CXV.

My daughter! with thy name this song begunMy daughter! with thy name thus much shall endI see thee not, I hear thee not, but none

Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far years extend: Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold, My voice shall with thy future visions blend, And reach into thy heart, - when mine is cold,A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.

But, as if to moderate the arrogance of genius, it is justly and wisely made requisite, that he must regulate and tame the fire of his fancy, and descend from the heights to which she exalts him, in order to obtain ease of mind and tranquillity. The materials of happiness, that is, of such degree of happiness as is consistent with our present state, lie around us in profusion. But the man of talents must stoop to gather them, otherwise they would be beyond the reach of the mass of society, for whose benefit, as well as for his, Providence has created them. There is no royal and no poetical path to contentment and heart's-ease: that by which they are attained is open to all classes of mankind, and lies within the most limited range of intellect To narrow our wishes and desires within the scope of our powers of attainment; to consider our misfortunes, however peculiar in their character, as our inevitable share in the patrimony of Adam; to bridle those irritable feelings, which ungoverned are sure to become governors; to shun that intensity of galling and self-wounding reflection which our poet has so forcibly described in his own burning language:

'I have thought

Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy, boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame'

-to stoop, in short, to the realities of life; repent if we have offended, and pardon if we have been trespassed against; to look on the world less as our foe than as a doubtful and capricious friend, whose applause we ought as far as possible to deserve, but neither to court nor contemn-such seem the most obvious and certain means of keeping or regaining mental tranquillity.

'Semita certe

Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vitæ.'"-Sfr Walter SCOTT.]

CXVI.

To aid thy mind's developement, — to watch Thy dawn of little joys, to sit and see Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch. Knowledge of objects, - wonders yet to thee! To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,

And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss, — This, it should seem, was not reserved for me; Yet this was in my nature:

as it is,

I know not what is there, yet something like to this.

CXVII.

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, I know that thou wilt love me; though my name Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation, and a broken claim: [same, Though the grave closed between us, 'twere the I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain My blood from out thy being were an aim, And an attainment, all would be in vain, Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life

retain.

The child of love,

CXVIII.

though born in bitterness And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire

These were the elements,

As yet such are around thee,

and thine no less.

Shall be more temper'd, and thy

but thy fire
hope far higher.

Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, [me! As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to

CHILDE HAROLD'S

PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO THE FOURTH.

Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna,
Quel Monte che divide, e quel che serra
Italia, e un mare e l' altro, che la bagna.

Ariosto, Satira iii.

то

Venice, January 2. 1818.

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ. A.M. F.R.S.

&c. &c. &c.

MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,

AFTER an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better, to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than— though not ungrate ful—I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet, to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, to a friend often tried and never found wanting to yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded