To Inez
Nay, smile not at my sullen brow;
Alas! I cannot smile again:
Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain.
And dost thou ask what secret woe
I bear, corroding Joy and Youth?
And wilt thou vainly seek to know
A pang, ev’n thou must fail to soothe?
It is not love, it is not hate,
Nor low Ambition’s honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I prized the most:
It is that weariness which springs
From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.
It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
The fabled Hebrew Wanderer bore;
That will not look beyond the tomb,
But cannot hope for rest before.
What Exile from himself can flee?
To zones though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where’er I be,
The blight of Life—the Demon Thought.
Yet others rapt in pleasure seem,
And taste of all that I forsake;
Oh! may they still of transport dream,
And ne’er—at least like me—awake!
Through many a clime ’tis mine to go,
With many a retrospection curst;
And all my solace is to know,
Whate’er betides, I’ve known the worst.
What is that worst? Nay do not ask—
In pity from the search forbear:
Smile on—nor venture to unmask
Man’s heart, and view the Hell that’s there.
Jan. 25. 1810.—
Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!
Who may forget how well thy walls have stood?
When all were changing thou alone wert true,
First to be free and last to be subdued;
And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude,
Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye,
A Traitor only fell beneath the feud:
Here all were noble, save Nobility;
None hugged a Conqueror’s chain, save fallen Chivalry!
Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her Fate!
They fight for Freedom who were never free,
A Kingless people for a nerveless state;
Her vassals combat when their Chieftains flee,
True to the veriest slaves of Treachery:
Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,
Pride points the path that leads to Liberty;
Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
War, war is still the cry, “War even to the knife!”
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know
Go, read whate’er is writ of bloodiest strife:
Whate’er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe
Can act, is acting there against man’s life:
From flashing scimitar to secret knife,
War mouldeth there each weapon to his need—
So may he guard the sister and the wife,
So may he make each curst oppressor bleed—
So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!
Flows there a tear of Pity for the dead?
Look o’er the ravage of the reeking plain;
Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,
Then to the vulture let each corse remain,
Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird’s maw;
Let their bleached bones, and blood’s unbleaching stain,
Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe:
Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw!
Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done;
Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees:
It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
Fall’n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees
More than her fell Pizarros once enchained:
Strange retribution! now Columbia’s ease
Repairs the wrongs that Quito’s sons sustained,
While o’er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrained.
Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
Not all the marvels of Barossa’s fight,
Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
Have won for Spain her well asserted right.
When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?
How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
And Freedom’s stranger-tree grow native of the soil!
And thou, my friend!—since unavailing woe
Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain—
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
Pride might forbid e’en Friendship to complain:
But thus unlaurelled to descend in vain,
By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest?
Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most!
Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear!
Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
And Fancy hover o’er thy bloodless bier,
Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,
And mourned and mourner lie united in repose.
Here is one fytte of Harold’s pilgrimage:
Ye who of him may further seek to know,
Shall find some tidings in a future page,
If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so:
Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld
In other lands, where he was doomed to go:
Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,
Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.
FOOTNOTES
{75} “Stanzas to be inserted after stanza 86th in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, instead of the song at present in manuscript.”-
{76} [Compare Horace, Odes, II. xvi. 19, 20—
“Patriæ quis exsul
Se quoque fugit?”]
To other zones howe’er remote
Still, still pursuing clings to me.—
[Compare Prior’s Solomon, bk. iii. lines 85, 86—
“In the remotest wood and lonely grot
Certain to meet that worst of evils—thought.”]
{77}
{78}
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
Sights, Saints, Antiques, Arts, Anecdotes and War,
Go hie ye hence to Paternoster Row—
Are they not written in the Boke of Carr,
Green Erin’s Knight and Europe’s wandering star!
Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink,
Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar;
All those are cooped within one Quarto’s brink,
This borrow, steal,—don’t buy,—and tell us what you think.
There may you read with spectacles on eyes,
How many Wellesleys did embark for Spain,
As if therein they meant to colonise,
How many troops y-crossed the laughing main
That ne’er beheld the said return again:
How many buildings are in such a place,
How many leagues from this to yonder plain,
How many relics each cathedral grace,
And where Giralda stands on her gigantic base.
There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John!
That these my words prophetic may not err)
All that was said, or sung, and lost, or won,
By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,
He that wrote half the “Needy Knife-Grinder,”
Thus Poesy the way to grandeur paves—
Who would not such diplomatists prefer?
But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves,
Leave legates to the House, and armies to their graves.
Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made,
Who for the Junta modelled sapient laws,
Taught them to govern ere they were obeyed:
Certes fit teacher to command, because
His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes;
Blest with a Dame in Virtue’s bosom nurst,—
With her let silent Admiration pause!—
True to her second husband and her first:
On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst.
“Porphyry said that the prophecies of Daniel were written after their completion, and such may be my fate here; but it requires no second sight to foretell a tome; the first glimpse of the knight was enough.”—
“I presume Marquis and Mr. and Pole and Sir A. are returned by this time, and eke the bewildered Frere whose conduct was canvassed by the Commons.”—
By shrivelled Wellesley——.—
“The Needy Knife-grinder,” in the Anti-Jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.
None better known for doing things by halves
As many in our Senate did aver.—
Yet surely Vulpes merits some applause.—
{81}
{82}
And thou, my friend! since thus my selfish woe
Bursts from my heart,{ to weaken in however light my strain, for ever light the——.—
Had the sword laid thee, with the mighty, low
Pride had forbade me of thy fall to plain.—
{83} ——belov’d the most.—
[With reference to this stanza, Byron wrote to Dallas, October 25, 1811 (Letters, 1898, ii. 58, 59), “I send you a conclusion to the whole. In a stanza towards the end of Canto I. in the line,
“Oh, known the earliest and beloved the most,
I shall alter the epithet to ‘esteemed the most.'”]
——where none so long was dear.—
And fancy follow to——.—
“Fytte” means “part.”—
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