LXXV.

LXXXI.
in all save form alone, how changed ! and who Glanced many a light caique along the foam,
That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
Why but would deem their bosoins burn'd anew Ne thought had man or maid of rest or home,
With thy unquenched bean, lost Liberty !

While many a languid eye and thrilling hand
And many dream withal the hour is nigh

Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
That gives them back their fathers' heritage: Or gently prest, return'd the pressure still:
For foreign armas and aid they fondly sigh,

Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,

Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
In tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of
page.

ill!
LXXVI.

LXXXII.
Rereditary bondsmen! know ye not [blow?

But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
Who would be free themselves must strike the

Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?

Even through the closest searment half betray'di
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? no!

To such the gentle murmurs of the main
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low,

Seem to reécho all they mourn in vain ;
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.

To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd
Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe!

Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain :
Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;

How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,
ľby glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame. And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud:

LXXXIII.
LXXVII.

This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,
The city won for Allah from the Giaour,

If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast.
The Gianur from Othman's race again may wrest;

Not such as prate of war, but skulk in peace,
And the Serai's impenetrable tower

The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,
Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;

Yet with smooth smile his tyrant can accost,
Or Wahab's rebel brood who dared divest

And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:
The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,

Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee
May wind their path of blood along the West;

most!
But ne'er will frecdom seek this fated soil,

Their birth, iheir blood, and that sublime record
Bat slave succeed to slave through years of endless of hero sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde
LXXVIII.

LXXXIV.
Yet mark their mirth-ere lenten days begin When riseth Lacedæmon's hardihood,
That penance which their holy rites prepare When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
To shrise from man his weight of mortal sin, When Athens' children are with hearts endued,
By daily abstinence and nightly praver ;

When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
Bat ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
To take of pleasaunce each his secret share; An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
In notley robe to dance at masking ball,

Can man in shatter'd splendor renovate,
And join the mimic train of merry Carnival. Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate i

35

toil.

LXXIX.

LXXXV.
And whose more rife with merriment than thine, And yet how lovely in thine age of wo,
Oh Stumhoul! once the empress of their reign? Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou !
Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine, Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,97
And Greece her very altars eyes in vain :

Proclaim thee Nature's varied favorite now;
(Alas! he woes will still pervade my strain!) Thy fame, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Au felt the common joy they now must feign, Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song, So perish monuments of mortal birth,
1s cooid the eye, and thrill'd the Bosphorus along. So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth:
LXXX.

LXXXVI.
Loud tras the lightsome tumult of the shore, Save where some solitary column mourns
Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone, Above its prostrate brethren ef the cave;
And timely echo'd back the measured oar,

Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns
And rippling waters made a pleasant moan: Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;
The Queen of tides on high consenting shone,

Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
And son a transicnt breeze swept o'er the wave, Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
Thas, as if darting from her heavenly throne, Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
Aoncher klince her form reflected gave,

While strangers only not regardless pass,
till ap-skiing billows scem'd to light the banks they Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh
lare

** Alas!"

LXXXVII.

XCIII.
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Let such approach this consecrated land,
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, And pass in peace along the magic waste;
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,

But spare its relics—let no busy hand
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields; Deface the scenes, already how defaced !
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, Not for such purpose were these altars placed;
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air ; Revere the remnants nations once revered:
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,

So may our country's name be undisgraced, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;

So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was rear' Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

By every honest joy of love and life endear'd!

39

reer.

LXXXVIII.

XCIV.
Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground; For thee, who thus in too protracted song
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,

Hath soothed thine idlesse with inglorious lays, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,

Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,

Of louder minstrels in these later days; Till the sense aches with gazing to behold

To such resign the strife for fading bays, The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :

Ill may such contest now the spirit inove Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Which heeds nor keen reproach nor partial pribe

Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone: Since cold each kinder heart that might approve Age shakes Athera's tower, but spares gray Mara- And none are left to please, when pone are ieft! thon

love. LXXXIX.

XCV. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;

Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! Unchanged in all except its foreign lord

Whom youth and youth's affections bound to me Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame

Who did for me what none beside have done, The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde

Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee. First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,

What is my being? thou hast ceased to be! As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home, When Marathon became a magic word ; :

Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall sed Which utter'd, to the hearer's eye appear

Would they had never been, or were to come! The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's ca- Would he had ne'er returned, to find fresh cause

roam.
XC.

XCVI.
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;

Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved !

How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below,
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!

And clings to thoughts now better far removed Such was the scene-what now remaineth here?

But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last. (has What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground,

All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! the Recording freedom's smile, and Asia's tear?

The parent, friend, and now the more than friend The rifled urn, the violated mound,

Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to len

And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
around.
XCI.

XCVII.
Yet tc the remnants of thy splendor past
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng;

Then must I plunge again into the crowd,
Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,

And follow all that Peace disdains to seek? Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;

Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue

False to the heart, distorts the hollow check, Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;

To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak; Boast of the ed! lesson of the young!

Still o'er the features, which perforce they chee Which sages venerate, and bards adore,

To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique ; Aa Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

Smiles form the channel of a future tear,

Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer XCII.

XCVIII. The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; What is the worst of woes that wait on age ? He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

To view each loved one blotted from life's page, Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth. And be alone on earth, as I am now. But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, Before the Chastener hambly let me bow And scarce regret the region of his birth,

O'er hearts divided, and o'er hopes destroy'd ; When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Roll on, vain days ! full reckless may ye flow, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd, died.

law' o'tis the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy

VI.
'Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense, that we endow
CANTO III.

With form or fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now.

What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
A pede appalisation vorn forgat de penser autre chose; n'y a en Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth
ente de repede que celubia et ke tempa."-Lettre du Roi de Prusa a

Invisible but gazing, as I glow Artert, Sept.7, 1776.

Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,

And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings
I.

dearth.

VII.
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child !
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? Yet must I think less wildly :- I have thought
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled, Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
And then we parted, -not as now we part,

In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
But with a hope.-

A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame;
Awaking with a start,

And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
The waters heave around me; and on high My springs of life were poison'd. 'Tis too late!
The winds lift up their voices : I depart,

Yet am I changed; though still enough the same b
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by, In strength to bear what time can not abate,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fata

50

mine eye.

scene.

II.

VIII.
Ouce more upon the waters ! yet once more! Something too much of this ;—but now 'tis past,
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed And the spell closes with its silent seal.
That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar! Long absent HAROLD reappears at last;
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead ! He of the breast which fain no more would feel,
Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'ez
And the rent canvas futtering strew the gale, Yet Time, who changes all, had alter'd him (heal;
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

In soul and aspect as irr age: years steal
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail Fire from the mind as vigor from the linıb;
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
prevail.
III.

IX. lu my youth's summer I did sing of One,

His had been quaff'd too quickly, and he found The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; The dregs were wormwood; but he fill’d again, Again I seize the thene then but begun,

And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind

And deem'd its spring perpetual; but in vain!
Bears the cloud onwards : in that Tale I find Still round him clung invisibly a chain
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,

Which gall’d, for ever fettering though unseen,
Which, ebbing, leave a steril track behind, And heavy though it clank'd not; worn with pain,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years

Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
Plod the last sands of life,—where not a flower Entering with every step he took through many a
appears.
IV.

X.
Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain, Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix'd
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string, Again in fancied safety with his kind,
And both may jar; it may be, that in vain And deem'd his spirit now so firmly fix'd
I would essay as I have sung to sing.

And sheath'd with an invulnerable mind, Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling, That, if no joy, no sorrow lurk'd behind; 80 that it ween me from the weary dream

And he, as one, might midst the many stand Of selfish grief or gladness-o it fling

Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

Fit speculation; such as in strange land
To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. He found in wonder-works of God and Nature'.

hand.

XI.
He who grown aged in this world of wo,

But who can view the ripen'd rose, nor seek
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, To wear it? who can curiously behold
So that no wonder waits him; nor below

The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek,
Cars lore, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, Nor feel the heart can never all grow old ?
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell

The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb ?
Why thought sceks jefuge in lone caves, yet rife Harold, once more within the vortex, rollid

With airy images, and shapes which dwell On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
sil] unimprir'd though old, in the soul's haunted Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fend
ceil.

prime.

V.

XII.

XVIII. But roon he knew himself the most unfit

And Harold stanie npon this place of skulls, Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo; Little in common; untaught to submit (quell'd How in an hour the power which gave annuls His thoughts to others, though his soul was Its gifts, transferring t'ame as theeting too! In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompellid, In “pride of place") liere last the eagle flew, He would not yield dominion of his mind

Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain, To spirits against whom his own retell’d;

Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through Proud though in desolation; which could find Ambition's life and labors all were vain ; A life within itself, to breath without mankind. He wears the shatter'd links of the world's broke

chain. XIII.

XIX. Where rose the mountains, there to him were Fit retribution ! Gaul may champ the bit friends;

And foam in fetters ;-but is Earth more free? Where rollid the ocean, thereon was his home; Did nations combat to make One subiuit; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty? He had the passion and the power to roam; What! shall reviving Thraldom again be The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,

The patch'd-up idol of enlighten'd days? Were unto him companionship; they spake Shall we, who struck the Lion downı, shall we A mutual language, clearer than the toine

Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake And servile knees to thrones ? No: prove before Fur Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.

praise!

XX
XIV.

If not, o'er one fallen despot boast no more! Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,

In vain fair cheeks were furrow'd with hot tears Till he had peopled them with beings bright

For Europe's flowers long rooted up before As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born

The trampler of her vineyards; in vain, years And human frailties, were forgotten quite: (jars,

Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears, Could he have kept his spirit to that flight

Have all been borne, and broken by the accord He had been happy; but this clay will sink

Of roused-up millions : all that most endears Its spark immortal, envying it the light

Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword To which it mounts, as if to break the link

Such as Harmodius? drew on A hens' tyrant lord. I hat keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.

XXI
XV.
But in Man's dwellings he became a thing

There was a sound of revelry by night,
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,

And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Droop'd as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,

Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright To whom the boundless air alone were home:

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave me Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when As eagerly the barr'd-up bird will beat

Music arose with its voluptuous swell, His breast and beak against his wiry dome

Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat

And all went merry as a marriage-bell;3 Df his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a risi

knell ! XVI.

XXII. Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,

Did ye not hear it ?-No; 'twas but the wind, With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom ;

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; The very knowledge that he lived in vain.,

On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined; That all was over on this side the tomb,

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure me Had made Despair a smilingness assume, (wreck

To chase the glowing Hours with flying feetWhich, though 'twere wild, -as on the plunder'd

But, hark !-that heavy sound breaks in once mo When mariners would madly meet their doom

As if the clouds its echo would repeat; With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.

Arm! Arm! it is—it is—the cannon's opening to

XVII.

XXIII. Stop!- For thy tread is on an Empire's dust. Within a window'd niche of that high hall An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below! Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear Is the spot mark'd with no colossal bust?

That sound the first amidst the festiral, Nor column trophied for triumphal show?

And caught its tone with Death's prophetic en None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so, And when they siniled because he deem'd it ne As the ground was before, thus let it be :

His heart more truly knew that peal too well How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier,

And is this all the world has gain'd by thee, And roused the vengeance blood alone could qui l'hou first and last of fields ! king-making Victory? He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting 1

XXIV.

XXX.
AD! then and there was hurrying to and fro, There have been tears and breaking hearts for the
And gathering tears and tremblings of distress, And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness; Which living waves where thou didst cease to live
And there were sudden partings, such as press And saw around me the wide field revive
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,

If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
Bince upon night so sweet such awful morn could I turn'd from all she brought to those she could not
rise ?

bring.?
XXV.

XXXI.
And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed

I turn'd to thee, to thousands, of whom each
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,

And one as all a ghastly gap did make
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, In his own kind and kindred, whor i teach
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;

Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;

The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
And near, the beat of the alarming drum

Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;

May for a moment sooth, it cannot slake [Fame While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb,

The fever of vain longing, and the name
Or whispering, with white lips—"The foe! They so honcr'd but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.
corre! they come !”
XXVI.

XXXII.
And wild and high the “Cameron's gathering" They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling,
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills (rose!

The tree will wither long before it fall; [moun:
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn:
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills In massy hoariness; the ruin'd wall
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
With the fierce native daring which instills The bars survive the captive they enthral; (sun:
The stirring memory of a thousand years,

The day drags through tho' storms keep out the
And •Evan's, "Donald's fame rings in each clans- And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on
man's ears!
XXVII.

XXXIII.
And Ardenness waves above them her green leaves Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass In every fragment multiplies; and makes
Grieving, if aught inmimate e'er grieves,

A thousand images of one that was,
Over the unreturning brave,-alas !

The same, and still the more, the more it breaks.
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass

And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow Living in shatter'd guise, and still, and cold,
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow acher or living valor, rolling on the foe,

Yet withers on till all without is old,
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold Showing no visible sign, for such things are untole
and low.
XXVIII.

XXXIV.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,

There is a very life in our despair,
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,

Vitality of poison,-a quick root
The morn the marshalling in arms,—the day

Which feeds these deadly branches; for it wort
Lattle's magnificently-stern array !

As nothing did we die ; but Life will suit
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent,

Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
The earth is covered thick with other ciay,

Like to the apples on the ® Dead Sea's shore,

All ashes to the taste: Did man compute wh ch her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent, Rider and horse,-friend, foe,-in one red burial Such hours 'gainst years of life,-say, would he name

Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er
blent !
XXIX.

threescore?

XXXV.
Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng, The Psalmist number'd out the years of man:
Partly because they blend me with his line, They are enough; and if thy tale be true,
And partly that I did his sire some wrong, Thou, who didst grudge him even tha fleeting spau,
And partly that bright names will hallow song; More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo !
And his was of the bravest, and when shower'd Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
The death-bolts deadliest the thinn'd files al'ng, Their children's lips shall echo them, and say—

Bren where the thickest of war's tempest lower'd, “Here, where the sword united nations drew, Taey reach'd no nobler breast than thine, young, Our countrymen were warring on that day!" gallant Howard

And this is much, and all which will not pass away