PROMETHEUS 40 [There is something in the character of Prometheus which early and strongly attracted Byron- as it did Shelley. Byron's first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase from a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus, and there are many allusions to the god in his later works. Indeed his mind wavered almost to the end between the heroic defiance of Prometheus and the cynical defiance of Don Juan.] TITAN! to whose immortal eyes Were not as things that gods despise; Which speaks but in its loneliness, Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, And the inexorable Heaven, 10 The ruling principle of Hate, 20 Which for its pleasure doth create And in thy Silence was his Sentence, Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, 40 Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory. DIODATI, July, 1816. A FRAGMENT 50 heart? a quiet of the 10 The whole of that of which we are a part? rest. The absent are the dead - for they are And ne'er can be what once we did behold; if yet The unforgotten do not all forget, or 20 The under-earth inhabitants Or have they their own language? and a sense Of breathless being? - darken'd and intense 30 As midnight in her solitude? - O Earth! The dead are thy inheritors - and we . . DIODATI, July, 1816. [First published, 1830.] SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE [Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. I did as well as I could,' says Lord Byron, but where I have not my choice, I pretend to answer for nothing.' (Letter to Murray, September 29, 1816.) For Byron's admiration of Sheridan, see Letters, passim.] WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day awes While Nature makes that melancholy pause, Time Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime, Who hath not shared that calm so still and deep, The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep, 10 A holy concord—and a bright regret, A glorious sympathy with suns that set? "T is not harsh sorrow-but a tenderer woe, Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below, Felt without bitterness - but full and clear, A sweet dejection Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain, a transparent tear, Shed without shame and secret without pain. Even as the tenderness that hour instils When Summer's day declines along the hills, 20 So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes MONODY ON THE DEATH OF R. B. SHERIDAN Of light no likeness is bequeath'd -no name, 193 That what to them seem'd Vice might be but Woe. Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise; Repose denies her requiem to his name, And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame. The secret enemy whose sleepless eye Stands sertinel, accuser, judge, and spy; 70 The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain, The envious who but breathe in others' pain Behold the host! delighting to deprave, Who track the steps of Glory to the grave, Watch every fault that daring Genius owes Half to the ardour which its birth be To find in Hope but the renew'd caress, What marvel if at last the mightiest fail? Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given Bear hearts electric from Heaven, charged with fire 90 Black with the rude collision, inly torn, By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne, Driven o'er the lowering atmosphere that Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport. The effect of the original ballad - which existed both in Spanish and Arabic-was such, that it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death, within Granada. [The Spanish of this ballad, which was originally printed side by side with the translation, is not known to exist elsewhere in its integrity. According to Mr. E. H. Coleridge it is 'a cento of three or more ballads which are included in the Guerras Civiles de Granada of Gines Perez de Hita, published at Saragossa in 1595.'] THE Moorish King rides up and down Woe is me, Alhama! 'Friends! ye have, alas! to know Out then spake old Alfaqui, With his beard so white to see: 'Good King! thou art justly served, Good King! this thou hast deserved. Woe is me, Alhama! 'By thee were slain, in evil hour, 30 40 Woe is me, Alhama! 50 |