And I have acted well my part, The babe which ought to have been mine, But let this pass-I'll whine no more, Thou hear'st of one, whose deepening crimes TO THYRZA. WITHOUT a stone to mark the spot, And say, what Truth might well have said, By all, save one, perchance forgot, Ah! wherefore art thou lowly laid? By many a shore and many a sea With fainter sighs, thy soul's release. Who held, and holds thee in his heart? [These lines will show with what gloomy fidelity, even while under the pressure of recent sorrow, Lord Byron reverted to the disappointment of his early affection, as the chief source of all his sufferings and errors, present and to come.-MOORE.] [The anticipations of his own future career in these concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, to awaken more of horror than of interest, were we not prepared, by so many instances of his exaggeration in this respect, not to be startled at any lengths to which the spirit of self-libelling would carry him. It seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the ambition to be, himself, the dark sublime he drew,' and that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavoured to fancy, where he could not find in his own character, fit subjects for his pencil. MOORE.] 3[Two days after, in another letter to Mr. Hodgson, Lord Byron says, "I am growing nervous (how you will laugh!) -but it is true, really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fineladically nervous. Your climate kills me; I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights restless: I have seldom any society, and, when I have, I run out of it. I don't know that I sha'n't end with insanity; for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that perplexes me strangely."] [Mr. Moore considers " Thyrza" as if she were a mere Oh! who like him had watch'd thee here? In that dread hour ere death appear, Till all was past! But when no more Had flow'd as fast as now they flow. Affection's mingling tears were ours? The kiss, so guiltless and refined, That Love each warmer wish forbore; Those eyes proclaim'd so pure a mind, Even Passion blush'd to plead for more. The tone, that taught me to rejoice, But sweet to me from none but thine; "about creature of the Poet's brain. "It was," he says, the time when he was thus bitterly feeling, and expressing, the blight which his heart had suffered from a real object of affection, that his poems on the death of an imaginary one were written; nor is it any wonder, when we consider the peculiar circumstances under which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that, of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touching and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs; a confluence of sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and warmed in their passage through his fancy, and forming thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling." It is a pity to disturb a sentiment thus beautifully expressed; but Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Dallas, bearing the exact date of these lines, viz. Oct. 11th, 1811, writes as follows:-" I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times: but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and supped full of horrors,' till I have become callous; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed my head to the earth." In his reply to this letter, Mr. Dallas says," I thank you for your confidential communication. How truly do I wish that that being had lived, and lived yours! What your obligations to her would have been in that case is inconceivable." Several years after the series of poems on Thyrza were written, Lord Byron, on being asked to whom they referred, by a person in whose tenderness he never ceased to 'Tis silent all!-but on my ear The well remember'd echoes thrill; I hear a voice I would not hear, A voice that now might well be still : Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep, Thou art but now a lovely dream; A star that trembled o'er the deep, Then turn'd from earth its tender beam. That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. Though gay companions o'er the bowl On many a lone and lovely night Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye: "That Thyrza cannot know my pains:" My life, when Thyrza ceased to live! My Thyrza's pledge in better days, When love and life alike were new! How different now thou meet'st my gaze! How tinged by time with sorrow's hue! The heart that gave itself with thee Is silent-ah, were mine as still! Though cold as e'en the dead can be, It feels, it sickens with the chill. Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token! Though painful, welcome to my breast! Still, still, preserve that love unbroken, Or break the heart to which thou'rt press'd! Time tempers love, but not removes, More hallow'd when its hope is fled: Oh! what are thousand living loves To that which cannot quit the dead? ONE STRUGGLE MORE, AND I AM FREE. It suits me well to mingle now With things that never pleased before: What future grief can touch me more? Then bring me wine, the banquet bring; That smiles with all, and weeps with none. It never would have been, but thou In vain my lyre would lightly breathe! The smile that sorrow fain would wear But mocks the woe that lurks beneath, Like roses o'er a sepulchre. confide, refused to answer, with marks of painful agitation, such as rendered any farther recurrence to the subject impossible. The reader must be left to form his own conclusion. The five following pieces are all devoted to Thyrza.] EUTHANASIA. WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, Oblivion! may thy languid wing Wave gently o'er my dying bed! No band of friends or heirs be there, With no officious mourners near: In her who lives and him who dies. E'en Pain itself should smile on thee. ["I wrote this a day or two ago, on hearing a song of former days."-Lord Byron to Mr. Hodgson, December & 1811.] But vain the wish-for Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in life, unman in death. Then lonely be my latest hour, Without regret, without a groan; For thousands Death hath ceased to lower, And pain been transient or unknown. "Ay, but to die, and go," alas ! Where all have gone, and all must go! To be the nothing that I was Ere born to life and living woe! Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, AND thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep That all those charms have pass'd away; And yet it were a greater grief Since earthly eye but ill can bear The night that follow'd such a morn Had worn a deeper shade: Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, And thou wert lovely to the last; Extinguish'd, not decay'd; As stars that shoot along the sky My tears might well be shed, Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears February, 1812. IF SOMETIMES IN THE HAUNTS OF MEN. If sometimes in the haunts of men The lonely hour presents again The semblance of thy gentle shade: The plaint she dare not speak before. Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile I waste one thought I owe to thee, I would not fools should overhear If not the goblet pass unquaff'd, From all her troubled visions free, That drown'd a single thought of thee. 1 [We know not whether the reader should understand the cornelian heart of these lines to be the same with that of which some notices are given at p. 398.] 2 [This impromptu owed its birth to an on dit, that the late Princess Charlotte of Wales burst into tears on hearing that the Whigs had found it impossible to put together a cabinet, at the period of Mr. Perceval's death. They were appended to the first edition of "The Corsair," and excited a sensation, as it is called, marvellously disproportionate to their length, or, we may add, their merit. The ministerial prints raved for two months on end, in the most foulmouthed vituperation of the poet, and all that belonged to him the Morning Post even announced a motion in the House of Lords" and all this," Lord Byron writes to Mr. Moore," as Bedreddin in the Arabian Nights remarks, for making a cream tart with pepper: how odd, that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand!"] 3["The Lines to a Lady weeping' must go with The Corsair. I care nothing for consequences on this point. My politics are to me like a young mistress to an old man ; the worse they grow, the fonder I become of them."- Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Jan. 22. 1814. "On my return, I find all the newspapers in hysterics, and town in an uproar, on the avowal and republication of two stanzas on Princess Charlotte's weeping at Regency's speech to Lauderdale in ADDRESS, SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF DRURY-LANE THEATRE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10. 1812.6 In one dread night our city saw, and sigh'd, In one short hour beheld the blazing fane, Apollo sink, and Shakspeare cease to reign. 1812. They are daily at it still:- some of the abuse good. -all of it hearty. They talk of a motion in our House upon it be it so."-Byron Diary, 1814.] 4" When Rogers does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as his poetry. If you enter his house-his drawing-room — his library-you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor."— Byron Diary, 1813.] 5 [The reader will recall Collins's exquisite lines on the tomb of Thomson: "In yonder grave a Druid lies," &c.] 6[The theatre in Drury Lane, which was opened, in 1747with Dr. Johnson's masterly address, beginning,- "When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes First rear'd the Stage, immortal Shakspeare rose," and witnessed the last glories of Garrick, having fallen into decay, was rebuilt in 1794. The new building perished by fire in 1811; and the Managers, in their anxiety that the opening of the present edifice should be distinguished by some composition of at least equal merit, advertised in the newspapers for a general competition. Scores of addresses, not one tolerable, showered on their desk, and they were in sad despair, when Lord Holland interfered, and, not without Ye who beheld, (oh! sight admired and mourn'd, Whose radiance mock'd the ruin it adorn'd!) Through clouds of fire the massy fragments riven, Like Israel's pillar, chase the night from heaven; Saw the long column of revolving flames Shake its red shadow o'er the startled Thames, 1 As soars this fane to emulate the last, Dear are the days which made our annals bright, Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley 2 ceased to write. Heirs to their labours, like all high-born heirs, Vain of our ancestry as they of theirs; While thus Remembrance borrows Banquo's glass To claim the sceptred shadows as they pass, And we the mirror hold, where imaged shine Immortal names, emblazon'd on our line, difficulty, prevailed on Lord Byron to write these verses"at the risk," as he said, " of offending a hundred scribblers and a discerning public." The admirable jeu d'esprit of the Messrs. Smith will long preserve the memory of the Rejected Addresses."] ["By the bye, the best view of the said fire (which I myself saw from a house-top in Covent Garden) was at Westminster Bridge, from the reflection of the Thames.". Lord Byron to Lord Holland.] ? [Originally, "Ere Garrick died," &c.-"By the bye, one of my corrections in the copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom — 'When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.' Ceasing to live is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be first. Second thoughts in every thing are best; but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as fast as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began Childe Harold,' I had never tried Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other." -Lord Byron to Lord Holland.] [The following lines were omitted by the Committee: Pause-ere their feebler offspring you condemn, Reflect how hard the task to rival them! Friends of the stage! to whom both Players and Plays Must sue alike for pardon or for praise, Whose judging voice and eye alone direct The boundless power to cherish or reject; If e'er frivolity has led to fame, And made us blush that you forbore to blame; This greeting o'er, the ancient rule obey'd, PARENTHETICAL ADDRESS 5 BY DR. PLAGIARY, Half stolen, with acknowledgments, to be spoken in an inarticulate voice by Master P. at the opening of the next new theatre. Stolen parts marked with the inverted commas of quotation-thus " "WHEN energising objects men pursue," Then Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who. "A modest monologue you here survey," Hiss'd from the theatre the "other day," As if Sir Fretful wrote " the slumberous" verse, And gave his son "the rubbish" to rehearse. "Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed," Knew you the rumpus which the author raised; "Nor even here your smiles would be represt," Knew you these lines-the badness of the best. "Flame! fire! and flame!!" (words borrow'd from Lucretius,) "Dread metaphors which open wounds" like issues! If you decree, the stage must condescend The past reproach let present scenes refute, Nor shift from man to babe, from babe to brute." "Is Whitbread," said Lord Byron, "determined to castrate all my cavalry lines? I do implore, for my own gratification, one lash on those accursed quadrupeds a long shot, Sir Lucius, if you love me.'"] 4["Soon after the Rejected Addresses' scene in 1812, I met Sheridan. In the course of dinner, he said, Lord Byron, did you know that amongst the writers of addresses was Whitbread himself?" I answered by an inquiry of what sort of an address he had made. Of that,' replied Sheridan, I remember little, except that there was a phoenix in it. A phoenix!! Well, how did he describe it?''Like a poulterer,' answered Sheridan: it was green, and yellow, and red, and blue: he did not let us off for a single feather.'"- Byron Letters, 1821.] [Among the addresses sent in to the Drury Lane Committee was one by Dr. Busby, entitled "A Monologue," of which the above is a parody. It began as follows: "When energising objects men pursue, Shot from the ruins of the other day," &c.] |