Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Part 7

The moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve!

Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand!

Now lads on sh.o.r.e may sigh, and maids believe: Such be our fate when we return to land!

Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love: A circle there of merry listeners stand, Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on sh.o.r.e they still were free to rove.

XXII.

Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy sh.o.r.e; Europe and Afric, on each other gaze!

Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor, Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze: How softly on the Spanish sh.o.r.e she plays, Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown, Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase: But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown, From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.

XXIII.

'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end: The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.

Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?

Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy!

Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

XXIV.

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere, The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, And flies unconscious o'er each backward year.

None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possessed A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; A flas.h.i.+ng pang! of which the weary breast Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

XXV.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean: This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

XXVI.

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!

None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued: This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

XXVII.

More blest the life of G.o.dly eremite, Such as on lonely Athos may be seen, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been, Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot; Then slowly tear him from the witching scene, Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot, Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.

XXVIII.

Pa.s.s we the long, unvarying course, the track Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind; Pa.s.s we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, And each well-known caprice of wave and wind; Pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s Calypso's isles, The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair G.o.ddess long has 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 essayed the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.

x.x.x.

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 mayst find a new Calypso there.

Sweet Florence! could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: But checked 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.

x.x.xI.

Thus Harold deemed, as on that lady's eye He looked, 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 wors.h.i.+pper no more, And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought: Since now he vainly urged him to adore, Well deemed the little G.o.d his ancient sway was o'er.

x.x.xII.

Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, One who, 'twas said, still sighed to all he saw, Withstand, unmoved, the l.u.s.tre of her gaze, Which others hailed with real or mimic awe, Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law: All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims: And much she marvelled that a youth so raw Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.

x.x.xIII.

Little knew she that seeming marble heart, Now masked by silence or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art, And spread its snares licentious far and wide; Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside, As long as aught was worthy to pursue: But Harold on such arts no more relied; And had he doted on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.

x.x.xIV.

Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs; What careth she for hearts when once possessed?

Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes, But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes; Disguise e'en tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes; Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Pa.s.sion crowns thy hopes.

x.x.xV.

'Tis an old lesson: Time approves it true, And those who know it best deplore it most; When all is won that all desire to woo, The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost: Youth wasted, minds degraded, honour lost, These are thy fruits, successful Pa.s.sion! these!

If, kindly cruel, early hope is crossed, Still to the last it rankles, a disease, Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please.

x.x.xVI.

Away! nor let me loiter in my song, For we have many a mountain path to tread, And many a varied sh.o.r.e to sail along, By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led-- Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head Imagined in its little schemes of thought; Or e'er in new Utopias were read: To teach man what he might be, or he ought; If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

x.x.xVII.

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still; Though always changing, in her aspect mild: From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.

Oh! she is fairest in her features wild, Where nothing polished dares pollute her path: To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have marked her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

x.x.xVIII.

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 On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!

The cross descends, thy minarets arise, And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen, Through many a cypress grove within each city's ken.

x.x.xIX.

Childe Harold sailed, and pa.s.sed the barren spot Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave; And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot, The lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave.

Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save That breast imbued with such immortal fire?

Could she not live who life eternal gave?

If life eternal may await the lyre, That only Heaven to which Earth's children may aspire.

XL.

'Twas on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve, Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar; A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave: Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war, Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar: Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight (Born beneath some remote inglorious star) In themes of b.l.o.o.d.y fray, or gallant fight, But loathed the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial wight.

XLI.

But when he saw the evening star above Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe, And hailed the last resort of fruitless love, He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow: And as the stately vessel glided slow Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount, He watched the billows' melancholy flow, And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont, More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front.