Betrayal

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
    To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother's word
    My child to banishment retires.

As disappears the moon, when wind
    Heaps miles of mist her visage o'er,
So vanisheth his face behind
    The cloud of his white pinafore.

I cannot then come near my child--
    A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled--
    I waiting, for I cannot cross.

Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
    The Isis-veil behind it brings--
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
    Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!

Mysterious moment! When or how
    Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
    When turns his being to the sun!

A light...

I.

Tuscara! thou art lovely now,
Thy woods, that frown'd in sullen strength
Like plumage on a giant's brow,
Have bowed their massy pride at length.
The rustling maize is green around,
The sheep is in the Congar's bed;
And clear the ploughman's whistlings sound
Where war-whoop's pealed o'er mangled dead.
Fair cots around thy breast are set,
Like pearls upon a coronet;
And in Aluga's vale below
The gilded grain is moving slow
Like yellow moonlight on the sea,
Where waves are swelling peacefully;
As beauty's breast, when quiet dreams
Come tranquilly and gently by;
When all she loves and hopes for seems
To float in smiles before her eye.

II.

And hast thou lost the grandeur rude
That made me breathless, when at first
...

Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy, ah! even to tears!,
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.

Scarce had they lifted up
Life’s full and fiery cup,
Than they had set it down untouched before them.
Before their day arose
They beckoned it to close,
Close in destruction and confusion o’er them.

They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task,
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips,
Even Belphoebe’s, whom they gave their lives for!

[1]

Two demons at their pleasure share our being -
The cause of Reason from her homestead fleeing;
No heart but on their altars kindleth flames.
If you demand their purposes and names,
The one is Love, the other is Ambition.
Of far the greater share this takes possession,
For even into love it enters,
Which I might prove; but now my story centres
Upon a shepherd clothed with lofty powers:
The tale belongs to older times than ours.

A king observed a flock, wide spread
Upon the plains, most admirably fed,
O'erpaying largely, as return'd the years,
Their shepherd's care, by harvests for his shears.
Such pleasure in this man the monarch took, -
'Thou meritest,' said he, 'to wield a crook
O'er higher flock than this; and my esteem
O...

As often as I murmur here
My half-formed melodies,
Straight from her osier mansion near,
The Turtledove replies:
Though silent as a leaf before,
The captive promptly coos;
Is it to teach her own soft lore,
Or second my weak Muse?

I rather think, the gentle Dove
Is murmuring a reproof,
Displeased that I from lays of love
Have dared to keep aloof;
That I, a Bard of hill and dale,
Have caroled, fancy free,
As if nor dove nor nightingale,
Had heart or voice for me.

If such thy meaning, O forbear,
Sweet Bird! to do me wrong;
Love, blessed Love, is everywhere
The spirit of my song:
'Mid grove, and by the calm fireside,
Love animates my lyre
That coo again! 'tis not to chide,
I feel, but to inspire.

Ere with cold beads of midnight dew
Had mingled tears of thine,
I grieved, fond Youth! that thou shouldst sue
To haughty Geraldine.

Immoveable by generous sighs,
She glories in a train
Who drag, beneath our native skies,
An oriental chain.

Pine not like them with arms across,
Forgetting in thy care
How the fast-rooted trees can toss
Their branches in mid air.

The humblest rivulet will take
Its own wild liberties;
And, every day, the imprisoned lake
Is flowing in the breeze.

Then, crouch no more on suppliant knee,
But scorn with scorn outbrave;
A Briton, even in love, should be
A subject, not a slave!

There is a long thin line of fading gold
    In the far West, and the transfigured leaves
    On some slight, topmost bough that sways and heaves
Hang limp and tremulous. Nor warm, nor cold
    The pungent air, and, 'neath the yellow haze,
    Show flushed and glad the wild, October ways.

There is a soft enchantment in the air,
    A mystery the Summer knows not, nor
    The sturdy, frost-crowned Winter. Nature wore
Her blandest smile to-day, as here and there
    I wandered, elf-beset, through wood and field
    And gleaned the glories of the autumn yield.

A bunch of purple aster, golden-rod
    Darkened by the first frost, a drooping spray
    Of scarlet barberry, and tall and gray
The silk-cored cotton with its bursting pod,
    Some tarnished m...

1

O raise those eyes to me again
And smile again so joyously,
And fear not, love; it was not pain
Nor grief that drew these tears from me;
Beloved child, thou canst not tell
The thoughts that in my bosom dwell
Whene'er I look on thee!

2

Thou knowest not that a glance of thine
Can bring back long departed years
And that thy blue eyes' magic shine
Can overflow my own with tears,
And that each feature soft and fair
And every curl of golden hair,
Some sweet remembrance bears.

3

Just then thou didst recall to me
A distant long forgotten scene,
One smile, and one sweet word from thee
Dispelled the years that rolled between;
I was a little child again,
And every after joy and pain
Seemed never to have b...

Thus they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
While to the music, from on high,
The echoes make a glad reply.
But the sage Muse the revel heeds
No farther than her story needs;
Nor will she servilely attend
The loitering journey to its end.
Blithe spirits of her own impel
The Muse, who scents the morning air,
To take of this transported pair
A brief and unreproved farewell;
To quit the slow-paced waggon's side,
And wander down yon hawthorn dell,
With murmuring Greta for her guide.
There doth she ken the awful form
Of Raven-crag black as a storm
Glimmering through the twilight pale;
And Ghimmer-crag, his tall twin brother,
Each peering forth t...

Lord Byron's Memoirs, written by himself.--Reflections, when about to read them.


Let me a moment--ere with fear and hope
Of gloomy, glorious things, these leaves I ope--
As one in fairy tale to whom the key
    Of some enchanter's secret halls is given,
Doubts while he enters slowly, tremblingly,
    If he shall meet with shapes from hell or heaven--
Let me a moment think what thousands live
O'er the wide earth this instant who would give,
Gladly, whole sleepless nights to bend the brow
Over these precious leaves, as I do now.

How all who know--and where is he unknown?
To what far region have his songs not flown,
Like PSAPHON'S birds[1] speaking their master's name,
In every language syllabled by Fame?--
How all who've felt the v...

Love's worshippers alone can know
The thousand mysteries that are his;
His blazing torch, his twanging bow,
His blooming age are mysteries.
A charming science, but the day
Were all too short to con it o'er;
So take of me this little lay,
A sample of its boundless lore.

As once, beneath the fragrant shade
Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air,
The children, Love and Folly, played,
A quarrel rose betwixt the pair.
Love said the gods should do him right,
But Folly vowed to do it then,
And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight,
So hard he never saw again.

His lovely mother's grief was deep,
She called for vengeance on the deed;
A beauty does not vainly weep,
Nor coldly does a mother plead.
A shade came o'er the eternal bliss
That ...

1.

One Day the Amarous Lisander,
By an impatient Passion sway'd,
Surpris'd fair Cloris, that lov'd Maid,
Who cou'd defend her self no longer ;
All things did with his Love conspire,
The gilded Planet of the Day,
In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,
War now descending to the Sea,
And left no Light to guide the World,
But what from Cloris brighter Eves was hurl'd.

2.

In alone Thicket, made for Love,
Silent as yielding Maids Consent,
She with a charming Languishment
Permits his force, yet gently strove ?
Her Hands his Bosom softly meet,
But not to put him back design'd,
Rather to draw him on inclin'd,
Whilst he lay trembling at her feet;
Resistance 'tis to late to shew,
She wants the pow'r to sav, Ah!what do you do?
<...

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

Nay, blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse,
Yet these my earlier welcome shared,
So, let the better shield the worse.

And some might say, "Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost;
To spring the opening leaf belongs,
The chestnut-burs await the frost."

When those I wrote, my locks were brown,
When these I write - ah, well a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May.

Go, little book, whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?

O sexton of the alcoved tomb,
Where souls in leathern cerements lie,
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?

Oh, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
Our mother is praying, our father is gone

To the forest, on wolves to make war.
Oh sing us a ballad, the tale then repeat,

'Till brother and I learn it right;
We long have been hoping a minstrel to meet,

For children hear tales with delight.

"At midnight, when darkness its fearful veil weaves,
His lofty and stately old castle he leaves,

But first he has buried his wealth.
What figure is that in his arms one perceives,

As the Count quits the gateway by stealth?
O'er what is his mantle so hastily thrown?

What bears he along in his flight?
A daughter it is, and she gently sleeps on"
<...

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunatly drown’d in his Passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretels the ruine of our corrupted Clergy then in their height.

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc’d fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melod...

Dear little Slavic Sappho, we had thought,
Hearing thy songs so sweetly, deftly wrought,
That thou shouldst have an heritage one day
Beyond thy father's lands: his lute to play.
For not an hour of daylight's joyous round
But thou didst fill it full of lovely sound,
Just as the nightingale doth scatter pleasure
Upon the dark, in glad unstinted measure.
Then Death came stalking near thee, timid thing,
And thou in sudden terror tookest wing.
Ah, that delight, it was not overlong
And I pay dear with sorrow for brief song.
Thou still wert singing when thou cam'st to die;
Kissing thy mother, thus thou saidst good-bye:
        "My mother, I shall serve thee now no more
Nor sit about thy table's charming store;
I must lay down my keys to go from here,
To leave th...

We were apart: yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be;
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee:
Nor fear’d but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day more tried, more true.

The fault was grave: I might have known,
What far too soon, alas, I learn’d
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith is often unreturn’d.
Self-sway’d our feelings ebb and swell:
Thou lov’est no more: Farewell! Farewell!

Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didn’t depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign,
Back to thy solitude again!

Back, with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer night,
Flash through he...