Martin, Byron: A Poet Before his Public, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1982 Jerome McGann, Fiery Dust: Byron's Poetic Development, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1968 Brian Nellist,'Lyric Presence in Byron from the Tales to Don Juan' in Byron and the Limits of Fiction, edited by Bernard Beatty and Vincent Newey,Liverpool,1988 Morten D. Paley,' Envisioning Lateness: Byron's "Darkness''', Romaticism, Ill, 1995,pp. 1-14 Frances Wilson Ced.), Byromania, Macmillan, London,1999 Peter Wilson' "Galvanism upon Mutton": Byron's Conjuring Trick in The Giaour', Keats-Shelley Journal, 24,1975,pp. 118-27 Websites

The Byron Society home page can be found at

www

.byronsociety.com

Many general Romantic links and links speci fic to Byron can be found on The Voice of the Shuttle' web pages: http://vos.ucsb.edu Discussion groups and other information on Byron and Romanticism in general can be found at'Romantic Circles': www.rc.umd.edu

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE (extracts) and

DON JUAN

Introduction to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage & Don Juan

'I awoke one morning and found myself famous'. * So Byron claimed on the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( 18 12- 16). Uke Don Juan, it is a long narrative poem concerning the travels of a young man across the Europe that Byron had travelled through - Spain, the Mediterranean, Greece and Italy. Although Byron claimed that it was 'original' (2:77), it owes something to Walter Scott's popular verse tales, like Marmiom ( 1808), and something to eighteenth­ century travel poetry and fiction . A 'childe' is a medieval young man of privileged birth; his 'pilgrimage' , the point o f departure for which is included here, suggests a romantic or even religious quest. Yet, our hero is departing rather mor� in the way of the Grand Tourist that Byron had j ust been, or even as a modem tourist, simply ' for change of scene' (CHP 1:6). It is this tension between high cultural values and expectations - not least th£ expectations that might be harboured by a Romantic traveller or poet - and the more mundane and harsh, yet exciting, realities of life which the poem, particularly in its early cantos, seeks to explore. An example is included here in the 'Bull­ fight' (CHP 1:72-82) . This characteristic tension is achieved partly by the use of a narrator who vacillates 'between sympathy and disapproval' (Cronin, p. 18) for Harold, and later for his own attitudes to the modem European cultural high spots, and for people with particular claims on Romantic ideas. Examples of this given here are : the narrator's views of Venice (CHP 4: 1-7) and Rome (CHP 4: 78-98) , and his attitude towards Rousseau (CHP 3:76-81) - the founder of the kind of Romantic primitiv­ ism and emotional investment in personal relationship with landscape of which Byron and his narrator could be so sceptical. Playful tension is also achieved in the poem by the knowing use form. t Childe Harold is written in Spenserian stanzas : nine lines of rhyming

• Reported by Moore, 1: 15 t For a discussion of the importance of form to Byron and Romanticism in

general, see Curran.

4

LORD BYRON

verse, used by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser for his The Faerie Queene ( 1 590) . Spenser himself had developed his stanza from Italian models . Spenser's poem is, amongst other things , a genuine quest­ romance narrative, and a complex allegory; its structure was taken up in the eighteenth century in poems like Thomson's The Castle of Indolence ( 1 741) and Beattie's The Minstrel (1 7 7 1 ) , to which Byron is particularly indebted. These poems continue the ideas of narrative quest, romance and allegory. From the opening of Canto One, with i ts overt medievalisms, to the repeated ways in which the narrative loses Sight of i ts alleged hero and eventually abandons him altogether, to the refusal to find fixed meaning in many of the experiences recorded, Byron deliberately under­ mines the readerly expectations suggested by the quest romance. The hero was originally to be called ' Childe Burun' , an older form of the name Byron; and it is tempting to see the poem as to some extent autobiographical. This could be done either in terms of Harold, or the narrator. The shift in focus across the poem as a whole can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that Cantos Three and Four were written after Byron's flight from England. Byron himself denied any easy identification (2 : 66) ; and, although McGann sees him as 'an ego-proj ection' (McGann, p. 69) , it might make more sense, again, to think in terms of playfu lness or irony. It is true to say that Byron 'personalis[esl the topographical poem' (CPW, p. 2 7 1 ) , particularly from Canto Three on; and that, in Venice for example, ' the speaker is as much an obj ect of attention as the scene which he surveys' (Rutherford, 1 96 1 , p. 98). This concentration on subjective experience might make the poem Romantic in the Words­ worthian sense. * Yet, at the very moment of capturing the ' meaning' of Venice - its place in history, its cultural significance, underpinned by the imaginative power of the speaker - the narrator bursts his own romantic bubble. Just as he does earlier to both the reader's and Harold's expecta­ tions of Spenserian quest, in the midst of Venice , just as in Greece , or at the poem's conclusion, the narrator reminds us that all this is the stuff of 'overweening fantasies unsound' (CHP 4: 7). Don Juan ( 1 8 1 9-24) , which is included here in its entirety, might equally be said to be concerned with the power of 'overweening fan tasy' . like Chi/de Harolde it concerns the many travels and adventures, par­ ticularly sexual, of the eponymous hero ; Rutherford rightly calls it 'a large , loose, baggy monster' (Rutherford, 1 96 1 , p. 1 4 1) ; and it, again, explores the tensions between Juan's, and perhaps the reader's, romantic •

For discussion of the relationship between Byron and Wordsworth, see McGann, pp. 32-5, Martin, pp. 70, 7 9 and Cooke, p. 4 7 ff.

I N TRODUCT I O N

5

expectations - in all senses of the word - and the views of the more cynical narrator. For example, in Canto Two, the theme of forbidden romantic love itself is given a grotesquely comic context when the genu­ inely touching love letter written by Julia is snatched from Juan to make lots to see who will be eaten by the starving shipwrecked crew: At length the lots were tom up, and prepared, But of materials that must shock the Muse Having no paper, for the want of better, They took by force from Juan Julia's letter.

[2 : 75]

On completing Canto One in 1 8 1 9 , Byron wrote , if anything understating his intent : It . . . is meant t o be a little quietly facetious upon everything. But I doubt whether it is not .. . too free for these modest days . . . if it don ' t take it will be discontinued. [4 : 2 60] Luckily for us it did ' take' and it was continued. Yet, Byron's observation captures the tone of the poem well, and particularly the sense of it both sitting uncomfortably with, and also exposing by its very popularity, the hypocrisy or cant of the superficially 'modest days' and social values of Regency England. As Peter Graham suggests : 'Don juan , in spite , and because of, its whole exploration of Europe . .. is always abou t England and never more so than at its most exotic' (Graham, p. 4). Thus, Spanish bedrooms, fantasy islands , imperial brothels and Turkish harems, which all awaitJuan - whose very name the rhyme insists is to be pronounced in the English manner - as they do the prudish but prurient reader, can be seen as comments on English hypocritical practice . As if to hammer home the point, the concluding cantos of the poem, as Byron left it when he died (OJ 1 0- 1 7) , are set in the very milieu of county-house politics and sexual dalliance which he was forced to abandon. Of course , however his name is pronounced, Don Juan is himself an exotic, Spanish hero . Like Chi/de Harolde, his adventures here are, in part, a response to the vogue for domesticated adventure narratives. Juan owes much, for example to novels like Fielding's Tom jones ( 1 749) , with i ts playful narrator and tales of sexual adventure . More directly it is cashing in on the craze for Juan stories which swept London follOwing a performance of Mozart's Don Giovani (the Italian form of the name) in 1 8 1 7 . Don J uan has many incarnations ; * he could be, like Glenarvon *

For a discussion of the nature of the Don Juan myth, particularly in Byron's hands, see Haslett.

6

LORD BYRON

and certainly like the Byron of gossip from 1 8 1 6 , a serial sexual oppor­ tunist and religious sceptic. For the apparently ' modest times' of early nineteenth-century England, he could represent something of a demon, but an attractive one none the less . Reflecting on the contemporary popularity of theatrical versions of the story, Coleridge wrote : There is no danger (thinks the spectator or reader) of my becoming such a monster of iniquity as Don Juan! I never shall be an atheist ! I shall never disallow all distinction between right and wrong! I have not the least inclination to be so ou trageous . . . in my love affairs ! But to possess such a power . . . [Coleridge p . 2 1 6j Of course , such a 'power' was assumed to be possessed by Byron, and to be endorsed in his poem. Wordsworth wrote: 'I am persuaded that Don Juan will do more harm to the English character than anything of our time ' (Rutherford, 1 9 70, p. 1 59) . What greater incentive could there be for wanting to read it then or now? Such a view of Juan , and indeed of Byron, is an understandable response to a poem that is about sexual, amongst other kinds, of adventure. It forms part of a larger debate amongst Romantic poets as to the nature of love , and the tensions between its physical and spiritual or idealist varieties, which Byron enters, again, at the start of the poem. Marilyn Butler suggests provocatively that Byron deliberately 'substituted a sexual ethic for Wordsworth's solemn aestheticism' (Butler, p. 1 40) . Indeed, much of the poem is about what might be called the joy of sex, but also its humour and perils . Byron's narrator engages directly with the idealism that he sees as endemic in much Romanticism : 'I mean to show things really as they arel Not as they ought to be . ' (OJ 1 2 : 40) . For Byron, interestingly, 'things as they are' includes both a celebration of the kind of ' power' , to use Coleridge's term, suggested speCifically by the Don Juan, if not the Byron, myth , and the claims made on behalf of love more generally. But it also includes a debunking of such 'power' , j ust as earlier in Chi/de Harold he plays with the possibilities of the narrative-quest hero . At a structural level this is done by a rewriting, an inversion of the Don Juan dynamic. As Caroline Franklin notes: 'Women in Don Juan are constantly presented as creatures of appetite and will, from the time that Julia seduces the sixteen-year-old son of her friend' (Franklin , p . 1 26) , in Canto One . To Julia can be added the Sultana, Gulbayez (OJ 5-6), Catherine the Great (OJ 9- 1 0) , the Duchess of Fitz­ Faulke (OJ 1 5) , and even, in slightly different ways, Haidee (OJ 2) and Aurora Raby (OJ 1 5) . Such a presentation might b e explained autobiographically. Of

I NTRODUCT I O N

7

his own Jaun-ish reputation Byron complained, as often only half jokingly: 'I should like to know who has been carried off - except poor dear me - 1 have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war' (6 : 2 3 7). The connection between epic war and amorous adventure is not a coincidence. Throughout the poem, and particularly in the Siege cantos (OJ 7-8) , sexual activity is equated with power politics and military aggression. And this aggression is as likely to be exhibited by a woman as a man. Byron's point, contrary to the assumptions which underpin the Juan myth and his own treatment, is to suggest that (sexual) behaviour is culturally determined rather than biologically given . * Thus, the Sultana can appear playfully, and perhaps titillatingly, masculine - 'a poniard deck'd her girdle' (OJ 5: Ill) - at the same time that Don Juan appears in the female 'garb' of a harem slave (OJ 5 : 1 2 7) . In Don Juan, though, Byron doesn't only play ironically with gender assumptions and current sexual politics, and indeed politics. He sees these as j ust part of what he identifies as the 'cant' (5 : 5 42) of his time. His chosen verse form here , the heavily rhymed ottava rima , par­ ticularly its concluding couplet, which is often used almost like the punch line of a j oke, aids him in his mission to expose hypocrisy. To give one example, from the very beginning of the poem he seeks to question the very notion of the hero. In the opening of (;:anto One , he lists, comically, the names of many contemporary leaders and public figures, but goes on to observe : Brave men were living before Agamemnon And since, exceeding valorous and sage , A good deal like him too, though quite the same none ; But then they shone not on the poet's page, And so have been forgotten: - I condemn none, But can ' t find any in the present age· Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one) ; So, as I said, I 'll take my friend Don Juan.

[ 1 : 5]

Here he attacks what he sees at the decline in poetic ambition in relation to public themes . But most importantly he mocks the con­ temporary claim to the hero status, enjoyed by figures such as Nelson, in the comparison with the hero of the Troj an War, Agamemnon. This attack is underpinned not least by the use of outrageous multi-syllabic rhyme •

Such a view makes him an unlikely bedfellow with much twentieth-century feminist thought; but it was also an idea being explored by his contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft.

8

LORD BYRON

and near rhyme: Agamemnon/ same none/ condemn none/ new one/ Don Juan. In a sense the progress of the rhymes from Agamemnon to Don Juan marks how far the hero has fallen. Yet, just as he seeks to explode myths of all kinds, so, as a Romantic despite himself, he is also drawn to them. Thus, in the case of gender identity Juan is drawn to the slave girl Dudu (OJ 6) and, finally, to Aurora Raby, who do much to restore more orthodox expectations about rela­ tions between the sexes. Indeed, the power of love in a more general sense is never quite banished from the poem . The most famous example of this ambivalence can be found in Canto Three. Briefly, Juan awakes to find himself washed ashore on a desert island, which he shares with the beautiful and powerful Haidee. This is the stuff of male (adolescent) dreams. It is also a kind of Rosseauesque fantasy but with all mod cons . The optimism of the young couple is allied to a greater political optimism: the lovers hold a feast at which a poet sings an inspirational song about the possible liberation of Greece. This suggests almost a kind of Shelleyan view of the power of love to affect political change (see Shelley'S Essay on Love, 1 8 1 5) . Yet, for Byron any such hope is immediately undermined by context: his revolutionary poet is simply a money-making opportunist, 'a sad trimmer' (O J 3: 82) ; and, in a wonderfu lly ironic reworking of the story of Odysseus, the imagined Grecian hero of the song is displaced by the return of Lombro , Haidee's father. He is a mercenary, materialistic patriarch who soon puts an end to love 's young dream. Yet, of course , in the sense that the episode exists , not least in the narrator's memory, since Haidee is o ften recalled (for example, OJ 1 5: 58) , and in the fact that the ' Isles of Greece' lyric is often separated from its context, the optimism remains 'present' - at least for some readers . In a similar way, the apparently very odd digres­ sion into the story of the Rousseauesque Daniel Boone, in the midst of the description of a bloody battle (OJ 8:61-7), and at least the first appearance of the ghost of Norman Abbey (OJ 1 6 : 20-5) are not really undercut by dismissive irony. It is, perhaps, this irony which marks both DonJuan and Chi/de Harold more than anything else; it is this which makes them Byronic. Byron wanted his long poem, his masterpiece, to be like life : '[I] t may be profligate - but is it not life - is it not the thing? - Could any man have written it - who has not lived in the world? ' (6: 23 1 ) he wrote. Like Chi/de Harold, if it is like life , it a harsh, yet endlessly comic and complex life ; a life which still has a place, however limited, for ideals; a life that we , perhaps , recognise today.

Extracts from CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

The notes for this section are on pages 47-50

Canto One I

Oh, thou ! in Hellas1 deem'd of heav'nly birth, Muse! form'd or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since sham'd full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I 've wander'd by thy vaunted rill; Yes ! sigh'd o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine, Where , save that feeble fountain , all is still; Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine To grace so plain a tale - this lowly lay of mine. 2

Whilome2 in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth, Who ne in virtue's ways did take deligh t ; But spent h i s days i n riot most uncouth, And vex'd with mirth the drowsy ear of Night. Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, Sore given to revel and ungodly glee; Few earthly things found favour in his sight Save concubines and carnal companie, And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.

10

3

Childe Harold was he high t :3 - but whence his name And lineage long, it suits me not to say; Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame, And had been glorious in another day: But one sad losel4 soils a name for aye, However mighty in the olden time ; Nor all that heralds rake from coffin'd clay, Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.

20

12

LORD B YRON

Canto One

4

Childe Harold bask'd him in the noon-tide sun , Disporting there like any other fly; Nor deem'd before his little day was done One blast might chill him into misery. But long ere scarce a third of his pass' d by, Worse than adversity the Childe befell ; He felt the fullness of satiety: Then loath 'd he in his native land to dwell, Which seem'd to him more lone than Eremite's5 sad cell.

30

5

For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run, Nor made atonement when he did amiss, Had sigh'd to many though he lov'd but one, And that lov'd one, alas ! could ne'er be his. Ah , happy she ! to 'scape from him whose kiss Had been pollu tion unto aught so chaste ; Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss, And spoil'd her goodly lands to gild his waste, Nor calm domestic peace had ever deign ' d to taste .

40

6

And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart, And from his fellow bacchanals would flee ; 'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start, But Pride congeal'd the drop within his e e : 6 Apart he stalk'd in j oyless reverie, And from his native land resolv'd to go , And visit scorching climes beyond the sea; With pleasure drugg'd he almost long'd for woe, And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.

50

7

The Childe departed from his father's hall : It was a vast and venerable pile ; So old , it seemed only not to fall, Yet strength was pillar'd in each massy aisle . Monastic dome! condemn'd to uses vile ! Where Superstition once had made her den Now Paphian7 girls were known to sing and smile ; And monks might deem their time was come agen, If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.

60

Canto One

CHILDE HAROLDE'S PILGRI M AGE

13

8

Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow, As if the memory of some deadly feud Or disappointed passion lurk'd below: But this none knew, nor haply car'd to know; For his was not that open, artless soul That feels relief b y bidding sorrow flow, Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole , Whate'er his grief mote be, which he could not control.

70

9

And none did love him - though to hall and bower He gather'd revellers from far and near, He knew them flatt'rers of the festal hour; The heartless parasites of present cheer. Yea ! none did love him - not his lemansB dear ­ But pomp and power alone are woman's care , And where these are light Eros finds a feere ;9 Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare , And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.

80

10

Childe Harold had a mother - not forgot, Though parting from that mother he did shu n ; A sister whom he lov'd, but saw h e r not Before his weary pilgrimage begun: If friends he had, he bade adieu to none. Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel; Ye, who have known what ' tis to doat upon A few dear obj ects, will in sadness feel Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal. 11

His house, his home, his heritage, his lands, The laughing dames in whom he did delight, Whose large blue eyes, fair locks , and snowy hands Might shake the saintship of an anchorite, And long had fed his youthful appetite ; His goblets brimm'd with every costly wine, And all that mote to luxury invite, Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine, And traverse Paynim shores, and pass Earth's central line. 1 0

90

14

LORD BYRON

Canto One

12

The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew, As glad to waft him from his native home ; And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foa m : And then, it may be, of h i s wish t o roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept.

100

13

But when the sun was sinking in the sea He seiz'd his harp, which he at times could string, And strike , albeit with untaught melody, When deem'd he no strange ear was listening: And now his fingers 0' er it he did fling, And tun'd his farewell in the dim twilight. While flew the vessel on her snowy wing, And fleeting shores receded from his sight, Thus to the elements he pour'd his last ' Good night' . *

*

*

110

Canto One

CHILDE HAROLDE'S PILGRIMAGE

15

72

The lists are op'd, the spacious area clear' d , Thousands on thousands pil'd are seated round; Long ere the first loud trumpet's note is heard, Ne vacant space for lated wight is found: Here dons, grandees, but chiefly dames abound, Skill'd in the ogle of a roguish eye , Yet ever well inclin'd to heal the wound; None through their cold disdain are doom'd to die, As moon-struck bards complain, by Love' s sad archeryY

720

73

Hush'd i s the din o f tongues - o n gallant steeds , With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-pois' d lance , Four cavaliers prepare for ven turous deeds, And lowly bending to the lists advance ; Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance: If in the dangerous game they shine today, The crowds loud shout and ladies lovely glance, Best prize of better acts , they bear away, And all that kings or chiefs e ' er gain their toils repay.

730

74

In costly sheen and gaudy cloak array' d, But all afoot, the light-limb'd Matadore S tands in the centre, eager to invade The lord of lowing herds ; but not before The ground, with cautious tread, is travers'd o'er, Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed: His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more Can man achieve withou t the friendly steed, Alas ! too oft condemn'd for him to bear and bleed.

740

75

Thrice sounds the clarion; lot the signal falls, The den expands , and Expectation mute Gapes round the silent Circle's peopled walls . Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And , wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot, The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe : Here, there , h e points his threatening front t o suit His first attack, wide waving to and fro His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.

750

16

LORD BYRON

Canto One

76

Sudden h e stops ; his eye i s fix' d : away, Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear: Now is thy time, to perish, or display The skill that yet may check his mad career. With well-tim'd croupe1 2 the nimble coursers veer; 760 On foams the bull, but not unscath 'd he goes; Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear: He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes ; Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowings speak his woes . 77

Again h e comes ; nor dart nor lance avail, Nor the wild plunging of the tortur'd horse ; Though man and man's avenging arms assail, Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force . O n e gallant steed i s stretch'd a mangled corse; Another, hideous sight! unseam'd appears , His gory chest unveils life's panting source , Tho' death-struck still his feeble frame he rears, Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unharm'd he bears .

770

78

Foil'd, bleeding, breathless, furious t o the last, Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances bras t , 1 3 And foes disabled in the brutal fray: And now the Matadores around him play, Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand : Once more through all he bursts his thundering way Vain rage ! the mantle quits the conyngel4 hand, Wraps his fierce eye - ' tis past - he sinks upon the sand!

780

79

Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine, Sheath'd in his form the deadly weapon lies. He stops - he starts - disdaining to decline: Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries, Without a groan, without a struggle dies . The decorated car appears - on high The corse is pil'd - sweet sight for vulgar eyes Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy, Hurl the dark bulk along, scarce seen in dashing by.

790

Canto One

CHILDE HAROLDE'S PILGRIMAGE

17

80

Such [he ungentle span [hat oft invites The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain. Nurtur'd in blood betimes , his hean delights In vengeance, gloating on another's pain. What private feuds the troubled village stain ! Though now one phalanx'd host should meet the foe , Enough, alas ! i n humble homes remain, To mediate 'gainst friends the secret blow, For some slight cause of wrath, whence life's warm stream must flow.

800

81

But Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts, His wither'd sentinel, Duenna sage ! 15 And all whereat the generous soul revolts , Which the stern dotard deem'd he could encage, Have pass'd to darkness with the vanish'd age . Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen, (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage) , With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance shone N ight's lover-loving Queen? 82

Oh ! many a time, and oft, had Harold lov'd , Or dream'd he lov'd, since Rapture is a dream ; But now his wayward bosom was unmov'd , F o r n o t yet h a d he drunk of Lethe's stream ; And lately had he learn'd with truth to deem Love has no gift so grateful as his wings : 16 How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem , Full from the fount ofjoy's delicious springs Some bitter o'er the flowers i ts bubbling venom flings.

810

Canto Two 10

Here let me sit upon this massy stone, The marble column's yet unshaken base; Here , son of Saturn ! 1 7 was thy fav'rite throne: Mightiest of many such ! Hence let me trace The latent grandeur of thy dwelling place . It may not be: nor ev'n can Fancy's eye Restore what Time hath labour'd to deface. Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh , Unmov'd the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.

90

11

But who, of all the plunderers of yon fanel8 On high , where Pallas linger'd, loth to flee The latest relic of her ancient reign ; The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Blush, Caledonia ! l9 such thy son could be! England! I j oy no child he was of thine: Thy free-born men should spare what once was free ; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine . 12

But most the modem Pict's ignoble boast, To rive20 what Goth , and Turk, and Time hath spar'd: Cold as the crags upon his native coast, His mind as barren a nd his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceiv'd, whose hand prepar'd, Aught to displace Athena's poor remains : Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains, And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.

100

Canto Two

CHILDE HAROLDE' S PILGRIMAGE

19

13

What ! shall i t e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy in Athena's tears? Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears; The ocean queen, the free Britannia bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land: Yes , she, whose gen 'rous aid her name endears , Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand, Which envious Eld21 forbore , and tyrants left to stand .

1 10

14

Where was thine Aegis, Pallas ! that appall'd Stem Alaric and Havoc22 on their way? Where Peleus' son?23 whom Hell in vain enthrall'd, His shade from Hades upon that dread day, Bursting to light in terrible array! What? could not Pluto24 spare the chief once more, To scare a second robber from his prey? Idly he wander'd on the Stygian shore , Nor now preserv'd the walls he lov'd to shield before.

120

IS

Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee, Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they lov'd; Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defac'd, thy mouldering shrines remov'd 130 By British hands , which it had best behov'd To guard those relics ne'er to be restor'd. Curst be the hour when from their isle they rov'd, And once again thy hapless bosom gor'd, And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr'd ! 16

But where is Harold? shall I then forget To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave? Little reck'd he of all that men regret ; No lov'd-one now in feign' d lament could rave; No friend the parting hand extended gave , Ere the cold stranger pass'd to other climes : Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave ; But Harold felt not as in other times, And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes .

140

20

LORD BYRON

Canto Two

17

He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea, Has view'd at times, I ween, a full fair sight; When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be, The white sail set, the gallant frigate tight; Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right, The glorious main expanding o'er the bow, The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight, The dullest sailor wearing bravely now, So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.

150

18

And oh, the little warlike world within ! The well-reev'd guns,25 the netted canopy, The hoarse command, the busy humming din, When, at a word, the tops are mann' d on high : Hark to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry! While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides; Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by, S trains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides, And well the docile crew that skilful urchin guides.

1 60

19

White is the glassy deck, without a stain, Where on the watch the staid Lieutenant walks : Look on that part which sacred doth remain For the lone chieftain,26 who maj estic stalks , Silent and fear'd by all - not oft he talks With aught beneath him, if he would preserve That strict restraint, which broken, ever balks 1 70 Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve From Law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve . 20

Blow! swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale ! Till the broad sun withdraws his lessening ray; Then must the pennant-bearer slacken sail, That lagging barks may make their lazy way. Ah ! grievance sore, and listless dull delay, To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze ! What leagues are lost before the dawn of day, Thus loitering pensive on the willing seas, The flapping sail haul'd down to halt for logs like these !

180

Canto Two

CHILDE HAROLDE'S PILGRIMAGE

21

21

The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve ! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand; Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe : Such be our fate when we return to land! Meantime some rude Arion's27 restless hand Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love ; A circle there of merry listeners stand, O r to some well-known measure featly move , Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove. 22

Through Calpe's s traits survey the steepy shore ; Europe and Afric on each other gaze! Lands of the dark-eid Maid and dusky Moor Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze : 28 How softly on the Spanish shore she plays, Disclosing rock, and slope , and forest brown , Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase ; But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown, From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down .29

1 90

23

'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have lov'd, though love is at an end : The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Alas ! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy! Ah ! happy years ! once more who would not be a boy?

200

24

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere ; The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, And flies unconscious o'er each backward year. N one are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possess' d A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; A flashing pang! of which the weary breast Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

210

22

LORD BYRON

Canto Two

2S

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene , Where things that own not man 's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been ; 220 To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; ' tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. 26

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock o f men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess , And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued; This is to be alone ; this, this is solitude! *

*

*

230

Canto Two

CHILDE HAROLDE'S PILGRIMAGE

23

76

Hereditary bondsmen ! 3o know y e not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? no! True, they may lay your proud despoilers3 l low, But not for you will Freedom 's altars flame. Shades of the Helots!32 triumph o'er your foe ! Greece ! change thy lords, thy state i s still the same; Thy gloriOUS day is o'er, but not thine years of shame.

720

77

The city won for Allah from the Giaour, The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest; And the Serai's impenetrable tower Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest ; On Wahab's33 rebel brood who dared divest The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil, May wind their path of blood along the West ; But ne'er will freedom seek this fated soil, But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil

730

78

Yet mark their mirth - ere lenten days begin, That penance which their holy rites prepare To shrive from man his weight of mortal sin, By daily abstinence and nightly prayer; But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, Some days of j oyaunce are decreed to all, To take of pleasaunce each his secret share, In motley robe to dance at masking ball, And j oin the mimic train of merry Carnival .

740

79

And whose more rife with merriment than thine, Oh Stamboul ! once the empress of their reign? Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine, And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: (Alas ! her woes will still pervade my strain!) Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, All felt the common j oy they now must feign, Nor oft I 've seen such sight, nor heard such song, As woo'd the eye, and thrill'd the Bosphorus along.

750

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