Life of Lord Byron Volume III Part 32

Sh.e.l.ley), a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though but subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine. When we arrived at St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the sh.o.r.e, unaccustomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing to venture at all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder and congratulation with our boatmen, who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased to set foot on sh.o.r.e."]

[Footnote 123: In the account of this visit to Copet in his Memoranda, he spoke in high terms of the daughter of his hostess, the present d.u.c.h.ess de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be attached to her husband, remarked that "Nothing was more pleasing than to see the developement of the domestic affections in a very young woman." Of Madame de Stael, in that Memoir, he spoke thus:--"Madame de Stael was a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be--she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again."]

[Footnote 124: Upon the same occasion, indeed, he wrote some verses in a spirit not quite so generous, of which a few of the opening lines is all I shall give:--

"And thou wert sad--yet I was not with thee!

And thou wert sick--and yet I was not near.

Methought that Joy and Health alone could be Where I was _not_, and pain and sorrow here.

And is it thus?--it is as I foretold, And shall be more so:--" &c. &c.

"EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

"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 wither'd 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, And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrances 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; 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?--darken'd and intense 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 Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more." * *

"TO AUGUSTA.

"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.

Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same-- A loved regret which I would not resign.

There yet are two things in my destiny,-- A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

"The first were nothing--had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness; But other claims and other ties thou hast, And mine is not the wish to make them less.

A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling, as it lies beyond redress; Reversed for him our grandsire's[125] fate of yore,-- He had no rest at sea, nor I on sh.o.r.e.

"If my inheritance of storms hath been In other elements, and on the rocks Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen, I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen My errors with defensive paradox; I have been cunning in mine overthrow, The careful pilot of my proper woe,

"Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.

My whole life was a contest, since the day That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd The gift,--a fate, or will that walk'd astray; And I at times have found the struggle hard, And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay: But now I fain would for a time survive, If but to see what next can well arrive.

"Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away: Something--I know not what--does still uphold A spirit of slight patience; not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

"Perhaps the workings of defiance stir Within me,--or perhaps a cold despair, Brought on when ills habitually recur,-- Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air, (For even to this may change of soul refer, And with light armour we may learn to bear,) Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not The chief companion of a calmer lot.

"I feel almost at times as I have felt In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even at moments I could think I see Some living thing to love--but none like thee.

"Here are the Alpine landscapes which create A fund for contemplation;--to admire Is a brief feeling of a trivial date; But something worthier do such scenes inspire: Here to be lonely is not desolate, For much I view which I could most desire, And, above all, a lake I can behold Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

"Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow The fool of my own wishes, and forget The solitude which I have vaunted so Has lost its praise in this but one regret; There may be others which I less may show;-- I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet I feel an ebb in my philosophy, And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

"I did remind thee of our own dear lake[126], By the old hall which may be mine no more.

Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake The sweet remembrance of a dearer sh.o.r.e: Sad havoc Time must with my memory make Ere _that_ or _thou_ can fade these eyes before; Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

"The world is all before me; I but ask Of nature that with which she will comply-- It is but in her summer's sun to bask, To mingle with the quiet of her sky, To see her gentle face without a mask, And never gaze on it with apathy.

She was my early friend, and now shall be My sister--till I look again on thee.

"I can reduce all feelings but this one; And that I would not;--for at length I see Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.

The earliest--even the only paths for me-- Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, I had been better than I now can be; The pa.s.sions which have torn me would have slept; _I_ had not suffer'd, and _thou_ hadst not wept.

"With false ambition what had I to do?

Little with love, and least of all with fame; And yet they came unsought, and with me grew, And made me all which they can make--a name.

Yet this was not the end I did pursue; Surely I once beheld a n.o.bler aim.

But all is over--I am one the more To baffled millions which have gone before.

"And for the future, this world's future may From me demand but little of my care; I have outlived myself by many a day; Having survived so many things that were; My years have been no slumber, but the prey Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share Of life which might have fill'd a century, Before its fourth in time had pa.s.s'd me by.

"And for the remnant which may be to come I am content; and for the past I feel Not thankless,--for within the crowded sum Of struggles, happiness at times would steal, And for the present, I would not benumb My feelings farther.--Nor shall I conceal That with all this I still can look around And wors.h.i.+p Nature with a thought profound.

"For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart I know myself secure, as thou in mine: We were and are--I am, even as thou art-- Beings who ne'er each other can resign; It is the same, together or apart, From life's commencement to its slow decline We are entwined--let death come slow or fast, The tie which bound the first endures the last!"

[Footnote 125: "Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather Jack.'

"But, though it were tempest-tost, Still his bark could not be lost.

He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's Voyage), and subsequently circ.u.mnavigated the world, many years after, as commander of a similar expedition."]

[Footnote 126: The lake of Newstead Abbey.]

In the month of August, Mr. M.G. Lewis arrived to pa.s.s some time with him; and he was soon after visited by Mr. Richard Sharpe, of whom he makes such honourable mention in the Journal already given, and with whom, as I have heard this gentleman say, it now gave him evident pleasure to converse about their common friends in England. Among those who appeared to have left the strongest impressions of interest and admiration on his mind was (as easily will be believed by all who know this distinguished person) Sir James Mackintosh.

Soon after the arrival of his friends, Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. S. Davies, he set out, as we have seen, with the former on a tour through the Bernese Alps,--after accomplis.h.i.+ng which journey, about the beginning of October he took his departure, accompanied by the same gentleman, for Italy.

The first letter of the following series was, it will be seen, written a few days before he left Diodati.

LETTER 247. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Diodati, Oct. 5. 1816.

"Save me a copy of 'Buck's Richard III.' republished by Longman; but do not send out more books, I have too many.

"The 'Monody' is in too many paragraphs, which makes it unintelligible to me; if any one else understands it in the present form, they are wiser; however, as it cannot be rectified till my return, and has been already published, even publish it on in the collection--it will fill up the place of the omitted epistle.

"Strike out 'by request of a friend,' which is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous.