The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 49

_Earth's dreams of Heaven--and such to seem to me_ _But one thing wants thy stream_----.--[MS.]

[303] [Compare Lucan's _Pharsalia_, ix. 969, "Etiam periere ruinae;" and the lines from Ta.s.so's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xv. 20, quoted in ill.u.s.tration of Canto II. stanza liii.]

[in]

_Gla.s.sed with its wonted light, the sunny ray;_ _But o'er the mind's marred thoughts--though but a dream_.--[MS.]

[io] {247} _Repose itself on kindness_----[MS.]

[304] [Two lyrics, ent.i.tled _Stanzas to Augusta_, and the _Epistle to Augusta_, which were included in _Domestic Pieces_, published in 1816, are dedicated to the same subject--the devotion and faithfulness of his sister.]

[ip] {248} _But there was one_----.--[MS.]

[iq] _Yet was it pure_----.--[MS.]

[305] [It has been supposed that there is a reference in this pa.s.sage, and again in _Stanzas to Augusta_ (dated July 24, 1816), to "the only important calumny"--to quote Sh.e.l.ley's letter of September 29, 1816--"that was even ever advanced" against Byron. "The poems to Augusta," remarks Elze (_Life of Lord Byron_, p. 174), "prove, further, that she too was cognizant of the calumnious accusations; for under no other supposition is it possible to understand their allusions." But the mere fact that Mrs. Leigh remained on terms of intimacy and affection with her brother, when he was under the ban of society, would expose her to slander and injurious comment, "peril dreaded most in female eyes;"

whereas to other calumnies, if such there were, there could be no other reference but silence, or an ecstasy of wrath and indignation.]

[ir]

_Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour_.--[MS.]

----_its absent feelings pour_.--[MS. erased.]

[306] {249} [Written on the Rhine bank, May 11, 1816.--MS. M.]

[is] {251} _A sigh for Marceau_----.--[MS.]

[307] [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crus.h.i.+ng the Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche a.s.serts in his memoirs, six hundred thousand fell in Vendee, Freedom's charter was not easily overstepped.]

[308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_--

"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air."]

[it] _And could the sleepless vultures_----.--[MS.]

[iu] _Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere_.--[MS.]

[309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by "autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive a.s.sonance of "high Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful pa.s.sage which he stole from _The Curse of Minerva_ and prefixed to the third canto of _The Corsair_.

The sense of the pa.s.sage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]

[iv] {253} _More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring s.h.i.+ne_ _But none unite in one enchanted gaze_ _The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.]

[310] [The "negligently grand" may, perhaps, refer to the glories of old days, now in a state of neglect, not to the unstudied grandeur of the scene taken as a whole; but the phrase is loosely thrown out in order to convey a general impression, "an attaching maze," an engaging attractive combination of images, and must not be interrogated too closely.]

[iw] {254} _Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_ _The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni_--

"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!"

The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1--

"Around his waist are forests braced, The Avalanche in his hand; But ere its fall, that thundering ball Must pause for my command."]

[312] {255} [The inscription on the ossuary of the Burgundian troops which fell in the battle of Morat, June 14, 1476, suggested this variant of _Si monumentum quaeris_--

"Deo Optimo Maximo.

Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiae ducis exercitus, Moratum obsidens, ab Helvetiis caesus, hoc sui monumentum reliquit."]

[ix] _Unsepulchred they roam, and shriek_----[MS.]

[313] [The souls of the suitors when Hermes "roused and shepherded them followed gibbering" (t?????sa? [tri/zousai]).--_Od._, xxiv. 5. Once, too, when the observance of the _dies Parentales_ was neglected, Roman ghosts took to wandering and shrieking.

"Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ulula.s.se per agros Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt."

Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. lines 553, 554.

The Homeric ghosts gibbered because they were ghosts; the Burgundian ghosts because they were confined to the Stygian coast, and could not cross the stream. For once the "cla.s.sical allusions" are forced and inappropriate.]

[314] [Byron's point is that at Morat 15,000 men were slain in a righteous cause--the defence of a republic against an invading tyrant; whereas the lives of those that fell at Cannae and at Waterloo were sacrificed to the ambition of rival powers fighting for the mastery.]

[iy] {255} ----_their proud land_ _Groan'd not beneath_----.--[MS.]

[iz] {257} _And thus she died_----.--[MS.]

[ja] _And they lie simply_----.--[MS. erased.]

[jb] _The dear depths yield_----.--[MS.]

[315] ["Haunted and hunted by the British tourist and gossip-monger, Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's _Life of Sh.e.l.ley_, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Sh.e.l.ley's companions.h.i.+p was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen few, might, he hoped, be found in solitude, face to face with nature.

But it was not to be. Even nature was powerless to "minister to a mind diseased." At the conclusion of his second tour (September 29, 1816), he is constrained to admit that "neither the music of the shepherd, the cras.h.i.+ng of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched ident.i.ty in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me"

(_Life_, p. 315). Perhaps Wordsworth had this confession in his mind when, in 1834, he composed the lines, "Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life," of which the following were, he notes, "written with Lord Byron's character as a past before me, and that of others, his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences:"--

"Nor do words, Which practised talent readily affords, Prove that his hand has touched responsive chords Nor has his gentle beauty power to move With genuine rapture and with fervent love The soul of Genius, if he dare to take Life's rule from pa.s.sion craved for pa.s.sion's sake; Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent Of all the truly great and all the innocent.

But who is innocent? By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine, Through good and evil there, in just degree Of rational and manly sympathy."

_The Works of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 729.

Wordsworth seems to have resented Byron's tardy conversion to "natural piety," regarding it, no doubt, as a fruitless and graceless endeavour without the cross to wear the crown. But if Nature reserves her balms for "the innocent," her quality of inspiration is not "strained." Byron, too, was nature's priest--

"And by that vision splendid Was on his way attended."]

[jc] {259} _In its own deepness_----[MS.]

[316] [The metaphor is derived from a hot spring which appears to boil over at the moment of its coming to the surface. As the particles of water, when they emerge into the light, break and bubble into a seething ma.s.s; so, too, does pa.s.sion chase and beget pa.s.sion in the "hot throng"

of general interests and individual desires.]

[jd] _One of a worthless world--to strive where none are strong._--[MS.]

[317] [The thought which underlies the whole of this pa.s.sage is that man is the creature and thrall of fate. In society, in the world, he is exposed to the incidence of pa.s.sion, which he can neither resist nor yield to without torture. He is overcome by the world, and, as a last resource, he turns to nature and solitude. He lifts up his eyes to the hills, unexpectant of Divine aid, but in the hope that, by claiming kins.h.i.+p with Nature, and becoming "a portion of that around" him, he may forego humanity, with its burden of penitence, and elude the curse.

There is a further reference to this despairing recourse to Nature in _The Dream_, viii. 10, _seq_.--