The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 36

ODE ON VENICE[234]

I.

Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls Are level with the waters, there shall be A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls, A loud lament along the sweeping sea!

If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee, What should thy sons do?--anything but weep: And yet they only murmur in their sleep.

In contrast with their fathers--as the slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, 10 That drives the sailor shipless to his home, Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.

Oh! agony--that centuries should reap No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years[235]

Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears; And every monument the stranger meets, Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets; And even the Lion all subdued appears,[236]

And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20 With dull and daily dissonance, repeats The echo of thy Tyrant's voice along The soft waves, once all musical to song, That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Of gondolas[237]--and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart, And flow of too much happiness, which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 30 Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.

But these are better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightning half an hour ere Death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, 40 Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away; Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay, To him appears renewal of his breath, And freedom the mere numbness of his chain; And then he talks of Life, and how again He feels his spirit soaring--albeit weak, And of the fresher air, which he would seek; And as he whispers knows not that he gasps, That his thin finger feels not what it clasps, And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy 50 Chamber swims round and round--and shadows busy, At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam, Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream, And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth That which it was the moment ere our birth.[238]

II.

There is no hope for nations!--Search the page Of many thousand years--the daily scene, The flow and ebb of each recurring age, The everlasting _to be_ which _hath been_, Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean 60 On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear Our strength away in wrestling with the air; For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts Are of as high an order--they must go Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.

Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, What have they given your children in return?

A heritage of servitude and woes, A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. 70 What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,[239]

O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal, And deem this proof of loyalty the _real_; Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?

All that your Sires have left you, all that Time Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime, Spring from a different theme!--Ye see and read, Admire and sigh, and then succ.u.mb and bleed!

Save the few spirits who, despite of all, 80 And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered, Gushing from Freedom's fountains--when the crowd,[240]

Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud, And trample on each other to obtain The cup which brings oblivion of a chain Heavy and sore,--in which long yoked they ploughed The sand,--or if there sprung the yellow grain, 'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bowed, 90 And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:-- Yes! the few spirits--who, despite of deeds Which they abhor, confound not with the cause Those momentary starts from Nature's laws, Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite But for a term, then pa.s.s, and leave the earth With all her seasons to repair the blight With a few summers, and again put forth Cities and generations--fair, when free-- For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! 100

III.

Glory and Empire! once upon these towers[241]

With Freedom--G.o.dlike Triad! how you sate!

The league of mightiest nations, in those hours When Venice was an envy, might abate, But did not quench, her spirit--in her fate All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate, Although they humbled--with the kingly few The many felt, for from all days and climes She was the voyager's worship;--even her crimes 110 Were of the softer order, born of Love-- She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead, But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread; For these restored the Cross, that from above Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,[242]

Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank The city it has clothed in chains, which clank Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles; 120 Yet she but shares with them a common woe, And called the "kingdom"[243] of a conquering foe,-- But knows what all--and, most of all, _we_ know-- With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

IV.

The name of Commonwealth is past and gone O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;[244]

If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time, 130 For Tyranny of late is cunning grown, And in its own good season tramples down The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime, Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean[245]

Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and Bequeathed--a heritage of heart and hand, And proud distinction from each other land, Whose sons must bow them at a Monarch's motion, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 140 Full of the magic of exploded science-- Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, Above the far Atlantic!--She has taught Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,[246]

May strike to those whose red right hands have bought Rights cheaply earned with blood.--Still, still, for ever Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 150 Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, Dammed like the dull ca.n.a.l with locks and chains, And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Three paces, and then faltering:--better be Where the extinguished Spartans still are free, In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, Than stagnate in our marsh,--or o'er the deep Fly, and one current to the ocean add, One spirit to the souls our fathers had, One freeman more, America, to thee![247] 160

FOOTNOTES:

[234] {193}[The _Ode on Venice_ (originally _Ode_) was completed by July 10, 1818 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 245), but was published at the same time as _Mazeppa_ and _A Fragment_, June 28, 1819. The _motif_, a lamentation over the decay and degradation of Venice, re-echoes the sentiments expressed in the opening stanzas (i.-xix.) of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_. A realistic description of the "Hour of Death" (lines 37-55), and a eulogy of the United States of America (lines 133-160), give distinction to the _Ode_.]

[235] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiii. lines 4-6.]

[236] [Compare _ibid._, stanza xi. lines 5-9.]

[237] {194}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza iii lines 1-4.]

[238] [Compare _The Prisoner of Chillon_, line 178, note 2, _vide ante_, p. 21.]

[239] {195}[In contrasting Sheridan with Brougham, Byron speaks of "the red-hot ploughshares of public life."--_Diary_, March 10, 1814, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 397.]

[240] [Compare--

"At last it [the mob] takes to weapons such as men s.n.a.t.c.h when despair makes human hearts less pliant.

Then comes 'the tug of war;'--'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,'

If I had not perceived that revolution Alone can save the earth from h.e.l.l's pollution."

_Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanza li. lines 3-8.]

[241] {196}[Compare Lord Tennyson's stanzas--

"Of old sat Freedom on the heights."]

[242] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiv. line 3, note 1, and line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 339, 340.]

[243] {197}[In 1814 the Italian possessions of the Emperor of Austria were "const.i.tuted into separate and particular states, under the t.i.tle of the kingdom of Venetian Lombardy."--Koch's _Europe_, p. 234.]

[244] [The Prince of Orange ... was proclaimed Sovereign Prince of the Low Countries, December 1, 1813; and in the following year, August 13, 1814, on the condition that he should make a part of the Germanic Confederation, he received the t.i.tle of King of the Netherlands.-_Ibid_., p. 233.]

[245] [Compare "Oceano dissociabili," Hor., _Odes_, I. iii 22.]

[246] [In October, 1812, the American sloop _Wasp_ captured the English brig _Frolic_; and December 29, 1812, the _Const.i.tution_ compelled the frigate _Java_ to surrender. In the following year, February 24, 1813, the _Hornet_ met the _Peac.o.c.k_ off the Demerara, and reduced her in fifteen minutes to a sinking condition. On June 28, 1814, the sloop-of-war _Wasp_ captured and burned the sloop _Reindeer_, and on September 11, 1814, the _Confiance_, commanded by Commodore Downie, and other vessels surrendered."--_History of America_, by Justin Winsor, 1888, vii. 380, _seq_.]

[247] {198}[Byron repented, or feigned to repent, this somewhat provocative eulogy of the Great Republic: "Somebody has sent me some American abuse of _Mazeppa_ and 'the Ode;' in future I will compliment nothing but Canada, and desert to the English."--Letter to Murray, February 21, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 410. It is possible that the allusion is to an article, "Mazeppa and Don Juan," in the _a.n.a.lectic Magazine_, November, 1819, vol. xiv, pp. 405-410.]

MAZEPPA.

INTRODUCTION TO _MAZEPPA_

_Mazeppa_, a legend of the Russian Ukraine, or frontier region, is based on the pa.s.sage in Voltaire's _Charles XII_. prefixed as the "Advertis.e.m.e.nt" to the poem. Voltaire seems to have known very little about the man or his history, and Byron, though he draws largely on his imagination, was content to take his substratum of fact from Voltaire.

The "true story of Mazeppa" is worth re-telling for its own sake, and lends a fresh interest and vitality to the legend. Ivan Stepanovitch Mazeppa (or Mazepa), born about the year 1645, was of Cossack origin, but appears to have belonged, by descent or creation, to the lesser n.o.bility of the semi-Polish Volhynia. He began life (1660) as a page of honour in the Court of King John Casimir V. of Poland, where he studied Latin, and acquired the tongue and pen of eloquent statesmanship.

Banished from the court on account of a quarrel, he withdrew to his mother's estate in Volhynia, and there, to beguile the time, made love to the wife of a neighbouring magnate, the _pane_ or Lord Falbowski. The intrigue was discovered, and to avenge his wrongs the outraged husband caused Mazeppa to be stripped to the skin, and bound to his own steed.

The horse, lashed into madness, and terror-stricken by the discharge of a pistol, started off at a gallop, and rushing "thorough bush, thorough briar," carried his torn and bleeding rider into the courtyard of his own mansion!

With regard to the sequel or issue of this episode, history is silent, but when the curtain rises again (A.D. 1674) Mazeppa is discovered in the character of writer-general or foreign secretary to Peter Doroshenko, hetman or president of the Western Ukraine, on the hither side of the Dnieper. From the service of Doroshenko, who came to an untimely end, he pa.s.sed by a series of accidents into the employ of his rival, Samolovitch, hetman of the Eastern Ukraine, and, as his secretary or envoy, continued to attract the notice and to conciliate the good will of the (regent) Tzarina Sophia and her eminent _boyard_, Prince Basil Golitsyn. A time came (1687) when it served the interests of Russia to degrade Samolovitch, and raise Mazeppa to the post of hetman, and thenceforward, for twenty years and more, he held something like a regal sway over the whole of the Ukraine (a fertile "no-man's land," watered by the Dnieper and its tributaries), openly the loyal and zealous ally of his neighbour and suzerain, Peter the Great.

How far this allegiance was genuine, or whether a secret preference for Poland, the land of his adoption, or a long-concealed impatience of Muscovite suzerainty would in any case have urged him to revolt, must remain doubtful, but it is certain that the immediate cause of a final reversal of the allegiance and a break with the Tsar was a second and still more fateful _affaire du coeur_. The hetman was upwards of sixty years of age, but, even so, he fell in love with his G.o.d-daughter, Matrena, who, in spite of difference of age and ecclesiastical kinship, not only returned his love, but, to escape the upbraidings and persecution of her mother, took refuge under his roof. Mazeppa sent the girl back to her home, but, as his love-letters testify, continued to woo her with the tenderest and most pa.s.sionate solicitings; and, although she finally yielded to _force majeure_ and married another suitor, her parents nursed their revenge, and endeavoured to embroil the hetman with the Tsar. For a time their machinations failed, and Matrena's father, Kotchubey, together with his friend Iskra, were executed with the Tsar's a.s.sent and approbation. Before long, however, Mazeppa, who had been for some time past in secret correspondence with the Swedes, signalized his defection from Peter by offering his services first to Stanislaus of Poland, and afterwards to Charles XII. of Sweden, who was meditating the invasion of Russia.

"Pultowa's day," July 8, 1709, was the last of Mazeppa's power and influence, and in the following year (March 31, 1710), "he died of old age, perhaps of a broken heart," at Varnitza, a village near Bender, on the Dniester, whither he had accompanied the vanquished and fugitive Charles.