CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE | |
Canto the Third | |
‘A fin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n’y a en vérité de remède que celui-ll et le temps.’ — | |
I | |
Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child! | |
A | |
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled, | |
And when we parted, – not as now we part, | |
5 | But with a hope. – |
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. | |
II | |
10 | Once more upon the waters! yet once more! |
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed | |
That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar! | |
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe’er it lead! | |
Though the strain’d mast should quiver as a reed, | |
15 | 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, | |
20 | 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, | |
25 | 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, | |
30 | 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 | |
35 | 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, piercing the depths of life, | |
So that no wonder waits him; nor below | |
40 | Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, |
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife | |
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell | |
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife | |
With airy images, and shapes which dwell | |
45 | Still unimpair’d, though old, in the soul’s haunted cell. |
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. | |
50 | What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou, |
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth, | |
Invisible but gazing, as I glow | |
Mix’d with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, | |
And feeling still with thee in my crush’d feelings’ dearth. | |
VII | |
55 | Yet must I think less wildly: – I |
Too long and darkly, till my brain became, | |
In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought, | |
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame: | |
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, | |
60 | My springs of life were poison’d. ’Tis too late! |
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same | |
In strength to bear what time can not abate, | |
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate. | |
VIII | |
Something too much of this: – but now ’tis past, | |
65 | And the spell closes with its silent seal. |
Long absent HAROLD re-appears 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 alter’d him | |
70 | In soul and aspect as in age: years steal |
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; | |
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim. | |
IX | |
His had been quaff’d too quickly, and he found | |
The dregs were wormwood; but he fill’d again, | |
75 | And from a purer fount, on holier ground, |
And deem’d its spring perpetual; but in vain! | |
Still round him clung invisibly a chain | |
Which gall’d for ever, fettering though unseen, | |
And heavy though it clank’d not; worn with pain, | |
80 | Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, |
Entering with every step he took through many a scene. | |
X | |
Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix’d | |
Again in fancied safety with his kind, | |
And deem’d his spirit now so firmly fix’d | |
85 | And sheath’d with an invulnerable mind, |
That, if no joy, no sorrow lurk’d behind; | |
And he, as one, might ’midst the many stand | |
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find | |
Fit speculation; such as in strange land | |
90 | He found in wonder-works of God and Nature’s hand. |
XI | |
But who can view the ripen’d rose, nor seek | |
To wear it? who can curiously behold | |
The smoothness and the sheen of beauty’s cheek, | |
Nor feel the heart can never all grow old? | |
95 | Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold |
The star which rises o’er her steep, nor climb? | |
Harold, once more within the vortex, roll’d | |
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time, | |
Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth’s fond prime. | |
XII | |
100 | But soon he knew himself the most unfit |
Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held | |
Little in common; untaught to submit | |
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell’d | |
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell’d | |
105 | He would not yield dominion of his mind |
To spirits against whom his own rebell’d; | |
Proud though in desolation; which could find | |
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind. | |
XIII | |
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; | |
110 | Where roll’d the ocean, thereon was his home; |
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, | |
He had the passion and the power to roam; | |
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam, | |
Were unto him companionship; they spake | |
115 | A mutual language, clearer than the tome |
Of his land’s tongue, which he would oft forsake, | |
For Nature’s pages glass’d by sunbeams on the lake. | |
XIV | |
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, | |
Till he had peopled them with beings bright | |
120 | As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, |
And human frailties, were forgotten quite: | |
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight | |
He had been happy; but this clay will sink | |
Its spark immortal, envying it the light | |
125 | To which it mounts, as if to break the link |
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. | |
XV | |
But in Man’s dwellings he became a thing | |
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, | |
Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, | |
130 | To whom the boundless air alone were home: |
Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome, | |
As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beat | |
His breast and beak against his wiry dome | |
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat | |
135 | Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat. |
XVI | |
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again, | |
With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom; | |
The very knowledge that he lived in vain, | |
140 | That all was over on this side the tomb, |
Had made Despair a smilingness assume, | |
Which, though ’twere wild, — as on the plunder’d wreck | |
When mariners would madly meet their doom | |
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck, – |