CXVI.

Io aid thy mind's development-to watch
Thy dawn of little joys to sit and see
Almost thy very growth,-to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects,-wonders yet to thee!
To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,-
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me;
Yet this was in my nature:-as it is,

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 com positions, I wish to do honor to myself by the recora 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, no.

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, tha: I thus attempt to coinmemorate
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,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim; [same-rence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of
Though the grave closed between us, 'twere the
I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain
My blood from out thy being, were an aim,
And an attainment,-all would be in vain,-

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 facul
ties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollec-

Sull thou would'st love me, still that more than life tion for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this

retain.

CXVIII.

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,

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,

As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to have accompanied me from first to last; and per

me!

CANTO IV.

Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna,
Quel Monte che divide, e quel che serra
Italia, e un mare e l'altro, che la bagna.
Ariost, Satira il.

Venice, January 2, 1818.

ΤΟ

JOHN HOBH JUSE, ESQ., A.M. F.R.S. &c., &c., &c.

N? DEAR HORHOUSE,

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 immediate 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 Bard, 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 resur to author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to che 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 conld 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, med 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 n my adversity; true in counsel, and trusty arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of

per to a friend often tried and never found authors. ay to yourself.

1

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 8 touched upon the present state of Italian literature, pended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them t 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 hav 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.

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 non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names stillCanova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Agiletti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Letand in some of the very highest-Europe tres; 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 neighDors, 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,"

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe at agreeable return to that country whose real welfa can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate you this poem in its completed state; and pe once more how truly I am ever

Your obliged and affectionate friend,
BYRON.

T

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 lazd
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundr
isles!
II.

She looks a sea-Cybele fresh from ecean
Rising with her tiara of proud towers 2
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers,
And such she was; her daughters had their dow
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless Eas
Pour'd in her lap ali gems in sparkling showers
Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

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.

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms 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 Pierra, cannot be swept or worn away-
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'e

it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge For us ref copied were the solitary shore.

with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carpage 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

Ore la turba di sue ciance assorda."

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;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have d

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

Thus, Veniee, if no stronger claim were thinc,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,-most of all,
Albion to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; And, annual marriage now no more renew'd, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood 5 Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power, Over the prond place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower. Of Venice think of thine, despite thy waterv wall

Ihan when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. The mourn'd, the loved, the lost-too many!

And grew a giant tree;-the mind may grow the With an immaculate charm which can not be defac

Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone--and al

No hollow aid; alone-man with his God must strive: Condensed their scatter'd rays, they would not form