Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Part 22

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled With thine Elysian water-drops; the face Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, Whose green wild margin now no more erase Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep, Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep,

CXVII.

Fantastically tangled; the green hills Are clothed with early blossoms, through the gra.s.s The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pa.s.s; Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their cla.s.s, Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy ma.s.s; The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.

CXVIII.

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting With her most starry canopy, and seating Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting Of an enamoured G.o.ddess, and the cell Haunted by holy Love--the earliest oracle!

CXIX.

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, Blend a celestial with a human heart; And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, Share with immortal transports? could thine art Make them indeed immortal, and impart The purity of heaven to earthly joys, Expel the venom and not blunt the dart-- The dull satiety which all destroys-- And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

CXX.

Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert: whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Pa.s.sion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI.

O Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,-- A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see, The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven.

CXXII.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, And fevers into false creation;--where, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreached Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again.

CXXIII.

Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds Which robed our idols, and we see too sure Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.

CXXIV.

We wither from our youth, we gasp away-- Sick--sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst, Though to the last, in verge of our decay, Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-- But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.

Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same-- Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst-- For all are meteors with a different name, And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

CXXV.

Few--none--find what they love or could have loved: Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies--but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And Circ.u.mstance, that unspiritual G.o.d And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust--the dust we all have trod.

CXXVI.

Our life is a false nature--'tis not in The harmony of things,--this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew-- Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see-- And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII.

Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base Abandonment of reason to resign Our right of thought--our last and only place Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine: Though from our birth the faculty divine Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined, And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine Too brightly on the unprepared mind, The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.

CXXVIII.

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long explored but still exhaustless mine Of contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies a.s.sume

CXXIX.

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

Cx.x.x.

O Time! the beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled-- Time! the corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher, For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, Which never loses though it doth defer-- Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

Cx.x.xI.

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine And temple more divinely desolate, Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate: If thou hast ever seen me too elate, Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne Good, and reserved my pride against the hate Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain--shall THEY not mourn?

Cx.x.xII.

And thou, who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!

Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long-- Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution--just, Had it but been from hands less near--in this Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!

Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must.

Cx.x.xIII.

It is not that I may not have incurred For my ancestral faults or mine the wound I bleed withal, and had it been conferred With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound.

But now my blood shall not sink in the ground; To thee I do devote it--THOU shalt take The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake-- But let that pa.s.s--I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.

Cx.x.xIV.

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; But in this page a record will I seek.

Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

Cx.x.xV.

That curse shall be forgiveness.--Have I not-- Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!-- Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?

Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?

And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

Cx.x.xVI.

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do?

From the loud roar of foaming calumny To the small whisper of the as paltry few And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Ja.n.u.s glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would SEEM true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

Cx.x.xVII.

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain, But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire: Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.

Cx.x.xVIII.