The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 41

Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth, Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obeyed Are one; but only in the sunny South Such sounds are uttered, and such charms displayed, So sweet a language from so fair a mouth--[278]

Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

Ravenna, June 21, 1819.

PREFACE

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author that having composed something on the subject of Ta.s.so's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's exile,--the tomb of the poet forming one of the princ.i.p.al objects[279]

of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four cantos, in _terza rima_, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the _Divina Commedia_ and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Ca.s.sandra of Lycophron,[280] and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the _terza rima_ of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto _tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley_,[281] of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to _Caliph Vathek_; so that--if I do not err--this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed and most likely taken in vain.

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_[282]

translated into Italian _versi sciolti_,--that is, a poem written in the _Spenserean stanza_ into _blank verse_, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza or the sense. If the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation of his great "Padre Alighier,"[283] I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory[284] in the first canto of the _Inferno_, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation--their literature; and in the present bitterness of the cla.s.sic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, Pindemonte, or Arici,[285] should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, where my business is with the English one; and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.

CANTO THE FIRST.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel The weight of clay again,--too soon bereft Of the Immortal Vision which could heal My earthly sorrows, and to G.o.d's own skies Lift me from that deep Gulf without repeal, Where late my ears rung with the d.a.m.ned cries Of Souls in hopeless bale; and from that place Of lesser torment, whence men may arise Pure from the fire to join the Angelic race; 10 Midst whom my own bright Beatrice[286] blessed My spirit with her light; and to the base Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,[287]

Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great G.o.d!

Soul universal! led the mortal guest, Unblasted by the Glory, though he trod From star to star to reach the almighty throne.[bw]

Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod So long hath pressed, and the cold marble stone, Thou sole pure Seraph of my earliest love, 20 Love so ineffable, and so alone, That nought on earth could more my bosom move, And meeting thee in Heaven was but to meet That without which my Soul, like the arkless dove, Had wandered still in search of, nor her feet Relieved her wing till found; without thy light My Paradise had still been incomplete.[288]

Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight Thou wert my Life, the Essence of my thought, Loved ere I knew the name of Love,[289] and bright 30 Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the World's war, and years, and banishment, And tears for thee, by other woes untaught; For mine is not a nature to be bent By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd, And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain,--and never more, save when the cloud Which overhangs the Apennine my mind's eye Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die, 40 Unto my native soil,--they have not yet Quenched the old exile's spirit, stern and high.

But the Sun, though not overcast, must set And the night cometh; I am old in days, And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways.

The World hath left me, what it found me, pure, And if I have not gathered yet its praise, I sought it not by any baser lure; Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name 50 May form a monument not all obscure, Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim, To add to the vain-glorious list of those Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows Their sail, and deem it glory to be cla.s.sed With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes, In b.l.o.o.d.y chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free;[290]

Oh Florence! Florence![291] unto me thou wast 60 Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird Gathers its young, I would have gathered thee Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire.[292]

Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who _for_ that country would expire, 70 But did not merit to expire _by_ her, And loves her, loves her even in her ire.

The day may come when she will cease to err, The day may come she would be proud to have The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer[bx]

Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.

But this shall not be granted; let my dust Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so rea.s.sume 80 My indignant bones, because her angry gust Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom; No,--she denied me what was mine--my roof, And shall not have what is not hers--my tomb.

Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof The breast which would have bled for her, the heart That beat, the mind that was temptation proof, The man who fought, toiled, travelled, and each part Of a true citizen fulfilled, and saw For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art 90 Pa.s.s his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulness, Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress Of such endurance too prolonged to make My pardon greater, her injustice less, Though late repented; yet--yet for her sake I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine, My own Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, 100 And still is hallowed by thy dust's return, Which would protect the murderess like a shrine, And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.

Though, like old Marius from Minturnae's marsh And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,[293]

And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch My brow with hopes of triumph,--let them go!

Such are the last infirmities of those 110 Who long have suffered more than mortal woe, And yet being mortal still, have no repose But on the pillow of Revenge--Revenge, Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change, When we shall mount again, and they that trod Be trampled on, while Death and Ate range O'er humbled heads and severed necks----Great G.o.d!

Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands I yield My many wrongs, and thine Almighty rod 120 Will fall on those who smote me,--be my Shield!

As thou hast been in peril, and in pain, In turbulent cities, and the tented field-- In toil, and many troubles borne in vain For Florence,--I appeal from her to Thee!

Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign, Even in that glorious Vision, which to see And live was never granted until now, And yet thou hast permitted this to me.

Alas! with what a weight upon my brow 130 The sense of earth and earthly things come back, Corrosive pa.s.sions, feelings dull and low, The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack, Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect Of half a century b.l.o.o.d.y and black, And the frail few years I may yet expect h.o.a.ry and hopeless, but less hard to bear, For I have been too long and deeply wrecked On the lone rock of desolate Despair, To lift my eyes more to the pa.s.sing sail 140 Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare; Nor raise my voice--for who would heed my wail?

I am not of this people, nor this age, And yet my harpings will unfold a tale Which shall preserve these times when not a page Of their perturbed annals could attract An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,[by]

Did not my verse embalm full many an act Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom Of spirits of my order to be racked 150 In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume Their days in endless strife, and die alone; Then future thousands crowd around their tomb, And pilgrims come from climes where they have known The name of him--who now is but a name, And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone, Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame; And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame My mind down from its own infinity-- 160 To live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye, A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den, Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all things That make communion sweet, and soften pain-- To feel me in the solitude of kings Without the power that makes them bear a crown-- To envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down On Arno, till he perches, it may be, 170 Within my all inexorable town, Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,[294]

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought Destruction for a dowry--this to see And feel, and know without repair, hath taught A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found, nor basely sought, They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.

CANTO THE SECOND.

The Spirit of the fervent days of Old, When words were things that came to pa.s.s, and Thought Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be, The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality; What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That Spirit was on them, and is on me, And if, Ca.s.sandra-like, amidst the din 10 Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed, Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget In thine irreparable wrongs my own; We can have but one Country, and even yet Thou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast, 20 My Soul within thy language, which once set With our old Roman sway in the wide West; But I will make another tongue arise As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs, Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream, And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;[295]

So that all present speech to thine shall seem 30 The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.[bz]

This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline.

Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries Is rent,--a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from Eternity into these eyes; The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, 40 The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb, The b.l.o.o.d.y Chaos yet expects Creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The Elements await but for the Word, "Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb!

Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,[296]

Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise, Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?

Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, 50 Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would suffice For the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds[ca]

With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue; Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew, And formed the Eternal City's ornaments From spoils of Kings whom freemen overthrew; Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of Saints, Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made[cb]

Her home; thou, all which fondest Fancy paints, 60 And finds her prior vision but portrayed In feeble colours, when the eye--from the Alp Of horrid snow, and rock, and s.h.a.ggy shade Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp Nods to the storm--dilates and dotes o'er thee, And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help To see thy sunny fields, my Italy, Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still The more approached, and dearest were they free, Thou--Thou must wither to each tyrant's will: 70 The Goth hath been,--the German, Frank, and Hun[297]

Are yet to come,--and on the imperial hill Ruin, already proud of the deeds done By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue, And deepens into red the saffron water Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, 80 And still more helpless nor less holy daughter, Vowed to their G.o.d, have shrieking fled, and ceased Their ministry: the nations take their prey, Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they Are; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the gore Of the departed, and then go their way; But those, the human savages, explore All paths of torture, and insatiate yet, With Ugolino hunger prowl for more. 90 Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;[298]

The chiefless army of the dead, which late Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met, Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate; Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.

Oh! Rome, the Spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river. 100 Oh! when the strangers pa.s.s the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye Rocks! Floods whelm them, and for ever!

Why sleep the idle Avalanches so, To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?

Why doth Erida.n.u.s but overflow The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?

Were not each barbarous horde a n.o.bler prey?

Over Cambyses' host[299] the desert spread Her sandy ocean, and the Sea-waves' sway Rolled over Pharaoh and his thousands,--why,[cc] 110 Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?

And you, ye Men! Romans, who dare not die, Sons of the conquerors who overthrew Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew, Are the Alps weaker than Thermopylae?

Their pa.s.ses more alluring to the view Of an invader? is it they, or ye, That to each host the mountain-gate unbar, And leave the march in peace, the pa.s.sage free? 120 Why, Nature's self detains the Victor's car, And makes your land impregnable, if earth Could be so; but alone she will not war, Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth In a soil where the mothers bring forth men: Not so with those whose souls are little worth; For them no fortress can avail,--the den Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting Is more secure than walls of adamant, when The hearts of those within are quivering. 130 Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring Against Oppression; but how vain the toil, While still Division sows the seeds of woe And weakness, till the Stranger reaps the spoil.[300]

Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low, So long the grave of thy own children's hopes, When there is but required a single blow To break the chain, yet--yet the Avenger stops, And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, 140 And join their strength to that which with thee copes; What is there wanting then to set thee free, And show thy beauty in its fullest light?

To make the Alps impa.s.sable; and we, Her Sons, may do this with one deed--Unite.

CANTO THE THIRD.

From out the ma.s.s of never-dying ill,[cd]

The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword, Vials of wrath but emptied to refill And flow again, I cannot all record That crowds on my prophetic eye: the Earth And Ocean written o'er would not afford s.p.a.ce for the annal, yet it shall go forth; Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven, There where the farthest suns and stars have birth, Spread like a banner at the gate of Heaven, 10 The b.l.o.o.d.y scroll of our millennial wrongs Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven Athwart the sound of archangelic songs, And Italy, the martyred nation's gore, Will not in vain arise to where belongs[ce]

Omnipotence and Mercy evermore: Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind, The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er The Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.

Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of 20 Earth's dust by immortality refined To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff, And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow Before the storm because its breath is rough, To thee, my Country! whom before, as now, I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre And melancholy gift high Powers allow To read the future: and if now my fire Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!

I but foretell thy fortunes--then expire; 30 Think not that I would look on them and live.

A Spirit forces me to see and speak, And for my guerdon grants _not_ to survive; My Heart shall be poured over thee and break: Yet for a moment, ere I must resume Thy sable web of Sorrow, let me take Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloom A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night, And many meteors, and above thy tomb Leans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight: 40 And from thine ashes boundless Spirits rise To give thee honour, and the earth delight; Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise, The gay, the learned, the generous, and the brave, Native to thee as Summer to thy skies, Conquerors on foreign sh.o.r.es, and the far wave,[301]

Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name;[302]

For _thee_ alone they have no arm to save, And all thy recompense is in their fame, A n.o.ble one to them, but not to thee-- 50 Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same?

Oh! more than these ill.u.s.trious far shall be The Being--and even yet he may be born-- The mortal Saviour who shall set thee free, And see thy diadem, so changed and worn By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced; And the sweet Sun replenishing thy morn, Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced, And noxious vapours from Avernus risen, Such as all they must breathe who are debased 60 By Servitude, and have the mind in prison.[303]

Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe[cf]

Some voices shall be heard, and Earth shall listen; Poets shall follow in the path I show, And make it broader: the same brilliant sky Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,[cg]

And raise their notes as natural and high; Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing Many of Love, and some of Liberty, But few shall soar upon that Eagle's wing, 70 And look in the Sun's face, with Eagle's gaze, All free and fearless as the feathered King, But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase Sublime shall lavished be on some small prince In all the prodigality of Praise!

And language, eloquently false, evince[ch]

The harlotry of Genius, which, like Beauty,[ci]

Too oft forgets its own self-reverence, And looks on prost.i.tution as a duty.[304]

He who once enters in a Tyrant's hall[cj][305] 80 As guest is slave--his thoughts become a booty, And the first day which sees the chain enthral A captive, sees his half of Manhood gone[306]-- The Soul's emasculation saddens all His spirit; thus the Bard too near the throne Quails from his inspiration, bound to _please_,-- How servile is the task to please alone!

To smooth the verse to suit his Sovereign's ease And royal leisure, nor too much prolong Aught save his eulogy, and find, and seize, 90 Or force, or forge fit argument of Song!