The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 125

So may ye peris.h.!.+--Pallas, when she gave Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.

"Look on your Spain!--she clasps the hand she hates, But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates. 230 Bear witness, bright Barossa! [19] thou canst tell Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.

But Lusitania, kind and dear ally, Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.

Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won, The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!

But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?

"Look last at home--ye love not to look there On the grim smile of comfortless despair: 240 Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls, Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.

See all alike of more or less bereft; No misers tremble when there's nothing left.

'Blest paper credit;' [20] who shall dare to sing?

It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing.

Yet Pallas pluck'd each Premier by the ear, Who G.o.ds and men alike disdained to hear; But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state, On Pallas calls,--but calls, alas! too late: 250 Then raves for'----'; to that Mentor bends, Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.

Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard, Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.

So, once of yore, each reasonable frog, Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign 'log.'

Thus hailed your rulers their patrician clod, As Egypt chose an onion [21] for a G.o.d.

"Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour; Go, grasp the shadow of your vanished power; 260 Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme; Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.

Gone is that Gold, the marvel of mankind.

And Pirates barter all that's left behind. [22]

No more the hirelings, purchased near and far, Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.

The idle merchant on the useless quay Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away; Or, back returning, sees rejected stores Rot piecemeal on his own enc.u.mbered sh.o.r.es: 270 The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom, And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming doom.

Then in the Senates of your sinking state Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.

Vain is each voice where tones could once command; E'en factions cease to charm a factious land: Yet jarring sects convulse a sister Isle, And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

"'Tis done, 'tis past--since Pallas warns in vain; The Furies seize her abdicated reign: 280 Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling brands, And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.

But one convulsive struggle still remains, [xix]

And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains, The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files, [xx]

O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles; The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum, That bid the foe defiance ere they come; The hero bounding at his country's call, The glorious death that consecrates his fall, 290 Swell the young heart with visionary charms.

And bid it antedate the joys of arms.

But know, a lesson you may yet be taught, With death alone are laurels cheaply bought; Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight, His day of mercy is the day of fight.

But when the field is fought, the battle won, Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun: His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name; The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame, 300 The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field, Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.

Say with what eye along the distant down Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?

How view the column of ascending flames Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?

Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine: Now should they burst on thy devoted coast, Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most? 310 The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life, And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife."

[Footnote 1: The lines (1-54) with which the Satire begins, down to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane," first appeared (1814) as the opening stanza of the Third Canto of 'The Corsair'. At that time the publication of 'The Curse of Minerva' had been abandoned. (See Byron's 'note' to 'The Corsair', Canto III. st. i. line i.)]

[Footnote 2: Idra; 'The Corsair', III. st. i. line 7. Hydra, or Hydrea, is an island on the east coast of the Peloponnese, between the gulfs of Nauplia and aegina. As an "isle of Greece" it had almost no history until the War of Independence, when its chief town became a "city of refuge" for the inhabitants of the Morea and Northern Greece. Byron was, perhaps, the first poet to give it a name in song.]

[Footnote 3: Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset (the hour of execution), notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun went down.]

[Footnote 4: The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration.]

[Footnote 5: The kiosk is a Turkish summer-house; the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream at all.]

[Footnote 6:

"The Temple of Theseus is the most perfect ancient edifice in the world. In this fabric, the most enduring stability, and a simplicity of design peculiarly striking, are united with the highest elegance and accuracy of workmans.h.i.+p."

'Travels in Albania, etc.', by Lord Broughton (1858), i. 259.]

[Footnote 7: This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in particular. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian; sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautiful marble and architecture.]

[Footnote 8: The following lines, of which the first two were written on the original 'MS'., are in Byron's handwriting:--

"Aspice quos Scoto Pallas concedit honores; Subter stat nomen, facta superque vide.

Scote miser! quamvis nocuisti Palladis aedi, Infandum facinus vindicat ipsa Venus.

Pygmalion statuam pro sponsa arsisse refertur; Tu statuam rapias, Scote, sed uxor abest."

Compare 'Horace in London', by the authors of 'Rejected Addresses'

(James and Horace Smith), London, 1813, ode xv., "The Parthenon,"

"'Pastor quum traheret per freta navibus'."

"And Hymen shall thy nuptial hopes consume, Unless, like fond Pygmalion, thou canst wed Statues thy hand could never give to bloom.

In wifeless wedlock shall thy life be led, No marriage joys to bless thy solitary bed."

[Lord Elgin's first marriage with Mary, daughter of William Hamilton Nisbet, was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1808.]]

[Footnote 9: His lords.h.i.+p's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon; above, in a part not far distant, are the torn remnants of the ba.s.sorelievos, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them.

[On the Erechtheum there was deeply cut in a plaster wall the words--

"QUOD NON FECERUNT GOTI, HOC FECERUNT SCOTI."]]

[Footnote 10: "Irish b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," according to Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan.

["A wild Irish soldier in the Prussian Army," in Macklin's 'Love-a-la-Mode' (first played December 12, 1759).]]

[Footnote 11: Lines 149-156 not in original 'MS'.]

[Footnote 12: Compare 'Horace in London', ode xv:--

"All who behold my mutilated pile, Shall brand its ravages with cla.s.sic rage; And soon a t.i.tled bard from Britain's isle Thy country's praise and suffrage shall engage, And fire with Athens' wrongs an angry age."]