Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

бо

For an unholy usage; they raked up, And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery. Then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died—

Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless

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A lump of death a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd

They slept on the abyss without a surge The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant

air,

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[Charles Churchill (1731-1764), the satirical poet. On the sheet containing the original draft of these lines, Lord Byron has written:

its

The following poem (as most that I have endeavoured to write) is founded on a fact; and this detail is an attempt at a serious imitation of the style of a great poet beauties and its defects: I say, the style; for the thoughts I claim as my own. In this, if there be anything ridiculous, let it be attributed to me, at least as much as to Mr. Wordsworth, of whom there can exist few greater admirers than myself. I have blended what I would deem to be the beauties as well as de

so;

He died before my day of Sextonship,

And I had not the digging of this grave.' And is this all? I thought, - and do we rip

The veil of Immortality, and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread, 20
For Earth is but a tomb-stone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's
thought,

Were it not that all life must end in one, Of which we are but dreamers; — as he caught

As 't were the twilight of a former Sun, Thus spoke he, -I believe the man of

whom

[There is something in the character of Promethens which early and strongly attracted Byron as it did Shelley. Byron's first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase from a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus, and there are many allusions to the god in his later works. Indeed his mind wavered almost to the end between the heroic defiance of Prometheus and the cynical defiance of Don Juan.]

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine- and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;

ΤΟ

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And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory. DIODATI, July, 1816.

A FRAGMENT

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SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE

[Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. I did as well as I could,' says Lord Byron, but where I have not my choice, I pretend to answer for nothing.' (Letter to Murray, September 29, 1816.) For Byron's admiration of Sheridan, see Letters, passim.]

WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and

Of light no likeness is bequeath'd — no

name,

193

That what to them seem'd Vice might be but Woe.

Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise; Repose denies her requiem to his name, And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame. The secret enemy whose sleepless eye Stands ser tinel, accuser, judge, and spy; 70 The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain, The envious who but breathe in others' pain

Behold the host! delighting to deprave, Who track the steps of Glory to the grave, Watch every fault that daring Genius owes Half to the ardour which its birth be

Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task,
To give the tribute Glory need not ask,
To mourn the vanish'd beam and add our
mite

Of praise in payment of a long delight. 100
Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield,
Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field!
The worthy rival of the wondrous Three,
Whose words were sparks of Immortality!
Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is
dear,

He was your Master-emulate him here!
Ye men of wit and social eloquence!
He was your brother bear his ashes
hence!

While Powers of mind almost of boundless

was

The effect of the original ballad — which existed both in Spanish and Arabicsuch, that it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death, within Granada. [The Spanish of this ballad, which was originally printed side by side with the translation, is not known to exist elsewhere in its integrity. According to Mr. E. H. Coleridge it is 'a cento of three or more ballads which are included in the Guerras Civiles de Granada of Gines Perez de Hita, published at Saragossa in 1595.']

THE Moorish King rides up and down
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's gates to those
Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama!

Out then spake old Alfaqui, With his beard so white to see: 'Good King! thou art justly served, Good King! this thou hast deserved. Woe is me, Alhama!

'By thee were slain, in evil hour,
The Abencerrage, Granada's flower;
And strangers were received by thee,
Of Cordova the Chivalry.

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Woe is me, Alhama! 50