It is that settled, ceaseless gloom Look on the hands with female slaughter red; Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain, Then to the vulture let each corse remain; Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw, The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore, That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before. What Exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life-the demon Thought. Yet others rapt in pleasure seem, Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, Whate'er betides, I've known the worst. What is that worst? Nay, do not ask- Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there. LXXXV. Adieu, fair Cadiz ! yea, a long adieu! Who may forget how well thy walls have stood? When all were changing, thou alone wert true, First to be free, and last to be subdued. And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude, Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye, A traitor only fell beneath the feud :* Here all were noble, save nobility; None hugg'd a conqueror's chain save fallen Chivalry.! LXXXVI. Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom, who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery; Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to liberty; Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife, War, war is still the cry, War even to the knife l't LXXXVII. Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his needSo may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed! LXXXVIII. Flows there a tear of pity for the dead? Look o'er the ravage of the reeking plain: Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May 1809. f Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza. Let their bleach'd bones, and blood s unbleaching stain, Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe: Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw! LXXXIX. Nor yet, alas, the dreadful work is done; Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees : It deepens still, the work is scarce begun, Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees. Fallen nations gaze on Spain: if freed, she freesMore than her fell Pizarros once enchain'd. Strange retribution! now Columbia's ease Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustain'd, While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrain'd. XC. Not all the blood at Talavera shed, Have won for Spain her well-asserted right. How many a doubtful day shall sink in night, XCI. And thou, my friend! since unavailing woe strain Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low, Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain: But thus unlaurel'd to descend in vain. By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain, While glory crowns so many a meaner crest! What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest? XCII. Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most! Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear! Though to my hopeless days for ever lost, In dreams deny me not to see thee here! And Morn in secret shall renew the tear Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourned and mourner lie united in repose. XCIII. Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage. Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quell'd, 1. CANTO THE SECOND. COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven !-but thou, alas, bestow. II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, First in the race that led to Glory's goal, Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of 111. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eyes to heaven- V. Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound; He fell, and falling nations mourn'd around; Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps VI. Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall, VII, Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! VIII. Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be IX. There, thou!-whose love and life together filed, When busy memory flashes on my brain? And woo the vision to my vacant breast: If aught of young Remembrance then remain, For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit X. Here let me sit upon this massy stone, It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was! interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixwho had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals teen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: oriin honour of his memory by his countrymen, as ginally there were one hundred and fifty. These Achilles, Brasidas, etc., and at last even Antinous, columns, however, are by many supposed to have bewhose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. longed to the Pantheon." ! The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place. It may not be: nor even can Fancy's eye Restore what time hath labour'd to deface. Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh; Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by. XI. But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? 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. XII. But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast, To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared: Cold as the crags upon his native coast, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, 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. XIII. What shall it e'er be said by British tongue Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, XIV. Where was thine Ægis, Pallas, that appall'd What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more, XV. Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee, According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.-See Chandler. By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne'er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorr'd! XVI. But where is Harold? shall I then forget To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave? And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes. He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea, So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow. XVIII. And oh, the little warlike world within! Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by XIX. 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, who majestic 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 baulks Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve. XX. 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! * To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action. Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind; Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, And each well-known caprice of wave and wind; Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find, Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel; The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind, As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell, Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well. XXIX. But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,* The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride: Here, too, his boy essay'd the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sigh'd. Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone: But trust not this; too easy youth, beware! A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne, And thou may'st find a new Calypso there. Sweet Florence! could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: But check'd by every tie, I may not dare To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine. XXXI. Thus Harold deem'd, as on that lady's eye He look'd, and met its beam without a thought, Save Admiration glancing harmless by: Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote, Who knew his votary often lost and caught, But knew him as his worshipper no more, And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought: Since now he vainly urged him to adore, Well deem'd the little god his ancient sway was o'er. XXXII. Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, All that gay Beauty from her bondsinen claims: * Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso. And much she marvell'd that a youth so raw Nor felt, nor feign'd at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames. XXXIII. Little knew she that seeming marble heart, Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, XXXV. 'Tis an old lesson: Time approves it true, Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please. Away! nor let me loiter in my song, For we have many a mountain path to tread, And many a varied shore to sail along, By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, ledClimes, fair withal as ever mortal head Imagined in its little schemes of thought; Or e'er in new Utopias were ared, To teach man what he might be, or he ought; If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught. XXXVII. Dear Nature is the kindest mother still; Though I have mark'd her when none other hath, And sought her inore and more, and loved her best in wrath. XXXVIII. Land of Albania! where Iskander rose ; Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise, And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprise: Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes |