The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 23

_Spirit_. But thy many crimes Have made thee--

_Man_. What are they to such as thee?

Must crimes be punished but by other crimes, And greater criminals?--Back to thy h.e.l.l!

Thou hast no power upon me, _that_ I feel; Thou never shalt possess me, _that_ I know: What I have done is done; I bear within A torture which could nothing gain from thine: The Mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts,-- 130 Is its own origin of ill and end-- And its own place and time:[170] its innate sense, When stripped of this mortality, derives No colour from the fleeting things without, But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy, Born from the knowledge of its own desert.

_Thou_ didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me; I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey-- But was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter.--Back, ye baffled fiends! 140 The hand of Death is on me--but not yours!

[_The Demons disappear._

_Abbot_. Alas! how pale thou art--thy lips are white-- And thy breast heaves--and in thy gasping throat The accents rattle: Give thy prayers to Heaven-- Pray--albeit but in thought,--but die not thus.

_Man_. 'Tis over--my dull eyes can fix thee not; But all things swim around me, and the earth Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well-- Give me thy hand.

_Abbot_. Cold--cold--even to the heart-- But yet one prayer--Alas! how fares it with thee? 150

_Man_. Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die.[171]

[MANFRED _expires._

_Abbot_. He's gone--his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight; Whither? I dread to think--but he is gone.[172]

FOOTNOTES:

[106] {86}[The MS. of _Manfred_, now in Mr. Murray's possession, is in Lord Byron's handwriting. A note is prefixed: "The scene of the drama is amongst the higher Alps, partly in the Castle of Manfred, and partly in the mountains." The date, March 18, 1817, is in John Murray's handwriting.]

[107] [So, too, Faust is discovered "in a high--vaulted narrow Gothic chamber."]

[108] [Compare _Faust,_ act i. sc. 1--

"Alas! I have explored Philosophy, and Law, and Medicine, And over deep Divinity have pored, Studying with ardent and laborious zeal."

Anster's Faust, 1883, p. 88.]

[ap] {86}

_Eternal Agency!_ _Ye spirits of the immortal Universe!_--[MS. M.]

[aq] _Of inaccessible mountains are the haunts_.--[MS. M.]

[109] [_Faust_ contemplates the sign of the macrocosm, and makes use of the sign of the Spirit of the Earth. _Manfred's_ written charm may have been "Abraxas," which comprehended the Greek numerals 365, and expressed the all-pervading spirits of the Universe.]

[110] [The Prince of the Spirits is Arimanes, _vide post,_ act ii. sc.

4, line 1, _seq._]

[111] {87}[Compare _Childe Harold,_ Canto I. stanza lx.x.xiii. lines 8, 9.]

[ar] _Which is fit for my pavilion_.--[MS. M.]

[as] _Or makes its ice delay_.--[MS. M.]

[112] {89}[Compare "Creatures of clay, I receive you into mine empire."--_Vathek,_ 1887, p. 179.]

[at] {90}_The Mind which is my Spirit--the high Soul._--[MS. erased.]

[au] _Answer--or I will teach ye._--[MS. M.]

[113] [So the MS., in which the word "say" clearly forms part of the _Spirit's_ speech.]

[114] {91}[Compare "Stanzas for Music," i. 3, _Poetical Works,_ 1900, iii 435.]

[115] [It is evident that the female figure is not that of Astarte, but of the subject of the "Incantation."]

[116] [The italics are not indicated in the MS.]

[117] N.B.--Here follows the "Incantation," which being already transcribed and (I suppose) published I do not transcribe again at present, because you can insert it in MS. here--as it belongs to this place: with its conclusion the 1st Scene closes.

[The "Incantation" was first published in "_The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems_. London: Printed for John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1816."

Immediately below the t.i.tle is a note: "The following Poem was a Chorus in an unpublished Witch Drama, which was begun some years ago."]

[118] {92}[Manfred was done into Italian by a translator "who was unable to find in the dictionaries ... any other signification of the 'wisp' of this line than 'a bundle of straw.'" Byron offered him two hundred francs if he would destroy the MS., and engage to withhold his hand from all past or future poems. He at first refused; but, finding that the alternative was to be a horsewhipping, accepted the money, and signed the agreement.--_Life_, p. 375, note.]

[av] {93}_I do adjure thee to this spell._--[MS. M.]

[119] {94}[Compare--

? d??? a????, ?.t.?.

[Greek: o~) di~os ai)ther, k.t.l.]

aeschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus,_ lines 88-91.]

[120] {95}[Compare Hamlet's speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (_Hamlet,_ act ii. sc. 2, lines 286, _sq._).]

[121] [The germs of this and of several other pa.s.sages in _Manfred_ may be found, as Lord Byron stated, in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which he transmitted to his sister. "Sept. 19, 1816.--Arrived at a lake in the very nipple of the bosom of the Mountain; left our quadrupeds with a Shepherd, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dints as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest _pinnacle._ ...

The whole of the Mountain superb. A Shepherd on a very steep and high cliff playing upon his _pipe_; very different from _Arcadia,_ (where I saw the pastors with a long Musquet instead of a Crook, and pistols in their Girdles).... The music of the Cows' bells (for their wealth, like the Patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, (which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain), and the Shepherds' shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence:--much more so than Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musquet order; and if there is a Crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other:--but this was pure and unmixed--solitary, savage, and patriarchal.... As we went, they played the 'Ranz des Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with Nature" (_Letters_, 1899, in. 354, 355).]

[122] {96}[Compare--

"Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun."

_To a Skylark_, by P. B. Sh.e.l.ley, stanza iii. line 5.]

[123] ["Pa.s.sed _whole woods of withered pines, all withered_; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a _single winter_,--their appearance reminded me of me and my family" (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 360).]

[124] {97}["Ascended the Wengen mountain.... Heard the Avalanches falling every five minutes nearly--as if G.o.d was pelting the Devil down from Heaven with snow b.a.l.l.s" (_Letters_, 1899, in. 359).]

[aw] _Like foam from the round ocean of old h.e.l.l_.--[MS. M.]

[125] ["The clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of h.e.l.l, during a Spring-tide--it was white, and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance. The side we ascended was (of course) not of so precipitous a nature; but on arriving at the summit, we looked down the other side upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood (these crags on one side quite perpendicular) ... In pa.s.sing the ma.s.ses of snow, I made a s...o...b..ll and pelted Hobhouse with it" (_ibid_, pp.

359. 360).]