The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 68

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Gla.s.ses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm-- Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime-- The image of Eternity-the throne[qj]

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime[551]

The monsters of the deep are made--each Zone Obeys thee--thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLx.x.xIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy[552]

I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a Child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.[553]

CLx.x.xV.

My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit[qk]

The spell should break of this protracted dream.

The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ,-- Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been--and my visions flit Less palpably before me--and the glow Which in my Spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLx.x.xVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-- A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql]

Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm]

Which is his last--if in your memories dwell A thought which once was his--if on ye swell A single recollection--not in vain He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-sh.e.l.l; Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain, If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.[554]

FOOTNOTES:

[363] {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession of the Lady Dorchester.

[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song....

He is no more--these breathings are his last."]

[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day,"

sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--

"Here's a happy new year!--but with reason I beg you'll permit me to say-- Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_, But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]

[366] {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a man than a monster; and others wonder to find one born five thousand miles from England, endued with common sense.... He must be some Englishman in disguise."--_The Citizen of the World; or a Series of Letters from a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friends in the East_, 1762, Letter x.x.xiii.]

[367] [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]

[368] {324} [Antonio Canova, sculptor, 1757-1822; Vincenzo Monti, 1754-1828; Ugo Foscolo, 1776-1827 (see _Life_, p. 456, etc.); Ippolito Pindemonte, 1753-1828 (see Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817), poets; Ennius Quirinus Visconti, 1751-1818, the valuer of the Elgin marbles, archaeologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de Cicognara, 1767-1834, archaeologist; the Contessa Albrizzi, 1769?-1836, auth.o.r.ess of _Ritratti di Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_ (see _Life_, pp. 331, 413, etc.); Giuseppe Mezzofanti, 1774-1849, linguist; Angelo Mai (cardinal), 1782-1854, philologist; Andreas Moustoxides, 1787-1860, a Greek archaeologist, who wrote in Italian; Francesco Aglietti (see _Life_, p.

378, etc.), 1757-1836; Andrea Vacca Berlinghieri, 1772-1826 (see _Life_, p. 339).

For biographical essays on Monti, Foscolo, and Pindemonte, see "Essay on the Present Literature of Italy" (Hobhouse's _Historical Ill.u.s.trations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, 1818, pp. 347, _sq._). See, too, _Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 333-337, 337-341, 341-342.]

[369] {325} [Sh.e.l.ley (notes M. Darmesteter), in his preface to the _Prometheus Unbound_, "emploie le mot sans demander pardon." "The ma.s.s of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circ.u.mstances which awaken it to action perpetually change."

"Capability" in the sense of "undeveloped faculty or property; a condition physical or otherwise, capable of being converted or turned to use" (_N. Eng. Dict._), appertains rather to material objects. To apply the term figuratively to the forces inherent in national character savoured of a literary indecorum. Hence the apology.]

[370] [Addison, _Cato_, act v. sc. 1, line 3--

"It must be so--_Plato_, thou reason'st well!-- Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?"]

[371] [Sh.e.l.ley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines addressed to his infant son--

"My lost William, thou in whom Some bright spirit lived----"]

[372] [Scott commented severely on this opprobrious designation of "the great and glorious victory of Waterloo," in his critique on the Fourth Canto, _Q. R._, No. x.x.xvii., April, 1818.]

[373] {326} [_The substance of some letters written by an Englishman resident in Paris during the last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon_. 1816.

2 vols.]

[374] [In 1817.]

[375] {327}

[Venice and La Mira on the Brenta.

Copied, August, 1817.

Begun, June 26. Finished, July 29th. MS. M.]

[376] [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft of the column as a specimen." Gifford, Frere, and many more to whom Murray "ventured to show it," expressed their approval (_Memoir of John Murray_, i. 385).

"'The Bridge of Sighs,'" he explains (i.e. _Ponte de' Sospiri_), "is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state." Compare _The Two Foscari_, act iv. sc. 1--

"In Venice '_but_'s' a traitor.

But me no '_buts_,' unless you would pa.s.s o'er The Bridge which few repa.s.s."

This, however, is an anachronism. The Bridge of Sighs was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1597, more than a century after the death of Francesco Foscari. "It is," says Mr. Ruskin, "a work of no merit and of a late period, owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron" (_Stones of Venice_, 1853, ii. 304; in. 359).]

[377] [Compare _Mysteries of Udolpho_, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii.

35, 36--

"Its terraces crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics ... appeared as if they had been called up from the Ocean by the wand of an enchanter."]

[lb] {328} ----_throned on her Seventy Isles_.--[MS. M. altern. reading, D.]

[378] Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.--"Quo fit ut qui superne [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere."

[_De Venetae Urbis situ Narratio_, lib. i. _Ital. Ill. Script._, 1600, p.

4. Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436-1506) wrote, _inter alia_, a _History of Venice_, published in folio in 1487, and _Rhapsodiae Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad_ A.C. 1504. His description of Venice (_vide supra_) was published after his death in 1527. Hofmann does not give him a good character: "Obiit A.C. 1506, turpi morbo confectus, aetat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his ??t?ep?t?f??? [Au)toepita/phion] implies that he was satisfied with himself.

"Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat aetas, Scribentem capit haec Coccion urna brevis."

Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cybele), the "mother of the G.o.ddesses," was represented as wearing a mural crown--"coronamque turritam gestare dicitur" (Albricus Phil., _De Imag. Deor._, xii.).

Venice with her tiara of proud towers is the earth-G.o.ddess Cybele, having "suffered a sea-change."]

[lc] {329} _From spoils of many nations and the East_.--[MS. M., D.

erased.]