Nor one memorial for a breast,
Whose thoughts are all thine own.

4.

Nor need I write to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! what can idle words avail,i
Unless the heart could speak?

5.

By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,

Must bear the love it cannot show,

And silent ache for thee.

March, 1811.

[First published, Childe Harold, 1812 (4to).]

FAREWELL TO MALTA.1

ADIEU, ye joys of La Valette!

Adieu, Sirocco, sun, and sweat!

Adieu, thou palace rarely entered!

Adieu, ye mansions where-I've ventured!

Adieu, ye curséd streets of stairs! 2

(How surely he who mounts them swears!)

Adieu, ye merchants often failing!

Adieu, thou mob for ever railing!

i. Oh! what can tongue or pen avail

Unless my heart could speak.—[MS. M.]

1. [These lines, which are undoubtedly genuine, were published for the first time in the sixth edition of Poems on his Domestic Circumstances (W. Hone, 1816). They were first included by Murray in the collected Poetical Works, in vol. xvii., 1832.]

2. [The principal streets of the city of Valetta are flights of stairs."-Gazetteer of the World.]

Adieu, ye packets-without letters!
Adieu, ye fools—who ape your betters!
Adieu, thou damned'st quarantine,
That gave me fever, and the spleen!
Adieu that stage which makes us yawn, Sirs,
Adieu his Excellency's dancers ! 1

Adieu to Peter-whom no fault's in,
But could not teach a colonel waltzing;
Adieu, ye females fraught with graces!
Adieu red coats, and redder faces!
Adieu the supercilious air

Of all that strut en militaire ! 2

I go but God knows when, or why,
To smoky towns and cloudy sky,
To things (the honest truth to say)
As bad—but in a different way.

Farewell to these, but not adieu,
Triumphant sons of truest blue!
While either Adriatic shore,3

And fallen chiefs, and fleets no more,

IO

20

I. [Major-General Hildebrand Oakes (1754-1822) succeeded Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keates as "his Majesty's commissioner for the affairs of Malta," April 27, 1810. There was an outbreak of plague during his tenure of office (1810–13).—Annual Register, 1810, p. 320; Dict. Nat. Biog., art. Oakes."]

2. ["Lord Byron... was once rather near fighting a duel-and that was with an officer of the staff of General Oakes at Malta " (1809).—Westminster Review, January, 1825, iii. 21 (by J. C. Hobhouse). (See, too, Life (First Edition, 1830, 4to), i. 202, 222.)]

3. [On March 13, 1811, Captain (Sir William) Hoste (17801828) defeated a combined French and Italian squadron off the island of Lissa, on the Dalmatian coast. "The French commodore's ship La Favorite was burnt, himself (Dubourdieu) being killed." The four victorious frigates with their prizes arrived at Malta, March 31, when the garrison "ran out unarmed to receive and hail them." The Volage, in which Byron returned to England, took part in the engagement. Captain Hoste had taken a prize off Fiume in the preceding year.-Annual Register, 1811; Memoirs and Letters of Sir W. Hoste, ii. 79.]

And nightly smiles, and daily dinners,1
Proclaim you war and women's winners.
Pardon my Muse, who apt to prate is,
And take my rhyme-because 'tis "gratis."

And now I've got to Mrs. Fraser,'
Perhaps you think I mean to praise her-
And were I vain enough to think
My praise was worth this drop of ink,
A line-or two-were no hard matter,
As here, indeed, I need not flatter:
But she must be content to shine
In better praises than in mine,
With lively air, and open heart,
And fashion's ease, without its art;
Her hours can gaily glide along.

Nor ask the aid of idle song.

And now, O Malta! since thou'st got us,
Thou little military hot-house!

I'll not offend with words uncivil,

And wish thee rudely at the Devil,

But only stare from out my casement,

And ask, "for what is such a place meant?"

Then, in my solitary nook,

Return to scribbling, or a book,

330

40

50

1. ["We have had balls and fêtes given us by all classes here, and it is impossible to convey to you the sensation our success has given rise to."-Memoirs and Letters of Sir W. Hoste, ii. 82.]

2. [Mrs. (Susan) Fraser published, in 1809, " Camilla de Florian (the scene is laid in Valetta) and Other Poems. By an Officer's Wife." Byron was, no doubt, struck by her admiration for Macpherson's Ossian, and had read with interest her version of "The Address to the Sun," in Carthon, p. 31 (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 229). He may, too, have regarded with favour some stanzas in honour of the Bolero (p. 82), which begin, "When, my Love, supinely laying."]

Or take my physic while I'm able
(Two spoonfuls hourly, by this label),
Prefer my nightcap to my beaver,
And bless my stars I've got a fever.

May 26, 1811.'

[First published, 1816.]

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

I.

In the dome of my Sires as the clear moonbeam falls
Through Silence and Shade o'er its desolate walls,
It shines from afar like the glories of old;

It gilds, but it warms not-'tis dazzling, but cold.

2.

Let the Sunbeam be bright for the younger of days:
'Tis the light that should shine on a race that decays,
When the Stars are on high and the dews on the ground,
And the long shadow lingers the ruin around.

3.

And the step that o'erechoes the gray floor of stone

Falls sullenly now, for 'tis only my own;

And sunk are the voices that sounded in mirth,
And empty the goblet, and dreary the hearth.

4.

And vain was each effort to raise and recall
The brightness of old to illumine our Hall;
And vain was the hope to avert our decline,
And the fate of my fathers had faded to mine.

1. [Byron left Malta for England June 13, 1811. (See Letter to H. Drury, July 17, 1811, Letters, 1898, i. 318.)]

5.

And theirs was the wealth and the fulness of Fame, And mine to inherit too haughty a name; i

And theirs were the times and the triumphs of yore, And mine to regret, but renew them no more.

6.

And Ruin is fixed on my tower and my wall,
Too hoary to fade, and too massy to fall;
It tells not of Time's or the tempest's decay,il
But the wreck of the line that have held it in sway.

August 26, 1811. [First published in Memoir of Rev. F. Hodgson, 1878, i. 187.]

EPISTLE TO A FRIEND,1

IN ANSWER TO SOME LINES EXHORTING THE AUTHOR

TO BE CHEERFUL, AND TO BANISH CARE."

"OH! banish care "-such ever be
The motto of thy revelry!

Perchance of mine, when wassail nights
Renew those riotous delights,

Wherewith the children of Despair
Lull the lone heart, and "banish care."
But not in Morn's reflecting hour,
When present, past, and future lower,
When all I loved is changed or gone,

Mock with such taunts the woes of one,

i. And mine was the pride and the worth of a name.—[MS. M.]