My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 40

"Italian by birth, the contrast between the beauties and circ.u.mstances of her native country compared with the frontiers of Silesia, where a pretty feudal tyranny exists, displays still more the fine sentiments that characterize her."

We shall close this long list of admirable conceptions (which one quits with regret, so great is their charm) by giving some extracts from the portrait he was engaged on, when death, alas! caused the pencil to drop from his fingers: we mean Aurora Raby in "Don Juan:"--

"Aurora Raby, a young star who shone O'er life, too sweet an image for such gla.s.s; A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded; * * * * * * *

"Early in years, and yet more infantine In figure, she had something of sublime In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine.

All youth--but with an aspect beyond time; Radiant and grave as pitying man's decline; Mournful--but mournful of another's crime, She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, And grieved for those who could return no more."

And then:--

"She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere, As far as her own gentle heart allow'd."

And again:--

"She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, And kept her heart serene within its zone.

There was awe in the homage which she drew: Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne Apart from the surrounding world, and strong In its own strength--most strange in one so young!"

"High, yet resembling not his lost Haidee; Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere."

"The difference in them Was such as lies between a flower and gem."

"_Don Juan_," canto xv.

Now that we have seen Lord Byron's ideal of womankind, let us mark with what sentiments they inspired him, and in what way love always presented itself to his heart or his imagination. Ever dealing out toward him the same measure of justice and truth, people have gone on complacently repeating that his love sometimes became a very frenzy, or anon degenerated into a sensation rather than a sentiment. And his poetry has been a.s.serted to contain proof of this in the actions, characters, and words of the persons there portrayed. I think, then, that the best way of ascertaining the degree of truth belonging to these a.s.severations, is to let him speak himself, on this sentiment, at all the different periods of his life:--

"Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given To lift from earth our low desire.

Devotion wafts the mind above, But Heaven itself descends in love; A feeling from the G.o.dhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A Ray of Him who form'd the whole; A Glory circling round the soul!

I grant _my_ love imperfect, all That mortals by the name miscall; Then deem it evil, what thou wilt; But say, oh say, _hers_ was not guilt!

She was my life's unerring light: That quench'd, what beam shall break my night?"

"_The Giaour._"

In 1817, at Venice, when his heart, at twenty-nine years of age, was devoid of any real love, and had even arrived at never loving, although suffering deeply from the void thus created, Lord Byron giving vent to his feelings wrote thus:--

"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her!

Ye elements!--in whose enn.o.bling stir I feel myself exalted--Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot."[49]

At the same period, he also unveils his soul, in guessing that of Ta.s.so:--

"And with my years my soul began to pant With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain; And the whole heart exhaled into One Want, But undefined and wandering, till the day I found the thing I sought--and that was thee; And then I lost my being, all to be Absorb'd in thine; the world was pa.s.s'd away; _Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!"

"_The Lament of Ta.s.so._"

A short time after, having described the charm of the pine forest at Ravenna, seen by twilight, he begins to paint the happiness of two loving hearts--of Juan and Haidee, and says:--

VIII.

"Young Juan and his lady-love were left To their own hearts' most sweet society; Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms.

They could not be Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring, Before one charm or hope had taken wing.

IX.

"Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail!

The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail, They were all summer; lightning might a.s.sail And shiver them to ashes, but to trail A long and snake-like life of dull decay Was not for them--they had too little clay.

X.

"They were alone once more; for them to be Thus was another Eden; they were never Weary, unless when separate: the tree Cut from its forest root of years--the river d.a.m.n'd from its fountain--the child from the knee And breast maternal wean'd at once forever,-- Would wither less than these two torn apart; Alas! there is no instinct like the heart.

XII.

"'Whom the G.o.ds love die young,' was said of yore, And many deaths do they escape by this: The death of friends, and that which slays even more-- The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is, Except mere breath; * * * * * * *

Perhaps the early grave Which men weep over, may be meant to save.

XIII.

"Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead.

The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them: They found no fault with Time, save that he fled; They saw not in themselves aught to condemn; Each was the other's mirror.

XVI.

"Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless found Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys As rarely they beheld throughout their round; And these were not of the vain kind which cloys, For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound By the mere senses; and that which destroys Most love, possession, unto them appear'd A thing which each endearment more endear'd.

XVII.

"Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful!

But theirs was love in which the mind delights To lose itself, when the old world grows dull.

And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights, Intrigues, adventures of the common school, Its petty pa.s.sions, marriages, and flights, Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more, Whose husband only knows her not a wh--re.

XVIII.

"Hard words; harsh truth; a truth which many know.

Enough.--The faithful and the fairy pair, Who never found a single hour too slow, What was it made them thus exempt from care?

Young innate feelings all have felt below, Which perish in the rest, but in them were Inherent; what we mortals call romantic, And always envy, though we deem it frantic.

XIX.

"This is in others a fact.i.tious state, * * * * * * *

But was in them their nature or their fate.

XX.

"They gazed upon the sunset: 'tis an hour Dear unto all, but dearest to _their_ eyes, For it had made them what they were: the power Of love had first o'erwhelm'd them from such skies, When happiness had been their only dower, And twilight saw them link'd in pa.s.sion's ties; Charm'd with each other, all things charm'd that brought The past still welcome as the present thought.

XXVI.