Byron: The Last Phase Part 24

HARMODIA.

'The things that were--and what and whence are they?

Those clouds and rainbows of thy yesterday?

Their path has vanish'd from th' eternal sky, And now its hues are of a different dye.

Thus speeds from day to day, and Pole to Pole, The change of parts, the sameness of the whole; And all we s.n.a.t.c.h, amidst the breathing strife, But gives to Memory what it takes from Life: Despoils a substance to adorn a shade-- And that frail shadow lengthens but to fade.

Sun of the sleepless! Melancholy Star!

Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar-- _That chang'st_ the darkness thou canst not dispel-- How like art thou to Joy, remembered well!

Such is the past--the light of other days That shines, but warms not with its powerless rays-- A moonbeam _Sorrow_ watcheth to behold, Distinct, but distant--clear, but _death-like_ cold.

'Oh! as full thought comes rushing o'er the Mind Of all we saw before--to leave behind-- Of all!--but words, what are they? Can they give A trace of truth to thoughts while yet they live?

No--Pa.s.sion--Feeling speak not--or in vain-- The tear for Grief--the Groan must speak for Pain-- Joy hath its smile--and Love its blush and sigh-- Despair her silence--Hate her lip and eye-- These their interpreters, where deeply lurk-- The Soul's despoilers warring as they work-- The strife once o'er--then words may find their way, Yet how enfeebled from the forced delay!

'But who could paint the progress of the wreck-- Himself still clinging to the dangerous deck?

Safe on the sh.o.r.e the artist first must stand, And then the pencil trembles in his hand.'

When, four years later, Byron was writing the first canto of 'Don Juan,'

with feelings chastened by suffering and time, he recurred to that period--never effaced from his memory--the time when he wrote:

'When thou art gone--the loved--the lost--the one Whose smile hath gladdened--though, perchance, undone!'

Time could not change the feelings of his youth, nor keep his thoughts for long from the object of his early love.

'They tell me 'tis decided you depart: 'Tis wise--'tis well, but not the less a pain; I have no further claim on your young heart, Mine is the victim, and would be again: To love too much has been the only art I used.'

'I loved, I love you, for this love have lost State, station, Heaven, Mankind's, my own esteem, And yet can not regret what it hath cost, _So dear is still the memory of that dream_; Yet, if I name my guilt, 'tis not to boast, None can deem harshlier of me than I deem.'

'All is o'er For me on earth, except some years to hide My shame and sorrow deep in my heart's core: These I could bear, but cannot cast aside The pa.s.sion which still rages as before-- And so farewell--forgive me, love me--No, That word is idle now--but let it go.'

'My heart is feminine, nor can forget-- To all, except one image, madly blind; So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole, As vibrates my fond heart to my fixed soul.'

It was early in 1814 that Byron also wrote his farewell verses to Mary Chaworth, which appeared in the second edition of 'The Corsair':

I.

'Farewell! if ever fondest prayer For other's weal availed on high, Mine will not all be lost in air, But waft thy name beyond the sky.

'Twere vain to speak--to weep--to sigh: Oh! more than tears of blood can tell, _When wrung from Guilt's expiring eye_, Are in that word--Farewell! Farewell!

II.

'These lips are mute, these eyes are dry; But in my breast, and in my brain, Awake the pangs that pa.s.s not by, _The thought that ne'er shall sleep again_.

My soul nor deigns nor dares complain, Though Grief and Pa.s.sion there rebel: I only know we loved in vain-- I only feel--Farewell! Farewell!'

Even in the 'Hebrew Melodies,' which were probably begun in the autumn of 1814, and finished after Byron's marriage in January, 1815, there are traces of that deathless remorse and love, whose expression could not be altogether repressed. We select some examples at random. In the poem 'Oh, s.n.a.t.c.hed away in Beauty's bloom,' the poet had added two verses which were subsequently suppressed:

'Nor need I write to tell the tale, My pen were doubly weak.

Oh! what can idle words avail, Unless my heart could speak?

'By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart, no longer free, Must bear the love it cannot show, And silent turn for thee.'

In 'Herod's Lament for Mariamne' we find:

'She's gone, who shared my diadem; She sunk, with her my joys entombing; I swept that flower from Judah's stem, Whose leaves for me alone were blooming; And mine's the guilt, and mine the h.e.l.l, This bosom's desolation dooming; And I have earned those tortures well, Which unconsumed are still consuming!'

While admitting that Byron's avowed object was to portray the remorse of Herod, we suspect that the haunting image of one so dear to him--one who had suffered through guilt which he so frequently deplored in verse--must have been in the poet's mind when these lines were written.

On January 17, 1814, Byron went to Newstead with Augusta Leigh, and stayed there one month.

'A busy month and pleasant, at least three weeks of it.... "The Corsair" has been conceived, written, published, etc., since I took up this journal. They tell me it has great success; it was written _con amore_, and much from _existence_.'

On the following day Byron wrote to his friend Wedderburn Webster:

'I am on my way to the country on rather a melancholy expedition. A very old and early connexion [Mary Chaworth], or rather friend of mine, has desired to see me; and, as now we can never be more than friends, I have no objection. She is certainly unhappy and, I fear, ill; and the length and circ.u.mstances attending our acquaintance render her request and my visit neither singular nor improper.'

This strange apology for what might have been considered a very natural act of neighbourly friendship, inevitably reminds us of a French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_. It is worthy of note that, after Byron had been ten days at Newstead with his sister, he wrote to his lawyer--who must have been surprised at the irrelevant information--to say that Augusta Leigh was 'in the family way.' The significance of this communication has. .h.i.therto pa.s.sed unnoticed. We gather from Byron's letters that he was much depressed by Mary Chaworth's state of health, involving all the risks of discovery.

'My rhyming propensity is quite gone,' he writes, 'and I feel much as I did at Patras on recovering from my fever--weak, but in health, and only afraid of a relapse.'

Soon after his return to London Byron wrote to Moore: 'Seriously, I am in what the learned call a dilemma, and the vulgar, a sc.r.a.pe....'

Moore took care, with his asterisks, that we should not know the nature of that sc.r.a.pe, which certainly had nothing to do with his 'Lines to a Lady Weeping' which appeared in the first edition of 'The Corsair.' If the reader has any doubts on this point, let him refer to Byron's letters to Murray, notably to that one in which the angry poet protests against the suppression of those lines in the second edition of 'The Corsair':

'You have played the devil by that injudicious _suppression_, which you did totally without my consent.... Now, I _do not_, and _will_ not be supposed to shrink, although myself and everything belonging to me were to perish with my memory.'

Moore's asterisks veiled the record of a deeper sc.r.a.pe, as Byron's letter to him, written three weeks later, plainly show.

On April 10, 1814, Byron wrote in his journal:

'I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I am never long in the society even of _her_ I love (G.o.d knows too well, and the Devil probably too), without a yearning for the company of my lamp, and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.'

The latter portion of the journal at this period is much mutilated. There is a gap between April 10 and 19, when, four days after the birth of Medora, he writes in deep dejection:

'There is ice at both poles, north and south--all extremes are the same--misery belongs to the highest and the lowest, only.... I will keep no further journal ... and, to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume.... "O! fool! I shall go mad."'

It was at this time that Byron wrote the following lines, in which he tells Mary Chaworth that all danger of the discovery of their secret is over:

'There is no more for _me_ to hope, _There is no more for thee to fear_; And, if I give my sorrow scope, That sorrow _thou_ shalt never hear.

Why did I hold thy love so dear?

Why shed for such a heart one tear?

Let deep and dreary silence be My only memory of thee!

When all are fled who flatter now, Save thoughts which will not flatter then; And thou recall'st the broken vow To him who must not love again-- _Each hour of now forgotten years_ Thou, then, shalt number with thy tears; And every drop of grief shall be A vain remembrancer of me!'

On May 4, 1814, Byron sent to Moore the following verses. We quote from Lady Byron's ma.n.u.script:

'I speak not--I trace not--I breathe not thy name-- There is love in the sound--there is Guilt in the fame-- But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.

'Too brief for our pa.s.sion--too long for our peace-- Was that hour--can its hope--can its memory cease?

We repent--we abjure--we will break from our chain: We must part--we must fly to--unite it again!