LXXX. His life was one long war with self-sought foes, Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. But he was frensied,-wherefore, who may know? Since cause might be which skill could never find; But he was frensied by disease or wo, LXXXVI. It is the hush of night, and all between To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more, show. XCV. Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way XCVIII. The morn is up again, the dewy morn, Much, that may give us pause, if ponder'd fittingly. XCIX. Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep Love, Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks. C. Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod, CI. All things are here of him; from the black pines, There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude. lurk'd. XCVI. Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye! Of what in me is sleepless,-if I rest. But where of ye, oh tempests! is the goal? CII. A populous solitude of bees and birds, And fairy-form'd and many-color'd things, [words, Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end. nest? XCVII. Could I embody and unbosom now, That which is most within me,-could I wreak All that I would have sought, and all I seek, [sword. CIII. He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore, With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a With the immortal lights, in its eternity! CIV. 'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, CX. Italia! too, Italia! looking on thee, Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have rear'd | Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial a throne. CV. Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes 23 They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim hill. CXI. Thus far have I proceeded in a theme On man and man's research could deign do more Is a stern task of soul:-No matter,-it is taught. My daughter! with thy name this song begun— The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air. A token and a tone even from thy father's mould. 1 CXVI. To aid thy mind's development-to watch I know not what is there, yet something like to this. CXVII. In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth, and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honor to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recur Yet, though dull hate as duty should be taught, retain. CXVIII. the most unfortunate day of my past existence, but which cannot poison my future, while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience, without thinking better of his species and of himself. The child of love,-though born in bitterness, And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire These were the elements,-and thine no less. As yet such are around thee,-but thy fire Shall be more temper'd, and thy hope far higher. Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to have accompanied me from first to last; and per me! Venice, January 2, 1818. ΤΟ JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M. F.R.S. &c., &c., &c. MY DEAR HOBHOUSE, It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable-Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy : and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, haps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the object, it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and im mediate impressions, yet, as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glori. ous, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects. With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not AFTER an interval of eight years between the to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's "Citcomposition of the first and last cantos of Childe izen of the World," whom nobody would believe to Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imsubmitted to the public. In parting with so old a agined that I had drawn, a distinction between the friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld preserve this difference, and disappointment at findthe birth and death of the other, and to whom I am iug it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the far more indebted for the social advantages of an composition, that I determined to abandon it altoenlightened friendship, than-though not ungrate- gether-and have done so. The opinions which ful-I can or could be, to Childe Harold for any have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are public favor reflected through the poem on the poet, now a matter of indifference; the work is to depend -to one, whom I have known long, and accompa- on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, nied far; whom I have found wakeful over my sick-who has no resources in his own mind beyond the ness, and kind in my sorrow; glad in my prosperity, reputation, transient or permanent, which is to and firm in my adversity; true in counsel, and trusty arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of in peril, to a friend often tried and never found authors. wanting;-to yourself. In the course of the following canto, it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have something more than a permanent army and a sus touched upon the present state of Italian literature, pended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the look at home. For what they have done abroad, limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for and especially in the South, "Verily they will have the labyrinth of external objects and the conse- their reward," and at no very distant period. quent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text. Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever Your obliged and affectionate friend, I. I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;1 I saw from out the wave her structures rise O'er the far times, when many a subject land It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us,-though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode,-to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language "Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la più nobile ed insieme la più dolce, tutte tutte le vie diversi si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti: She looks a sea-Cybele fresh from ocean non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names stillRising with her tiara of proud towers 2 Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, And such she was; her daughters had their dowers Mustoxidi, Agiletti, and Vacca, will secure to the From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East present generation an honorable place in most of Pour'd in her lap ali gems in sparkling showers the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some of the very highest;-Europe-Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity inIn purple was she robed, and of her feast the World-has but one Canova. It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra-e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbors, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched "longing after immortality,"the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non è più come era prima," it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work. worthy of the better days of our history. For me, "Non movero ma corda Ore la turba di sue ciance assorda." isles! creased. II. III. In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,3 IV. But unto us she hath a spell beyond V. The beings of the mind are not of clay; What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. |