The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 12

[z]

_Go where thou wilt thou art to me the same_-- _A loud regret which I would not resign_.--[MS.]

[84] [Compare--

"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister!"

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxvii. lines 1, 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 456.]

[aa] _But other cares_----.--[MS.]

[ab] _A strange doom hath been ours, but that is past_.--[MS.]

[85] ["Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather Jack' [or 'Hardy Byron'].

"'But, though it were tempest-toss'd, Still his bark could not be lost.'

He returned safely from the wreck of the _Wager_ (in Anson's voyage), and many years after circ.u.mnavigated the world, as commander of a similar expedition" (Moore). Admiral the Hon. John Byron (1723-1786), next brother to William, fifth Lord Byron, published his _Narrative_ of his shipwreck in the _Wager_ in 1768, and his _Voyage round the World_ in the _Dolphin_, in 1767 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 3).]

[ac] {58}

_I am not yet o'erwhelmed that I shall ever lean_ _A thought upon such Hope as daily mocks_.--[MS. erased.]

[86] [For Byron's belief in predestination, compare _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza lx.x.xiii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 74, note 1.]

[ad] {59}_For to all such may change of soul refer_.--[MS.]

[ae]

_Have hardened me to this--but I can see_ _Things which I still can love--but none like thee_.--[MS. erased.]

[af]

{_Before I had to study far more useless books_.--[MS. erased,]

{_Ere my young mind was fettered down to books_.

[ag] _Some living things_-----.--[MS.]

[87] [Compare--

"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, when we are _least_ alone."

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xc. lines 1, 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 272]

[88] {60}[For a description of the lake at Newstead, see _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lvii.]

[ah] _And think of such things with a childish eye._--[MS.]

[89] {61}[Compare--

"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue, Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."

_The Island_, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.

His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.

Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for a.s.sociation to consecrate the vision (_Life_, p. 8).]

[ai]

_The earliest were the only paths for me._ _The earliest were the paths and meant for me._--[MS. erased.]

[aj]

_Yet could I but expunge from out the book_ _Of my existence all that was entwined._--[MS. erased.]

[ak]

_My life has been too long--if in a day_ _I have survived_----.--[MS. erased.]

[90] {62}[Byron often insists on this compression of life into a yet briefer span than even mortality allows. Compare--

"He, who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life," etc.

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 218, note 1.

Compare, too--

"My life is not dated by years-- There are moments which act as a plough," etc.

_Lines to the Countess of Blessington_, stanza 4.]

[al] _And for the remnants_----.--[MS.]

[am] _Whate'er betide_----.--[MS.]

[an] _We have been and we shall be_----.--[MS. erased.]

[91] {63}["These verses," says John Wright (ed. 1832, x. 207), "of which the opening lines (1-6) are given in Moore's _Notices_, etc. (1830, ii.

36), were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation ...

[i.e. the intervention] of Madame de Stael, who had persuaded Byron 'to write a letter to a friend in England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady Byron' (_Life_, p. 321), but were not intended for the public eye." The verses were written in September, and it is evident that since the composition of _The Dream_ in July, another "change had come over" his spirit, and that the mild and courteous depreciation of his wife as "a gentle bride," etc., had given place to pa.s.sionate reproach and bitter reviling. The failure of Madame de Stael's negotiations must have been to some extent antic.i.p.ated, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was a rumour or report of the "one serious calumny" of Sh.e.l.ley's letter of September 29, 1816, which provoked him to fury, and drove him into the open maledictions of _The Incantation_ (published together with the _Prisoner of Chillon_, but afterwards incorporated with _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1, _vide post_, p.

91), and the suppressed "lines," written, so he told Lady Blessington (_Conversations, etc._, 1834, p. 79) "on reading in a newspaper" that Lady Byron had been ill.]

[92] [Compare--

" ... that unnatural retribution--just, Had it but been from hands less near."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cx.x.xii. lines 6, 7, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 427.]