CXI.

That two, or one, are almost what they seem,Thus far have I proceeded in a theme

That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. Renew'd with no kind auspices :-to feel

CXV. We are not what we have been, and to deem

ily daughter! with thy name this song begunWe are not what we should be, and to steel

My daughter! with thy name thus much shall The heart against itself; and to conceal,

endWith a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,

I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,-

Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought,

To whom the shadows of far years extend: Is a stern task of soul :-No matter,-it is taught.

Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,

My voice shall with thy future visions blend, CXIT.

And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, And for these words, thus woven into song,

token and a tone, even from thy father's mould. It may be that they are a harmless wile,

CXVI.
The colouring of the scenes which fleet along,
Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile

To aid thy mind's development, -to watch
My breast, or that of others, for a while.

Thy dawn of little joys-to sit and see Fame is the thirst of youth,—but I am not

Almost thy very growth,-to view thee catch So young as to regard men's frown or smile

Knowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee! As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;

To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, I stood and stand alone,-remember'd or forgot. And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,–

This, it should seem, was not reserved for me; CXIII.

Yet this was in my nature :- As it is,
I have not loved the world, nor the world me , I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow d

CXVII.
To its idolatries a patient knee,-
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,

I know that thou wilt love me; though my name In worship of an echo; in the crowd

Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught They could not deem me one of such ; I stood

With desolation, and a broken claim : Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud

Though the grave closed between us,-'twere the Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and

same, still could,

I know that thou wilt love me ; though to drain Had I not filed* my mind, which thus itself subdued.

My blood from out thy being were an aim,
CXIV.

And an attainment,--all would be in vain,

Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life I have not loved the world, nor the world me,

retain. But let us part fair foes; I do believe,

CXVIII. Though I have found them not, that there may be

The child of love,-though born in bitterness, Words which are things,-hopes which will not

And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire deceive,

These were the elements, and thine no less. And virtues which are merciful, nor weave

As yet such are around thee; but thy fire Snares for the failing: I would also deem

Shall be more teniper'd, and thy hope far higher, O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;

Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea,

And from the mountains where I now respire, - If it be thus,

Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind.'—Macbeth. As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me!

CANTO THE FOURTH.

1818.
TO JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M., F.R.S., ETC.

VENICE, January 2, 1818. MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,- After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than-though not ungrateful-I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet,--to one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, -to a friend often tried and never found wanting ;-to yourself.

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 honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness,

and of honour. 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 with stand 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 recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence, but which cannot poison my future while I retain the re. source 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.

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, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps 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 objects 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 immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, 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 to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are now a matter of indifference: the work is to depend on itself and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I ain indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.

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 abodeto 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 diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l' antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima.' Italy has great names still: Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti,

Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of art, science, and belles lettres; and in some the very highest. Europe-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 neighbours-that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, it such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their concep tions, 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 labourers' 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 mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda,

* His marriage

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 something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the south, ‘verily they will have their reward, and at no very distant period.

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,

BYRON.

Watering the heart whose early flowers have

died, And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

VI.

Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
And, may be, that which grows beneath inine

eye :
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,

And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse :

1.
I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand :
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times when many a subject land

Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hun. dred isles!

II.
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers :
And such she was; her daughters had their

dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.

In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity in. creased.

III.
In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear :
Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade-but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,

The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy !

VII.
I saw or dream'd of such,-but let them go-
They came like truth, and disappear d like

dreanis;
And whatsoe'er they were are now but so;
I could replace them if I would : still teems
My mind with many a form which aptly seems
Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
Let these too go—for waking reason deems

Such overweening phantasies unsound,
And other voices speak, and other sights surround.

VIII.
I've taught me other tongues, and in strange

eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise ;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with-ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause ; and should I leave behind

The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forins despond
Above the Dogeless city's vanish'd sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away-

The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

IX.

Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it, if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remember'd in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,-

If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar

V.
The beings of the mind are not of clay ;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;

X.
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honour'd by the nations-let it be

walls.

And light the laurels on a loftier head !

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous And be the Spartan's epitaph on me

pile *Sparta hath many a worthier son than he. ** Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need ; Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree Have yielded to the stranger : einpty halls,

I planted,—they have torn me, and I bleed: Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must I should have known what fruit would spring from

Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, such a seed.

Have flung a desolate cloud o er Venice' lovely
XI

XVI.
The spouseless Adriatic mourns het lord ;
And, annual marriage now no more renewi,

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,

And setter'd thousands bore the yoke of war, Neglected garment of her widowhood!

Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, *

Her voice their only ransom from afar:
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power,

See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car

Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour

Fall from his hands---his idle scimitar
When Venice was a queen with an unequallid

Starts from its belt-he iends his captive's chains, dlower.

And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his

strains. XII.

XVII. The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, reigns

Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;

Thy choral iremory of the Bard livine, Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains

Thy love of Tasso, should have cat the knot Clank over sceptred cities, nations melt

Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot From power's high pinnacle, when they have

Is sharneful to the nations, most of all, felt

Albion! 10 thee': the Ocean Queen should not The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Abandon Ocean's children; in the full Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt:

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo ! 'Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering roe.

XVIII.

I loved her from my boyhood : she to me
XIII.

Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Rising like water-columns from the sea,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
But is not Doria's inenace come to pass ?

And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, Are they not bridled ?-Venice, lost and won, Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Although I found her thus, we did not part, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence shc rose ! Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Better be whelm d beneath the waves, and shun, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes,

XIX.
From whom subinission wrings an infamous repose.

I can repeople with the past—and of
XIV.

The present there is still for eye and thought, In youth she was all glory.-a new Tyre,

And meditation chasten'd down, enough ; Her very byword sprung from victory,

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; The Planter of the Lion,'t which through fire And of the happiest moments which were wrought And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;

Within the web of my existence, some Though making many slaves, herse!f still free, From thee, fair Venice ! have their colours caught: And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomité :

There are some feelings Time can not benumb, Witness Troy's rival, Candia ! Vouch it, ye

Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight !

dumb.

XX.
For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

But from their nature will the tannen grow
XV.

Loftiest on loftiest and least shelter'd rocks, Statues of glass--all shiver'd--the long file of her dead Doges are declined to dust;

• The story is told in Plutarch's Life of Nicias.

+ Venice Preserved : Mysteries of Udolpho; The

Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice : • The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lace-Othello. dæmonian general, to the strangers who praised the Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir memory of her son.

peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky + That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon- can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon,

height than any other mountain tree.

Rooted in barrenness, where nought below

Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks The beautiful, the brave-the lords of earth and Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and sea. mocks

XXVI. The howling tempest, till its height and frame The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks And even since, and now, fair Italy ! Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came,

Thou art the garden of the world, the home And grew a giant tree ;-the mind may grow the Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; same.

Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
XXI.

Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste
Existence may be borne, and the deep root

More rich than other climes fertility ; of life and sufferance make its firm abode

Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced In bare and desolate bosoms: mute

With an immaculate charm which cannot be de. The camel labours with the heaviest load,

faced. And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestow'd

XXVII. In vain should such examples be ; if they,

The moon is up, and yet it is not nightThings of ignoble or of savage mood,

Sunset divides the sky with her-a sea Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay

Of glory streams along the Alpine height
May temper it to bear,-it is but for a day.

Of blue Friuli's inountains ; Heaven is free
XXII.

From clouds, but of all colours seems to be

Melted to one vast Iris of the West, All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd,

Where the Day joins the past Eternity ; Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,

While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Ends:-Somc, with hope replenish'd and rebuoy'd Return to whence they came-with like intent,

Floats through the azure air-an island of the

blest! And weave their web again; some, bow'd and

XXVIII. bent,

A single star is at her side, and reigns Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time,

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still And perish with the reed on which they leant; Soine seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,

Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains

Rollid o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill, According as their souls were form'd to sink or

As Day and Night contending were, until climb.

Nature reclaim'd her order :-gently flows
XXIII.

The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil But ever and anon of griefs subdued

The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued ;

Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within

it glows. And slight withal may be the things which bring

XXIX.
Back on the heart the weight which it would fing
Aside for ever: it may be a sound

Fil'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar, A tone of music-summer's eve-or spring

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, A flower--the wind-the, ocean-which shall

From the rich sunset to the rising star, wound,

Their magical variety diffuse : Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly And now they change; a paler shadow strews bound:

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day XXIV.

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues And how and why we know not, nor can trace

With a new colour as it gasps away, Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone and all is But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface

grey.

XXX. The blight and blackening which it leaves be. hind,

There is a tomb in Arqua ;-rear'd in air, Which out of things familiar, indesign'd,

Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose When least we dleem of such, calls up to view

The bones of Laura's lover: here repair The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,

Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The cold-the changed-perchance the dead- The pilgrims of his genius. He arose anew,

To raise a language, and his land reclaim The mourn'd, the loved, the lost-too many !-yet

From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes : how few!

Watering the tree which bears his lady's name XXV.

With his melodious tears, he gave himself to faine. But my soul wanders; I demand it back To meditate amongst decay, and stand

XXXI. A ruin amidst ruins; there to track

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; Fallen states and buried greatness, o'er a land The mountain-village where his latter days Which was the mightiest in its old command, Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their And is the loveliest, and must ever be

prideThe master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand, An honest pride-and let it be their praise