A crimson cloud it spreads and glows, But shall return to whence it rose; When 't is full 't will burst asunder

Never yet was heard such thunder

As then shall shake the world with wonder,
Never yet was seen such lightning

As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning!
Like the Wormwood Star foretold
By the sainted Seer of old,
Show'ring down a fiery flood,
Turning rivers into blood.

The Chief has fallen, but not by you,
Vanquishers of Waterloo !
When the soldier citizen

Sway'd not o'er his fellow-men,
Save in deeds that led them on
Where Glory smiled on Freedom's son-
Who, of all the despots banded,

With that youthful chief competed?
Who could boast o'er France defeated,
Till lone Tyranny commanded ?
Till, goaded by ambition's sting,
The Hero sunk into the King?

so perish all

Who would men by man enthrall !

And thou, too, of the snow-white plume!
Whose realm refused thee ev'n a tomb;
Better hadst thou still been leading
France o'er hosts of hirelings bleeding,
Than sold thyself to death and shame
For a meanly royal name;
Such as he of Naples wears,
Who thy blood-bought title bears.
Little didst thou deem, when dashing

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On thy war-horse through the ranks Like a stream which burst its banks, While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing, Shone and shiver'd fast around thee Of the fate at last which found thee: Was that haughty plume laid low By a slave's dishonest blow? Once as the Moon sways o'er the tide, It roll'd in air, the warrior's guide; Through the smoke-created night Of the black and sulphurous fight, The soldier raised his seeking eye To catch that crest's ascendency, And, as it onward rolling rose, So moved his heart upon our foes. There, where death's brief pang was quickest, And the battle's wreck lay thickest, Strew'd beneath the advancing banner

ΤΟ

Of the eagle's burning crest

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[Charles Churchill (1731-1764), the satirical poet. On the sheet containing the original draft of these lines, Lord Byron has written: The following poem (as most that I have endeavoured to write) is founded on a fact; and this detail is an attempt at a serious imitation of the style of a great poet - its beauties and its defects: I say, the style; for the thoughts I claim as my own. In this, if there be anything ridiculous, let it be attributed to me, at least as much as to Mr. Wordsworth, of whom there can exist few greater admirers than myself. I have blended what I would deem to be the beauties as well as de

He died before my day of Sextonship,

And I had not the digging of this grave.' And is this all? I thought, and do we rip

The veil of Immortality, and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread, 20
For Earth is but a tomb-stone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's
thought,

Were it not that all life must end in one, Of which we are but dreamers; - as he caught

As 't were the twilight of a former Sun, Thus spoke he, 'I believe the man of

whom

[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
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine- and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;

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And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory. DIODATI, July, 1816.

A FRAGMENT

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