Which colour'd all his objects:---he had ceased A touch, of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, But she in these foud feelings had no share: Of a time-honour'd race.(1)—It was a name A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The Boy of whom I spake;-he was alone, He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. (1) [See ante, p. 9.1-"Our union," said Lord Byron in 1821,"would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers-it would have joined lands, broad and rich-it would have joined at least one heart and two persons not ill-matched in years (she is two years my elder) — and-and-and-what has been the result!"—L. E. (2) The picture which Lord Byron has here drawn of his youthful love shows how genius and feeling can elevate the realities of this life, and give to the commonest events and objects an undying lustre. The old hall at Annesley, under the name of the antique oratory,' will long call up to fancy the maiden and the youth' who once stood in it; while the image of the 'lover's steed,' though suggested by the unromantic race-ground of Nottingham, will not the less conduce to the general charm of the scene, and share a portion of that light which only Genius could shed over Moore.-L. E. it. The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. (3) “I had long been in love with M. A. C., and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well." B. Diary, 1822. L. E. (4) “This is true keeping an Eastern picture, perfect in its foreground, and distance, and sky, and no part of which is so dwelt upon or laboured as to obscure the principal figure. It is often in the slight and almost imperceptible touches that the hand of the master is shown, and that a single spark, struck from his fancy, lightens with a long train of illumination that of the reader." Walter Scott. -L. E. The beautiful scenery described in this passage is supposed to have been suggested by the country which Byron in the course of his journey in Greece, traversed between the Saronic and Corinthian Gulfs.-P. E. The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. (I) "This touching picture agrees closely, in many of its circumstances, with Lord Byron's own prose account of the wedding in his Memoranda; in which he describes himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joiued, for the first time, on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down-he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes-his thoughts were elsewhere; and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders to find that he was-married.” Moore.-L. E. (2) In the MS. -"the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift; For it becomes the telescope of truth, And shows us all things naked as they are."-L. E. Mithridates of Pontus. "This poem is written with great beauty and genius -but is extremely painful. We cannot maintain our accustomed tone of levity, or even speak like calm literary judges, in the midst of these agonising traces of a wounded and distempered spirit. Even our admiration is swallowed up in a most painful feeling of pity and of wonder. It is impossible to mistake these for fictitious sorrows, conjured up for the purpose of poetical effect. There is a dreadful tone of sincerity, and an energy that cannot be counterfeited, in the expression of wretchedness, and alienation from human kind, which occurs in every line of this poem." Jeffrey.-L. E. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. (6) Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Of this their desolation; and all hearts The habitations of all things which dwell, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes The flashes fell upon them; some lay down (5) In the original MS.-" A Dream."-L. E. (6) In this poem Lord Byron has abandoned the art, so peculiarly his own, of showing the reader where his purpose tends, and has contented himself with presenting a mass of powerful ideas unarranged, and the meaning of which it is not easy to attain. A succession of terrible haages is placed before us, flitting and mixing, and disengaging themselves. as in the dream of a feverish man-chimeras dire, to whose existence the mind refuses credit, which confound and weary the ordinary reader, and baffle the comprehension even of those more accustomed to the flights of a poetic muse. The subject is the progress of utter darkness, until it becomes, in Shakspeare's phrase, the 'burier of the dead; and the assemblage of terrific ideas which the poet has placed before ' us only fail in exciting our terror from the extravagance of the plan. To speak plainly, the framing of such phantasms is a dangerous employment for the exalted and teeming imagination of such a poet as Lord Byron, whose Pegasas ever required rather a bridle than a spur. The waste of boundless space into which they lead the poet, the neglect of precision which such themes may render habitual, male them, in respect to poetry, what mysticism is to religion. The meaning of the poet, as he ascends upon cloudy wing, becomes the shadow only of a thought, and having eluded the comprehension of others, necessarily ends by escaping from that of the author himself. The strength of poetical conception, and the beauty of diction, bestowed upon such prolusions, is as much thrown away as the colours of a painter, could he take a cloud of mist, or a wreath of smoke, for his canvass." Waller Scott.-L. E. With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; And they were enemies: they met beside Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died-- (1) "Darkness" is a grand and gloomy sketch of the sup posed consequences of the final extinction of the sun and the heavenly bodies; executed, undoubtedly, with great and fearful force, but with something of German exaggeration, and a fantastical solution of incidents. The very conception is terrible above all conception of known calamity, and is too oppressive to the imagination to be contemplated with pleasure, even in the faint reflection of poetry." Jeffrey, -L. E. (2) On the sheet containing the original draught of these lines, Lord Byron has written:-"The following poem (as most that I have endeavoured to write) is founded on a fact; and this detail is an attempt at a serious imitation of the style of a great poet-its beauties and its defects: I say, the style; for the thoughts I claim as my own. In this, if there be any thing ridiculous, let it be attributed to me, at least as much as to Mr. Wordsworth, of whom there can exist few greater admirers than myself. I have blended what I would deem to be the beauties as well as defects of his The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, CHURCHILL'S GRAVE; A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED. (2) I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed The gardener of that ground, why it might be And I had not the digging of this grave." I know not what of honour and of light Your honour pleases," then most pleased I DIODATI, 1816. style; and it ought to be remembered, that, in such things. whether there be praise or dispraise, there is always what is called a compliment, however unintentional."-L. E. (3) Originally "then most pleased, I shook My inward pocket's most retired nook, And out fell five and sixpence."-L. E. (4) "The Grave of Churchill might have called from Lord Byron a deeper commemoration; for, though they generally differed in character and genius, there was a resemblance between their history and character. The satire of Churchill flowed with a more profuse, though not a more embittered, stream; while, on the other hand, he cannot be compared to Lord Byron in point of tenderness or imagination. both these poets held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed But PROMETHEUS. TITAN! to whose immortal eyes Were not as things that gods despise; Which speaks but in its loneliness, Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The ruling principle of Hate, Which for its pleasure doth create Was thine-and thou hast borne it well. That in his hand the lightnings trembled. Thy godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less Of thine impenetrable spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, To mortals of their fate and force; A troubled stream from a pure source; And a firm will, and a deep sense, I's own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory. DIODATI, July, 1816. to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness. Both died in the flower of their age in a foreign land." Walter Scott.-L. E. (1) These verses, of which the opening lines are given in Moore's Life, were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation already alluded to, antè, p.877, but were not What is this Death?-a quiet of the heart? The absent are the dead-for they are cold, The under-earth inhabitants-are they Or have they their own language? and a sense Where are the past?-and wherefore had they birth? 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; for the mind recoils Upon itself, and the wreck'd heart lies cold, While heaviness collects the shatter'd spoils. It is not in the storm nor in the strife We feel benumb'd, and wish to be no more, But in the after-silence on the shore, When all is lost, except a little life. intended for the public eye: as, however, they have recently found their way into circulation, we must include them, though with reluctance, in this collection.-L. E. These lines "were written," says Lady Blessington,, "with deep feelings of pain, and should be judged as the outpourings of a wounded spirit demanding pity more than anger. While to the public they are of that value that any ! am too well avenged!-but 't was my right; Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent To be the Nemesis who should requite- Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument. Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now. I have had many foes, but none like thee; Hadst nought to dread-in thy own weakness shielded, On things that were not, and on things that are— Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart, reasons for their suppression ought to be extremely strong; so, on the other hand, I trust, they cannot hurt either her feelings to whom they are addressed, or his memory by whom they are written:-to her, because the very bitterness of reproach proves that unconquerable affection which cannot but heal the wound it causes: to him, because who, in the shattered feelings they betray, will not acknowledge the grief that hurries into error, and (may we add in cha rity!) atones for it!"—P. E. (1) Lord Byron had at least this much to say for himself, that he was not the first to make his domestic differ. ences a topic of public discussion. On the contrary, he saw himself, ere any fact but the one undisguised and tangible one was or could be known, held up every where, and by every art of malice, as the most infamous of men,--because he had parted from his wife. He was exquisitely sensitive: he was wounded at once by a thousand arrows; and all this with the most perfect and indignant knowledge, that of all who were assailing him not one knew any thing of the real merits of the case. Did he right, then, in publishing those squibs and tirades? No, certainly: it would have been nobler, better, wiser far, to have utterly scorned the assaults of such enemies, and taken no notice, of any kind, of them. But, because this young, hot-blooded, proud, patrician poet did not, amidst the exacerbation of feelings which he could not control, act in precisely the most digni fied and wisest of all possible manners of action, are we entitled, is the world at large entitled, to issue a broad sen. tence of vituperative condemnation? Do we know all that he had suffered ?-have we imagination enough to comprehend what he suffered, under circumstances such as these? -have we been tried in similar circumstances, whether we could feel the wound unflinchingly, and keep the weapon quiescent in the hand that trembled with all the excitements of insulted privacy, honour, and faith? STANZAS TO HER WHO CAN BEST UNDER- Be it so!-we part for ever! Hadst thou been thus dear to me. And, in words, my vengeance wreak. But there is a silent sorrow Which can find no vent in speech, From the heights that song can reach. "Let people consider, for a moment, what it is that they demand when they insist upon a poet of Byron's class abstaining altogether from expressing in his works any thing of his own feelings in regard to any thing that immediately concerns his own history. We tell him, in every possible form and shape, that the great and distinguishing merit of his poetry is the intense truth with which that poetry expresses his own personal feelings. We encourage him, in every possible way, to dissect his own heart for our entertainment-we tempt him, by every bribe most likely to act powerfully on a young and imaginative man, to plunge into the darkest depths of self-knowledge; to madden his brain with eternal self-scrutinies, to find his pride and his pleasure in what others shrink from as torture-we tempt him to indulge in these dangerous exercises, until they obviously acquire the power of lending him to the very brink of frenzy-we tempt him to find, and to see in this perilous vocation, the staple of his existence, the food of bis ambition, the very essence of his glory;-and the moment that, by habits of our own creating, at least of our own encouraging and confirming, he is carried one single step beyond what we happen to approve of, we turn round with all the bitterness of spleen, and reproach him with the unmanliness of entertaining the public with his feelings in regard to his separation from his wife. This was truly the conduct of a fair and liberal public! To our view of the matter, Lord Byron, treated as he had been, tempted as he had been, and tortured and insulted as he was at the moment, did no more forfeit his character by writing what he did write upon that unhappy occasion, than another man, under circumstances of the same nature, would have done, by telling something of his mind about it to an intimate friend across the fire. The public had forced him into the habits of familiarity, and they received his confidence with nothing but anger and scorn." Lockhart.-L. E. |