My Recollections of Lord Byron
The flow of compliment, the slippery wile.
Would make that breast with indignation burn,
And all the glittering snares to tempt thee spurn.
Domestic happiness will stamp thy fate;
Sacred to love, unclouded e'er by hate;
The world admire thee, and thy friends adore;
Ambition's slave alone would toil for more.
"Now last, but nearest, of the social band,
See honest, open, generous Cleon stand;
With scarce one speck to cloud the pleasing scene,
No vice degrades that purest soul serene.
On the same day our studious race begun,
On the same day our studious race was run;
Thus side by side we pass'd our first career,
Thus side by side we strove for many a year;
At last concluded our scholastic life,
We neither conquer'd in the classic strife:
As speakers, each supports an equal name,[22]
And crowds allow to both a partial fame:
To soothe a youthful rival's early pride,
Though Cleon's candor would the palm divide,
Yet candor's self compels me now to own
Justice awards it to my friend alone.
"Oh! friends regretted, scenes forever dear,
Remembrance hails you with her warmest tear!
Drooping, she bends o'er pensive Fancy's urn,
To trace the hours which never can return;
Yet with the retrospection loves to dwell,
And soothe the sorrows of her last farewell!
Yet greets the triumph of my boyish mind,
As infant laurels round my head were twined,
When Probus' praise repaid my lyric song,
Or placed me higher in the studious throng;
Or when my first harangue received applause,
His sage instruction the primeval cause,
What gratitude to him my soul possest,
While hope of dawning honors fill'd my breast!
For all my humble fame, to him alone
The praise is due, who made that fame my own.
Oh! could I soar above these feeble lays,
These young effusions of my early days,
To him my muse her noblest strain would give:
The song might perish, but the theme might live.
Yet why for him the needless verse essay?
His honored name requires no vain display:
By every son of grateful Ida blest,
It finds an echo in each youthful breast;
A fame beyond the glories of the proud,
Or all the plaudits of the venal crowd.
"Ida! not yet exhausted is the theme,
Nor closed the progress of my youthful dream.
How many a friend deserves the grateful strain!
What scenes of childhood still unsung remain!
Yet let me hush this echo of the past,
This parting song, the dearest and the last;
And brood in secret o'er those hours of joy,
To me a silent and a sweet employ,
While, future hope and fear alike unknown,
I think with pleasure on the past alone;
Yes, to the past alone my heart confine,
And chase the phantom of what once was mine.
"Ida! still o'er thy hills in joy preside,
And proudly steer through time's eventful tide;
Still may thy blooming sons thy name revere,
Smile in thy bower, but quit thee with a tear,--
That tear, perhaps, the fondest which will flow
O'er their last scene of happiness below.
Tell me, ye hoary few, who glide along,
The feeble veterans of some former throng,
Whose friends, like autumn leaves by tempests whirl'd,
Are swept forever from this busy world;
Revolve the fleeting moments of your youth,
While Care as yet withheld her venom'd tooth;
Say if remembrance days like these endears
Beyond the rapture of succeeding years?
Say, can ambition's fever'd dream bestow
So sweet a balm to soothe your hours of woe?
Can treasures, hoarded for some thankless son,
Can royal smiles, or wreaths by slaughter won,
Can stars or ermine, man's maturer toys
(For glittering bawbles are not left to boys),
Recall one scene so much beloved to view
As those where Youth her garland twined for you?
Ah, no! amid the gloomy calm of age
You turn with faltering hand life's varied page;
Peruse the record of your days on earth,
Unsullied only where it marks your birth;
Still lingering pause above each checker'd leaf,
And blot with tears the sable lines of grief;
When Passion o'er the theme her mantle threw,
Or weeping Virtue sigh'd a faint adieu;
But bless the scroll which fairer words adorn,
Traced by the rosy finger of the morn;
When Friendship bow'd before the shrine of Truth,
And Love, without his pinion, smiled on youth."
On leaving Harrow and his best friends, Byron felt that he was saying
adieu to youth and to its pleasures, and he was as yet unable to replace
these by the feasts of the mind. This filled his heart with regret in
addition to the sorrows which he experienced by those reflections upon
existence which are common to all poetical natures. The cold discipline
of Cambridge fell like ice upon his warm nature. He fell ill, and, by
way of seeking a relief to the oppression of his mind, he wrote the
above transcribed poem.
Harrow is called Ida, as his friends are denominated by fictitious
names. To the college itself, and to the recollections which it brought
back to his memory of physical and mental suffering, he addresses
himself:--
"Ida! blest spot, where Science holds her reign,
How joyous once I join'd thy youthful train!
Bright in idea gleams thy lofty spire,
Again I mingle with thy playful quire.
* * * * * * *
My wonted haunts, my scenes of joy and woe,
Each early boyish friend, or youthful foe;
Our feuds dissolved, but not my friendship past,
I bless the former, and forgive the last."
The same kind, affectionate disposition can be traced in all his other
poems, together with those well-inculcated notions of God's justice,
wisdom, and mercy, of toleration and forgiveness, of hatred of falsehood
and contempt of prejudices, which never abandoned him throughout his
life.
I really pity those who could read "The Tear" without being touched by
its simple, plaintive style, written in the tenderest strain, or
"L'Amitie est l'Amour sans Ailes," or the lines to the Duke of Dorset on
leaving Harrow, or the "Prayer of Nature," or his stanzas to Lord Clare,
to Lord Delaware, to Edward Long, or his generous forgiveness of Miss
Chaworth; or, again, his lines on believing that he was going to die,
his answer to a poem called "The Common Lot," his reply to Dr. Beecher,
and, finally, his address to a companion whose conduct obliged him to
withdraw his friendship:--
"What friend for thee, howe'er inclined,
Will deign to own a kindred care?
Who will debase his manly mind,
For friendship every fool may share?
"In time forbear; amid the throng
No more so base a thing be seen;
No more so idly pass along;
Be something, any thing but--mean."
Since our object is to show in these effusions of a youthful mind, its
natural beauty, and not that genius which is shortly to be developed by
contact with the troubles and pains of this life, it may not be
irrelevant to our subject to give in parts, if not entirely, some of the
poems which he wrote at this time:--
THE TEAR.
"O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater
Felix! in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit."--GRAY.
When Friendship or Love our sympathies move,
When truth in a glance should appear,
The lips may beguile with a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear.
Too oft is a smile but the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation or fear;
Give me the soft sigh, while the soul-telling eye
Is dimm'd for a time with a Tear.
Mild Charity's glow, to us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt where this virtue is felt,
And its dew is diffused in a Tear.
The man doom'd to sail with the blast of the gale,
Through billows Atlantic to steer,
As he bends o'er the wave which may soon be his grave,
The green sparkles bright with a Tear.
The soldier braves death for a fanciful wreath
In glory's romantic career;
But he raises the foe when in battle laid low,
And bathes every wound with a Tear.
If with high-bounding pride he return to his bride,
Renouncing the gore-crimson'd spear,
All his toils are repaid, when, embracing the maid,
From her eyelid he kisses the Tear.
Sweet scene of my youth! seat of Friendship and Truth,[23]
Where love chased each fast-fleeting year,
Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd, for a last look I turn'd,
But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear.
Though my vows I can pour to my Mary no more,
My Mary to love once so dear,
In the shade of her bower I remember the hour
She rewarded those vows with a Tear.
By another possest, she may live ever blest!
Her name still my heart must revere:
With a sigh I resign what I once thought was mine,
And forgive her deceit with a Tear.
Ye friends of my heart, ere from you I depart,
This hope to my breast is most near:
If again we shall meet in this rural retreat,
May we meet as we part, with a Tear.
When my soul wings her flight to the regions of night,
And my corse shall recline on its bier,
As ye pass by the tomb where my ashes consume,
Oh! moisten their dust with a Tear.
May no marble bestow the splendor of woe,
Which the children of vanity rear;
No fiction of fame shall blazon my name,
All I ask--all I wish--is a Tear.
* * * * *
L'AMITIE EST L'AMOUR SANS AILES.
Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,
One firm record, one lasting truth,
Celestial consolation brings;
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat,
Where first my heart responsive beat,
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
Through few, but deeply checker'd years,
What moments have been mine!
Now half-obscured by clouds of tears,
Now bright in rays divine;
Howe'er my future doom be cast,
My soul enraptured with the past,
To one idea fondly clings;
Friendship! that thought is all thine own,
Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone--
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
Where yonder yew-trees lightly wave
Their branches on the gale,
Unheeded heaves a simple grave,
Which tells the common tale;
Round this unconscious schoolboys stray,
Till the dull knell of childish play
From yonder studious mansion rings;
But here when'er my footsteps move,
My silent tears too plainly prove
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
Oh, Love! before thy glowing shrine
My early vows were paid;
My hopes, my dreams, my heart was thine,
But these are now decay'd;
For thine are pinions like the wind,
No trace of thee remains behind,
Except, alas! thy jealous stings.
Away, away! delusive power,
Thou shalt not haunt my coming hour;
Unless, indeed, without thy wings.
Seat of my youth! thy distant spire
Recalls each scene of joy;
My bosom glows with former fire,
In mind again a boy.
Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill
Thy every path delights me still,
Each flower a double fragrance flings;
Again, as once, in converse gay,
Each dear associate seems to say,
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
My Lycus! wherefore dost thou weep?
Thy falling tears restrain;
Affection for a time may sleep,
But, oh! 'twill wake again.
Think, think, my friend, when next we meet,
Our long-wish'd interview, how sweet!
From this my hope of rapture springs;
While youthful hearts thus fondly swell,
Absence, my friend, can only tell,
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
In one, and one alone deceived,