CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE THIRD. "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."-Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, Sept. 7. 1776. CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. CANTO THE THIRD. I. Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! 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. (2) (1) [In an hitherto unpublished letter, dated Verona, November 6. 1816, Lord Byron says" By the way, Ada's name (which I found in our pedigree, under king John's reign), is the same with that of the sister of Charlemagne, as I redde, the other day, in a book treating of the Rhine." -E.] (2) [Lord Byron quitted England, for the second and last time, on the 25th of April, 1816, attended by William Fletcher and Robert Rushton, the 66 yeoman " and "page" of Canto L.; his physician, Dr. Polidori; and a Swiss valet. — E.] Once more upon II. the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome, to the roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, And the rent canvass 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. 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, To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. |