mits no other laws of life but the ty- pause in the darkest track of his pilrannic passions, cherished in the con- grimage, to hear the calm, pure, lofty scious pride of that power, which, in anthem that the poet sings to nature turn, uses those passions as its most in the sinless happiness which she has abject slaves. created, sanctified, and blest against If such may be the effects of Byron's violence or decay, Lord Byron seems poetry on good natures, it is to be feare to have roamed through the Alps with ed that it may exert a lamentable in- the spirit of Wordsworth often at his fluence over those prone to evil. There side ;-and his soul was elevated by must appear in the splendour, and the communion. It is cold and unpower, and majesty, wherein his ge- meaning to say, that in the third cannius enshrouds feelings and passions to of Childe Harold, he imitated or intrinsically worthless or pernicious, a competed with the author of the Exfatal justification of that evil, from cursion. He followed him-he was which, in its native nakedness, even led by him to the same eternal founthe fallen spirit would turn with aver- tain of all beauty and all grandeur. sion. When virtue is dead, pride Different as are the souls of these two often remains in full life. It firmly illustrious men, nature bowed them fastens on representations like these, down or elevated them up into similiby which a veil is thrown over its own tude ; so that in Byron's glorious songs meanness, and a false but dazzling among the Alps, we see the same soul world is thus created for it, wherein at work that had before sublimed the it may move, and act as bold and fear, mountains of England, -and are deless a part as virtue herself walk- lighted to behold how the calm wise ing in her untroubled beauty. To dom of contemplative age and recluse Byron, and to great though erring philosophy can purify, and sustain, spirits like his, we mournfully allow and strengthen, the impetuous energy the privilege of his pride. It is a of a wilder spirit, revelling deliriously shirt of mail wherewith he would seek among the maddening magnificence of to guard his bosom from the shafts of nature. sorrow. And it may be, that its folds It would lead us into a most intersometimes indeed repel those“ un- esting, but difficult and long inquiry, kindest blows of all," against whose were we to endeavour clearly to point infliction the soul hath no other shield out the connexion subsisting between in its solitude. But with them whose much of Byron's late poetry, and the passions tend only towards mere earth- spirit of Wordsworth's and of some of ly objects-unsanctified by genius of his disciples. This we purpose doing by grief-reckless, importunate, and on a future occasion. Suffice it to say, selfish-sacrificing to their indulgence, that such spiritual communion between without compunction, the happiness of two great poets, in many things so unother hearts-how pernicious must like, is honourable to both, and we that philosophy be (and the poetry of fear not that we shall soon see the Byron is but too full of it), that lends day, when Byron, escaping from the robes of royalty, and a seeming sceptre too severe dominion of his own pasto passions that are in themselves base, sions, shall look abread over nature odious, and contemptible, or, haply, with a wider sweep of speculation,such as conduct to ruin, agony, and become a happier, a better, a greatdeath. er man, as the benign influences There is one school of poetry (we of nature are suffered to enter, unopuse the word somewhat unwillingly) posed, into the recesses of his heart, from which this great Poet has already and that the penance which he has learned much, and from which his for so long endured, and often self-innoble nature may yet learn more the ficted, shall be found to have fitted poetry of the Lakes. Byron need not and disposed his soul for the recepbe ashamed-nay, he must exult to be tion and love of those lofty and uniinstructed by the wisdom of Words- versal truths, on which alone a splenworth. Nothing can impair the ori, did poetical reputation can ultimately ginality of his genius ; little need be rest, and by which alone he can hope added to its power. But a warning to be of essential and lasting benefit voice may arise from the untroubled to his fellow-mortals. He knows, that magnificence of the mountain solitude, the great poet to whom we have allud, and the wandering “ Childe” may ed, though accused of bigotry, infatuation, and narrowness of view, has From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless taken ampler and nobler prospects of East the soul of man than any other living Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling mind. He knows the depths of the In purple was she robed, and of her feast, showers. calm of that wisdom, which the storms Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity of the world cannot disturb. He increas'd. knows that poetry is a divine art 3. that its influences are divine. And In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, all may see scattered throughout the And silent rows the songless gondolier ; darkest scenery of his own soul, lights Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, that seem as if they would fain break And music meets not always now the ear: through the gloom, and that wait but Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here. for his will to shine on him and his States fall, arts fade but Nature doth not die, spirit for evermore, and make him, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, what every great poet should be, the The pleasant place of all festivity, glad, exulting, hoping, undismayed, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy. friend and vindicator of the immortal He then seems tacitly to reproach destinies of man. himself for taking all the subjects of We said, that we should not criti- his musing from among strangers, and cise, and we have accordingly thrown bursts into one of the few truly patriout merely a few unformed feelings otic pieces of poetry which are to be and reflections, which many of our found in his works. readers may think but little illustra 8. tive of the subject immediately before I'vetaught me other tongues- and in strange us. But we may have touched a string, eyes perhaps, in some meditative heart, Have made me not a stranger; to the mind and afforded food for thought to those which is itself, no changes bring surprise ; who love to think and feel for them. Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find selves, and who, on that account, are A country with may, or without mankind; contented to peruse with pleasure the Not without cause; and should I leave be Yet was I born where men are proud to be, most wandering reveries of others, hind when they seem to tend, at least, to- The inviolate island of the sage and free, wards what is right and beautiful. And seek me out a bome We shall now give some extracts from 9. the last, and perhaps the finest canto Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay of Childe Harold, the finest, beyond My ashes in a soil which is not mine, all comparison, of Byron's poems. My spirit shall resume it if we may Unbodied choose a sanotuary. I twine At the opening of the Fourth Canto, My hopes of being remembered in my line the Poet represents himself as stand- With my land's language; if too fond and far ing upon a Bridge of Venice, and in- These aspirations in their scope incline, dulging himself in such a grain of me- If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, ditations as might well be excited by Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Obthe decaying splendour, unexpected livion bar desertedness, and ancient glories of 10. this romantic city. My name from out the temple where the dead 1. Are honoured by the nations-let it be I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, And light the laurels on a loftier head ! A palace and a prison on each hand : And be the Spartan's epitaph on me I saw from out the wave her structures rise Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need ; A thousand years their cloudy wings expand The thorns which I have reaped are of the Around me, and a dying Glory smiles D'er the far times, when many a subject land I planted, they have to me, and I bleed; Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, I should have known what fruit would spring Where Venice sate in state, thron'd on her from such & seed. hundred isles ! He then returns to Venice, and al. 2. lades to the well-known affeetion en She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, tertained by her inhabitants for the Rising with her tiara of proud towers poetry of Tasso. At airy distance, with majestic motion, 17. A ruler of the waters and their powers : Thus, Venice, if no stronger daima were And such she was ;--her daughters had their thine, dowers Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, remoter sea, a 6 tree not a trace Thy choral memory of the bard divine, And weave their web again ; some, bow'd time, Albion ! to thee : the Ocean queen should And perish with the reed on which they leant; Some seek devotion, toil, war, good, or crime, Abandon Ocean's children ; in the fall According as their souls were form’d to sink Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery or climb: wall. 23. 18. I lov'd her from my boyhood she to me But ever and anon of griefs subdued There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, Was as a fairy city of the heart, Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued; Rising like water-columns from the sea, And slight withal may be the things which Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart; And 'Otway, Ratcliff, Schiller, Shakspeare's Back on the heart the weight which it would bring art, * fling Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, Aside for ever : it may be a sound Although I found her thus, we did not part, A tone of music,-summer's eve-or spring, Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and A flower--the wind-the ocean--which shall wound, a show. Striking the electric chain wherewith we are 19. darkly bound; I can repeople with the past—and of The present there is still for eye and thought, 24. And meditation chasten'd down, enough ; And how and why we know not, nor can And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought ; And of the happiest moments which were Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, wrought But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface Within the web of my existence, some The blight and blackening which it leaves From thee, fair Venice ! have their colours behind, caught : Which out of things familiar, undesign'd, There are some feelings Time cannot be- When least we deem of such, calls up to view numb, The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be The cold—the changed-perchance the dead cold and dumb. anew, 20, The mourn'd, the loved, the lost too many! But from their nature will the tannen grow -yet how few! Loftiest on loftiest and least shelter'd rocks, Wearied with the contemplation of Rooted in barrenness, where nought below Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine scenes so humiliating to the eye of shocks man,—the Poet and the Pilgrim, for Of eddying storms ; yet springs the trunk, they are now confessedly the same, and mocks rejoices to escape into the pure soliThe howling tempest, till its height and frame tude of nature, and to sooth his mind Are worthy of the mountains from whose with the survey of less transitory blocks beauties. At Arqua, the little hamlet Of bleak, gray, granite, into life it came, where Petrarch spent the last years of And grew a giant tree ;-the mind may his life, and where his house, chair, grow the same. &c. are still shewn to travellers, ex21. Existence may be borne, and the deep root actly as the relics of Shakspeare are at Of life and sufferance makes its firm abode Stratford-upon-Avon, Byron is filled In bare and desolated bosoms : mute with admiration of the modest retreat The camel labours with the heaviest load, selected by this illustrious poet, and And the wolf dies in silence, not bestow'd enters fully, for a moment, into the In vain should such example be; if they, quiet and self-subdued spirit of one Things of ignoble or of savage mood, with whom, in general, he appears to Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay have very little in common. May temper it to bear,-it is but for a day. 22. 32. All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd, And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt Even by the sufferer; and, in each event, Is one of that comp. xion which seems made Ends. Some, with replenish'd and for those who their mortality have felt, rebuoy'd, And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd Return to whence they came with likeintent, In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, Which shows a distant prospect far away Venice Preserved ; Mysteries of Udol. Of busy cities, now in vain display'd, pho; the Ghost-seer, or Armenian ; the For they can lure no further ; and the ray Merchant of Venice ; Othello. Of a bright sin can make sufficient holiday, a 33. nities of petty tyrants, is well fitted to Developing the mountains, leaves, and call up that mist of morbid contempt flowers, And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, to look upon the frail pageants of ex through which Lord Byron delights Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours ternal grandeur. With a calm languor, which, though to the eye At Florence he seems to have Idlesse it seem, hath its morality. If from society we learn to live, thought of little except the statues in 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; thegallery, and the tombs in the church It hath no flatterers ; vanity can give of Santa Croce. This, we think, is the No hollow aid ; alone-man with his God first time that he has ever come directe must strive. ly upon the subject of art ; and alThe description of an Italian even though he is careful to tell us how ing on the banks of the Bretna, is one much he prefers a single green valley, of the most beautiful passages in the or roaring cataract, and all the masterpoem. The poetry of Nature, which pieces of the chisel and the pencil, he has learned from Wordsworth, still his soul is so conversant with ideal seems to be heightened and improved creations of loveliness, majesty, and in his hands, by the unseen influence terror, that he speaks of the Venus, of the more glorious scenes and cli- the Apollo, and the Laocoon, in a style mates to which he has transferred it. which our readers will easily acknow27. ledge to be far superior to any thing The Moon is up, and yet it is not night, which the admiration of art had beSænset divides the sky with her-a sea fore embodied in English Poetry. Of glory streams along the Alpine height 49. Of blue Friuli's mountains ; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills Melted to one vast Iris of the West, Where the Day joins the past Eternity ; The air around with beauty ; we inhale While on the other hand, meek Dian's crest The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Floats through the azure air-man island of Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale Part of its immortality ; the veil We stand, and in that form and face behold “ A single star is at her side, and reigns What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail ; With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still And to the fond idolaters of old Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains Roll’d o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill, Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould. As Day and Night contending were, until Nature reclaim'd her order :- gently flows There is something to us inexThe deep-dyed Brenta, where their húes instil pressibly touching in the transition The odorous purple of a new-born rose, from this splendid enthusiasm to the Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd mournful shades of the Florentine within it glows, cemetry. Never was more deep mean29. Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from ing conveyed in one line than in the eighth of this stanza. afar, 54. Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie From the rich sunset to the rising star, Ashes which make it holier, dust which is Even in itself an immortality, and this, Which have relaps'd to chaos :-here repose The last still loveliest, til—'tis gone-and Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, The starry Galileo, with his woes ; Here Machiavelli's earth, return'd to whence We must not venture upon Fer it rose. The strain of sentiment is in Although the Venus is the only general quite the same with that of his Lament of Tasso. But Ferrara is great statue of which he speaks when at Florence, we prefer to quote his only one of a long line of half-peo- verses concerning the Apollo and the pled cities, and perished sovereignties, Loacoon at the saine time. through which he passes; and the 160. view of such scenes, where all the misery that is appears so distinctly to Laocoon's torture dignifying painbe the necessary consequence of the A father's love and inortal's agony envious jealousies and brutal malig- With animmortal's patience blending:-- Vaig a all is gray. rara. Go see rain ; The struggle , vain, against the coiling strain Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and with. The old man's clench ; the long en venomed draw chain From their down-toppling nests; and bel, Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp lowing herds Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread gasp hath no words. :61. 65. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, Far other scene is Thrasimene now; The God of life, and poesy, and light Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough ; All radiant from his triumph in the fight; Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain The shaft hath just been shot the arrow Lay where their raots are; but a brook hath bright ta'en- Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwill. rich as they are in relics of fallen And madden'd in that vision--are exprest grandeur and inimitable art, and still Al that ideal beauty ever bless'd The mind with in its most unearthly mood, plays herself both in beauty and sub more so in scenes where nature disWhen each conception was a heavenly guestA ray of immortality-and stood, limity, are, after all, only the avenues Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god! to the main attraction of the poet and From the smiling beauties of the the poem. Even Greece, with all her Vale of Arno, he rushes to breathe natural graces, and all her heroic reagain, an atmosphere more congenial collections, wants that majestic charm to his soul, among the rugged defiles of unapproached greatness, which of Thrasimene the imperishable mo- binds the heart of every profound nument of Carthagenian skill and Roc thinker to the contemplation of the man despair. It is well known that skeleton of Rome. It was here that an earthquake, which shook all Italy, the nature of man arrayed itself in occurred during the battle, and was greatness so terrific, that it almost me unfelt by any of the combatants, rited the name of a disguise. It was 62. here that imagination and passion, disdaining all individual hopes, and ty in the idea of country. The host between the mountains and the A Roman thought himself great and shore, noble, not because he was himself, not Where Courage falls in her despairing files, for any thing that himself had done or And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, could do, but simply because his birth Beek through the sultry plain, with legions and home were in the eternal city, scatter'd o'er. All other men are vain. The Roman 63. Like to a forest felld by mountain winds ; only was proud. He looked upon himAnd such the storm of battle on this day, self as a being animated with the inAnd such the phrenzy, whose convulsion spirations of a nobler nature than is blinds given to other men. Even the Greek, plishments were, seem to have acknow- were brought into actual contact either The Earth to them was as a rolling bark with the bodies or the spirits of these Which bore them to Eternity ; they saw “Men of Iron.”* a |
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