The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 6

PROMETHEUS.[64]

I.

t.i.tan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that G.o.ds despise; What was thy pity's recompense?[65]

A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, 10 Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

II.

t.i.tan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven,[66]

And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The ruling principle of Hate, 20 Which for its pleasure doth create[67]

The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die:[68]

The wretched gift Eternity Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee,[69]

But would not to appease him tell; 30 And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

III.

Thy G.o.dlike crime was to be kind,[70]

To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, 40 In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,[71]

A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; 50 His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself--an equal to all woes--[m][72]

And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concentered recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory.

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]

A FRAGMENT.[73]

Could I remount the river of my years To the first fountain of our smiles and tears, I would not trace again the stream of hours Between their outworn banks of withered flowers, But bid it flow as now--until it glides Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart?

The whole of that of which we are a part?

For Life is but a vision--what I see Of all which lives alone is Life to me, 10 And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.

The absent are the dead--for they are cold, And ne'er can be what once we did behold; And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet The unforgotten do not all forget, Since thus divided--equal must it be If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea; 20 It may be both--but one day end it must In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants--are they But mingled millions decomposed to clay?

The ashes of a thousand ages spread Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread?

Or do they in their silent cities dwell Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense Of breathless being?--darkened and intense 30 As Midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth!

Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth?

The dead are thy inheritors--and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the Grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold[74]

Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more. 40

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 36.]

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.

Rousseau--Voltaire--our Gibbon--and De Stael-- Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy sh.o.r.e, Thy sh.o.r.e of names like these! wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall: To them thy banks were lovely as to all, But they have made them lovelier, for the lore Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Of human hearts the ruin of a wall Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by _thee_ How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,[76]

The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the Heirs of Immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of Glory real!

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.[n][77]

I.

Though the day of my Destiny's over, And the star of my Fate hath declined,[o]

Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; Though thy Soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me, And the Love which my Spirit hath painted[p]

It never hath found but in _Thee_.

II.

Then when Nature around me is smiling,[78]

The last smile which answers to mine, I do not believe it beguiling,[q]

Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, As the b.r.e.a.s.t.s I believed in with me,[r]

If their billows excite an emotion, It is that they bear me from _Thee._

III.

Though the rock of my last Hope is s.h.i.+vered,[s]

And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is delivered To Pain--it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn; They may torture, but shall not subdue me; 'Tis of _Thee_ that I think--not of them.[t]

IV.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;[u][79]

Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though parted, it was not to fly, Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, Nor, mute, that the world might belie.[v]

V.

Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it, Nor the war of the many with one; If my Soul was not fitted to prize it, 'Twas folly not sooner to shun:[80]

And if dearly that error hath cost me, And more than I once could foresee, I have found that, whatever it lost me,[w]

It could not deprive me of _Thee_.