and I leave England without regret, and without a wish to revisit anything it

contains, except yourself."

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO THE THIRD.2

Afin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps." 3-Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, September 7, 1776.

I.

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,—not as now we part,

But with a hope.—

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

5

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.

1 The word " childe," in old poetical usage, means a noble youth, as Childe Waters, Childe Childers. (See Shakespeare's line in Lear, iii. iv., where Edgar sings: "Childe Rowland to the dark tower came.") Byron first called his hero Childe Burun, an early form of his own family name. 2 See Introduction, p. 9, for an account of Cantos I. and II.

3 Translate this French motto, and explain how it applies to Byron's personal history.

4 Augusta Ada Byron (born December 10, 1815) was but five weeks old

II.

Once more upon the waters!1 yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider.
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!

Welcome to their roar!

Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,
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 prevail.

10

15

III.

In my youth's summer I did sing of One,2
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,
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,

20

25

when her father saw her for the last time. On January 5, 1816, he wrote to the poet Tom Moore: "She was and is very flourishing and fat, and reckoned very large for her days,―squalls and sucks incessantly." Byron's daughter married the earl of Lovelace in 1835, and died in 1852.

1 Byron left England, April 25, 1816, never to return. He made his first foreign tour in 1809-1810.

2 Childe Harold.

CANTO III.]

CHILDE HAROLD.

And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing.
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V.

He who, grown aged in this world of woe,

In deeds, not years,1 piercing the depths of life,

So that no wonder waits him; nor below

Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife

40

Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell

Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell

Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

45

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.2

What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,

50

Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,

Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,

And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth.

1 "We live in deeds, not years" (BAILEY'S Festus).

2 The poet finds refuge from the troubles of life in the exercise of literary imagination. Longfellow sings of "the rapture of creating." Byron's ideal, the "soul of his thought," was superior to his actual self,

VII.

Yet must I think less wildly:-I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of fantasy and flame:

And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poisoned.1 'Tis too late!
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what time cannot abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

VIII.

55

бо

Something too much of this:2-but now 'tis past,
And the spell closes with its silent seal.

65

Long-absent HAROLD reappears at last;.

He of the breast which fain no more would feel,

Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;

Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him

In soul and aspect as in age: years steal

70

Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb;

And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

IX.

His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again, And from a purer fount,3 on holier ground,3 And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain! This refers bitterly to the author's neglected childhood. circumstances. 2 See Hamlet, iii. ii.

75

He blames

3 What "fount" on what "holier ground"? Seek the answer in the stanzas following. The first sixteen stanzas are introductory and largely egotistical,