The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 47

[ej] _Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid_.--[MS.]

{213}[ek]

_With human ordure is it now defiled_, _As if the peasant's scorn this mode invented_ _To show his loathing of the thing he soiled_.--[MS.]

[el] _Those sufferings once reserved for h.e.l.l alone._--[MS.]

[em]

_Its fumes are frankincense; and were there nought_ _Even of this vapour, still the chilling yoke_ _Of silence would not long be borne by Thought_.--[MS.]

[en]

_I have drunk deep of pa.s.sions as they pa.s.s,_ _And dearly bought the bitter power to give_.--[MS.]

[262] [See, for instance, Wilson's review of _Don Juan_, in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, August, 1819, vol. v. p. 512, _sq._: "To confess ... to his Maker, and to weep over in secret agonies the wildest and most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life and action.... But to lay bare to the eye of man--and of _woman_--all the hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit," etc.]

{214}[eo]

_What! must I go with Wordy to the cooks?_ _Read--were it but your Grandmother's to vex--_ _And let me not the only minstrel be_ _Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea_.--[MS.]

[263] [Compare--

"I leave them to their daily 'tea is ready,'

Snug coterie, and literary lady."

_Beppo_, stanza lxxvi. lines 7, 8, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 184, note.]

[264] [The caged starling, by its repeated cry, "I can't get out! I can't get out!" cured Yorick of his sentimental yearnings for imprisonment in the Bastille. See Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, ed.

1804, pp. 100-106.]

[265] [In his _Essay, Supplement to the Preface_ (_Poems by William Wordsworth_, ed. 1820, iii. 315-348), Wordsworth maintains that the appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the presence of advent.i.tious qualities: "So strange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.... Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word _popular!_ ... The voice that issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that _Vox Populi_ which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry--transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in this clamour of that small though loud portion of the community ever governed by fact.i.tious influence, which under the name of the PUBLIC, pa.s.ses itself upon the unthinking for the PEOPLE." Naturally enough Byron regarded this p.r.o.nouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth's n.o.ble appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the popularity of contemporaries.]

{215}[266] [Southey's _Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works_, Part I. Canto V.

Ed. 1838, v. 39.]

[ep]

_Not having looked at many of that hue,_ _Nor garters--save those of the_ "honi soit"--_which lie_ _Round the Patrician legs which walk about,_ _The ornaments of levee and of rout_.--[M.S.]

[267] [Probably Lady Charlemont. See "Journal," November 22, 1813.]

{216}[268] [The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Benedict de Saussure (1740-1799); see his _Essai sur l'Hygrometrie_. F.H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) "made great use of his instrument on his voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the acc.u.mulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the air."--_Alexander von Humboldt_, by Professor Klencke, translated by Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46.]

[eq]

_I'll back a London_ "Bas" _against Peru_.

or, _I'll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru_.

or, _And so, old Sotheby, we'll measure you_.--[MS.]

[269] ["The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments." Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. "Before they cheapen 'em, they turn 'em about from this side to that, survey 'em from top to bottom....

Such of 'em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been n.i.g.g.ardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as have youth and beauty pa.s.s their time well enough.... The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves'

education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for 'tis here, as 'tis in markets for horses, the handsomest don't always appear, but are kept within doors."--_A Voyage into the Levant_, by M.

Tournefort, 1741, ii. 198, 199. See, too, for the description of the sale of two Circa.s.sians and one Georgian, _Voyage de Vienne a Belgrade_, ... par N.E. Kleeman, 1780, pp. 141, 142. The "lowest offer for the prize Circa.s.sian was 4000 piastres."]

[er]

_The females stood, till chosen each as victim_ _To the soft oath of "Ana seing Siktum!"_[*]--[MS.]

[[*]If the Turkish words are correctly given, "the oath" may be an imprecation on "your mother's" chast.i.ty.]

[es] _For fear the Canto should become too long._--[MS.]

CANTO THE FIFTH.[270]

I.

WHEN amatory poets sing their loves In liquid lines mellifluously bland, And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves, They little think what mischief is in hand; The greater their success the worse it proves, As Ovid's verse may give to understand; Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity, Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.

II.

I therefore do denounce all amorous writing, Except in such a way as not to attract; Plain--simple--short, and by no means inviting, But with a moral to each error tacked, Formed rather for instructing than delighting, And with all pa.s.sions in their turn attacked; Now, if my Pegasus should not be shod ill, This poem will become a moral model.

III.

The European with the Asian sh.o.r.e Sprinkled with palaces--the Ocean stream[271]

Here and there studded with a seventy-four, Sophia's Cupola with golden gleam,[272]

The cypress groves, Olympus high and h.o.a.r, The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream, Far less describe, present the very view Which charmed the charming Mary Montagu.

IV.

I have a pa.s.sion for the name of "Mary,"[273]

For once it was a magic sound to me; And still it half calls up the realms of Fairy, Where I beheld what never was to be; All feelings changed, but this was last to vary, A spell from which even yet I am not quite free: But I grow sad--and let a tale grow cold, Which must not be pathetically told.

V.

The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades; 'T is a grand sight from off "the Giant's Grave"[274]

To watch the progress of those rolling seas Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease: There's not a sea the pa.s.senger e'er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

VI.

'T was a raw day of Autumn's bleak beginning, When nights are equal, but not so the days; The Parcae then cut short the further spinning Of seamen's fates, and the loud tempests raise[et]

The waters, and repentance for past sinning In all, who o'er the great deep take their ways: They vow to amend their lives, and yet they don't; Because if drowned, they can't--if spared, they won't.

VII.

A crowd of shivering slaves of every nation, And age, and s.e.x, were in the market ranged; Each bevy with the merchant in his station: Poor creatures! their good looks were sadly changed.

All save the blacks seemed jaded with vexation, From friends, and home, and freedom far estranged; The negroes more philosophy displayed,-- Used to it, no doubt, as eels are to be flayed.

VIII.

Juan was juvenile, and thus was full, As most at his age are, of hope, and health; Yet I must own, he looked a little dull, And now and then a tear stole down by stealth; Perhaps his recent loss of blood might pull His spirit down; and then the loss of wealth, A mistress, and such comfortable quarters, To be put up for auction amongst Tartars,