Selected Poems (23 page)

LXXXVI

Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate!

They fight for freedom who were never free,

A Kingless people for a nerveless state,

885

Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee,

True to the veriest slaves of Treachery:

Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,

Pride points the path that leads to Liberty;

Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,

890

War, war is still the cry, ‘War even to the knife!’
¹

LXXXVII

Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,

Go, read whate’er is writ of bloodiest strife:

Whate’er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe

Can act, is acting there against man’s life:

895

From flashing scimitar to secret knife,

War mouldeth there each weapon to his need –

So may he guard the sister and the wife,

So may he make each curst oppressor bleed,

So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!

LXXXVIII

900

Flows there a tear of pity for the dead?

Look o’er the ravage of the reeking plain;

Look on the hands with female slaughter red;

Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,

Then to the vulture let each corse remain;

905

Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird’s maw,

Let their bleach’d bones, and blood’s unbleaching stain,

Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe:

Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw!

LXXXIX

Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done;

910

Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees:

It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,

Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.

Fall’n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees

More than her fell Pizarros once enchain’d:

915

Strange retribution! now Columbia’s ease

Repairs the wrongs that Quito’s sons sustain’d,

While o’er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrain’d.

XC

Not all the blood at Talavera shed,

Not all the marvels of Barossa’s fight,

920

Not Albuera lavish of the dead,

Have won for Spain her well asserted right.

When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?

When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?

How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,

925

Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,

And Freedom’s stranger-tree grow native of the soil!

XCI

And thou, my friend!
¹
– since unavailing woe

Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain –

Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,

930

Pride might forbid e’en Friendship to complain:

But thus unlaurel’d to descend in vain,

By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,

And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,

While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!

935

What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest?

XCII

Oh, known the earliest, and esteem’d the most!

Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear!

Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,

In dreams deny me not to see thee here!

940

And Morn in secret shall renew the tear

Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,

And Fancy hover o’er thy bloodless bier,

Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,

And mourn’d and mourner lie united in repose.

XCIII

945

Here is one fytte of Harold’s pilgrimage:

Ye who of him may further seek to know,

Shall find some tidings in a future page,

If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.

Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so:

950

Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld

In other lands, where he was doom’d to go:

Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,

Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quell’d.

Canto the Second

I

Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! – but thou, alas!

Didst never yet one mortal song inspire –

Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,

And is, despite of war and wasting fire,1

5

And years, that bade thy worship to expire:

But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,

Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire

Of men who never felt the sacred glow

That thoughts of thee and thine on polish’d breasts bestow.

II

10

Ancient of days! august Athena!
¹
where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?

Gone – glimmering through the dream of things that were:

First in the race that led to Glory’s goal,

They won, and pass’d away – is this the whole?

15

A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!

The warrior’s weapon and the sophist’s stole

Are sought in vain, and o’er each mouldering tower,

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

III

Sun of the morning, rise! approach you here!

20

Come – but molest not yon defenceless urn:

Look on this spot – a nation’s sepulchre!

Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.

Even gods must yield – religions take their turn:

‘Twas Jove’s – ’tis Mahomet’s – and other creeds

25

Will rise with other years, till man shall learn

Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;

Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.

IV

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven –

Is’t not enough, unhappy thing! to know

30

Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,

That being, thou woulds’t be again, and go,

Thou know’st not, reck’st not to what region, so

On earth no more, but mingled with the skies?

Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?

35

Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies:

That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

V

Or burst the vanish’d Hero’s lofty mound;

Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:1

He fell, and falling nations mourn’d around;

40

But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,

Nor warlike-worshipper his vigil keeps

Where demi-gods appear’d, as records tell.

Remove yon skull from out the scatter’d heaps:

Is that a temple where a God may dwell?

45

Why ev’n the worm at last disdains her shatter’d cell!

VI

Look on its broken arch, its ruin’d wall,

Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:

Yes, this was once Ambition’s airy hall,

The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul:

50

Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,

The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit

And Passion’s host, that never brook’d control:

Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,

People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

VII

55

Well didst thou speak, Athena’s wisest son!

‘All that we know is, nothing can be known.’

Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?

Each hath his pang, but feeble sufferers groan

With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.

60

Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best;

Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron:

There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,

But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome rest.

VIII

Yet if, as holiest men have deem’d, there be

65

A land of souls beyond that sable shore,

To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee

And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;

How sweet it were in concert to adore

With those who made our mortal labours light!

70

To hear each voice we fear’d to hear no more!

Behold each mighty shade reveal’d to sight,

The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right!

IX

There, thou! – whose love and life together fled,

Have left me here to love and live in vain –

75

Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead

When busy Memory flashes on my brain?

Well – I will dream that we may meet again,

And woo the vision to my vacant breast:

If aught of young Remembrance then remain,

80

Be as it may Futurity’s behest,

For me ’twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!

X

Here let me sit upon this massy stone,

The marble column’s yet unshaken base;

Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav’rite throne:1

85

Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace

The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.

It may not be: nor ev’n can Fancy’s eye

Restore what Time hath labour’d to deface.

Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh;

90

Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.

XI

But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane

On high, where Pallas linger’d, loth to flee

The latest relic of her ancient reign;

The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?

95

Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!

England! I joy no child he was of thine:

Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;

Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,

And bear these altars o’er the long-reluctant brine.
²

XII

100

But most the modern Pict’s ignoble boast,

To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:3

Cold as the crags upon his native coast,

His mind as barren and his heart as hard,

Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,

105Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains:

Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,

Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains,
⁴

And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s chains.

XIII

What! shall it e’er be said by British tongue,

110

Albion was happy in Athena’s tears?

Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,

Tell not the deed to blushing Europe’s ears;

The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears

The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:

115

Yes, she, whose gen’rous aid her name endears,

Tore down those remnants with a harpy’s hand,

Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.

XIV

Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appall’d

Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?
¹

120

Where Peleus’ son? whom Hell in vain enthrall’d

His shade from Hades upon that dread day

Bursting to light in terrible array!

What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more,

To scare a second robber from his prey?

125

Idly he wander’d on the Stygian shore,

Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before.

XV

Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,

Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

130

Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed

By British hands, which it had best behoved

To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,

And once again thy hapless bosom gored,

135

And snatch’d thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr’d!

XVI

But where is Harold? shall I then forget

To urge the gloomy wanderer o’er the wave?

Little reck’d he of all that men regret;

No loved-one now in feign’d lament could rave;

140

No friend the parting hand extended gave,

Ere the cold stranger pass’d to other climes:

Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave;

But Harold felt not as in other times,

And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes.

XVII