And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black-as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
Look on thine earthly victims-and despair!
Down to the dust!--and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear—
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers-
And festering in the infamy of years.

March 29, 1816.

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA,3

I.

WHEN all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray—

And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;'

II.

In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deem'd too kind,

The weak despair-the cold depart;

2 [In first draught-"weltering." "I doubt about 'weltering.' We say 'weltering in blood; but do they not also use 'weltering in the wind,' 'weltering on a gibbet?' I have no dictionary, so look. In the mean time, I bave put 'festering;' which, perhaps, in any case is the best word of the two. Shakspeare has it often, and I dɔ not think it too strong for the figure in this thing. Quick! quick! quick! quick!" -Lord B. to Mr. Murray, April 2.]

[His sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh.-These stanzas-the parting tribute to her whose tenderness had been his sole consolation in the crisis of domestic miserywere, we believe, the last verses written by Lord Byron in England.]

III.

When fortune changed-and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star

Which rose and set not to the last.

And when the cloud upon us came,
Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray-

Then purer spread its gentle flame,
And dash'd the darkness all away.

VI.

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,

And teach it what to brave or brook-
There's
's more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world's defied rebuke.

VII.

Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree,
That still unbroke, though gently bent,

Still waves with fond fidelity

Its boughs above a monument.

VIII.

The winds might rend-the skies might pour, But there thou wert-and still wouldst be

Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

IX.

But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;

For heaven in sunshine will requite

The kind-and thee the most of all.

X.

Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken-thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel-but will not move;
Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.

XI.

And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fix'd in thee;-
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert-ev'n to me.

4

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.1

I.

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,'
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee,

II.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,

I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

[These beautiful verses, so expressiye of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva.

"Be care

ful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, 'Though the day of my destiny's,' &c., which I think well of as a composition."]

5 [In the original MS.

"Though the days of my glory are over,

And the sun of my fame hath declined."]

III.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn; They may torture but shall not subdue me; "Tis of thee that I think-not of them."

IV.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie."

V.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many. with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

VI.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

6 [Originally thus :

7

"There is many a pang to pursue me,

And many a peril to stem;

They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
They may crush, but they shall not contemn."]
[MS.-"Though watchful, 'twas but to reclaim me,
Nor, silent, to sanction a lie."]

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

July 24, 1816.

EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.R

I.

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,—
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

II.

The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;

But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;

Reversed for him our grandsire's" fate of yore,-
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

8 [These stanzas-"than which," says the Quarterly Review, for January, 1831, "there is nothing perhaps more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry," were also written at Diodati, and sent home to be published if Mrs. Leigh should consent. She decided the other way, and the epistle was not printed till 1830.]

9 [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."

"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 circumnavigated the world, as commander of a similar expedition.]