CANTO THE THIRD. 1816. "Afin que cette application vous forçât à penser à autre chose; il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps."-Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776. I. Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! But with a hope.— Awaking with a start, The waters heave around me; and on high The winds lift up their voices: I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by, When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. II. Once more upon the waters! yet once more! Welcome to their roar ! Swift be their guidance wheresoe'er it lead ! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath pre vail. III. In my youth's summer I did sing of One, The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; Again I seize the theme, then but begun, And bear it with me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of life-where not a flower appears. IV. Since my young days of passion—joy, or pain, I would essay as I have sung to sing. —it shall seem To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. V. He, who grown aged in this world of woe, Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell. VI. 'Tis to create, and in creating live A being more intense, that we endow With form our fancy, gaining as we give The life we image, even as I do now. What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou, Soul of my thought: with whom I traverse earth, Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth. VII. Yet must I think less wildly: I have thought VIII. Something too much of this but now 'tis past, Long-absent Harold reappears at last; He of the breast which fain no more would feel, In soul and aspect as in age: years steal And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim. IX. His had been quaff'd too quickly, and he found Which gall'd for ever, fettering though unseen, X. Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix'd He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand. XI. But who can view the ripen'd rose, nor seek The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime. XII. But soon he knew himself the most unfit Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd XIII. Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where roll'd the ocean, thereon was his home; XIV. Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, Till he had peopled them with beings bright As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, Could he have kept his spirit to that flight, us to its |