My Recollections of Lord Byron
And lift their raptured looks on high,
As though it were a joy to die.
A brow like a midsummer lake,
Transparent with the sun therein
When waves no murmur dare to make,
And heaven beholds her face within.
A cheek and lip--but why proceed?
I loved her then, I love her still;
And such as I am, love indeed
In fierce extremes--in good and ill.
* * * * *
LEILA.
Her eye's dark charm 'twere vain to tell,
But gaze on that of the Gazelle,
It will assist thy fancy well;
As large, as languishingly dark,
But Soul beam'd forth in every spark
That darted from beneath the lid,
Bright as the jewel of Giamschid.
Yea, _Soul_, and should our Prophet say
That form was naught but breathing clay,
By Allah! I would answer nay;
Though on Al-Sirat's arch I stood,
Which totters o'er the fiery flood,
With Paradise within my view,
And all his Houris beckoning through.
Oh! who young Leila's glance could read
And keep that portion of his creed
Which saith that woman is but dust,
A soulless toy for tyrant's lust?
On her might Muftis gaze, and own
That through her eye the Immortal shone;
On her fair cheek's unfading hue
The young pomegranate's blossoms strew
Their bloom in blushes ever new;
Her hair in hyacinthine flow,
When left to roll its folds below,
As midst her handmaids in the hall
She stood superior to them all,
Hath swept the marble where her feet
Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth
It fell, and caught one stain of earth.
The cygnet nobly walks the water;
So moved on earth Circassia's daughter--
The loveliest bird of Franguestan!
As rears her crest the ruffled Swan,
And spurns the waves with wings of pride,
When pass the steps of stranger man
Along the banks that bound her tide;
Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck:--
Thus arm'd with beauty would she check
Intrusion's glance, till Folly's gaze
Shrunk from the charms it meant to praise.
Thus high and graceful was her gait;
Her heart as tender to her mate;
Her mate--stern Hassan, who was he?
Alas! that name was not for thee!
ADAH.
Adah is the wife of Cain. It is especially as the drama develops itself
that Lord Byron brings out the full charm of Adah's beautiful nature--a
nature at once primitive, tender, generous, and Biblical.
CAIN.
_Lucifer._ Approach the things of earth most beautiful,
And judge their beauty near.
_Cain._ I have done this--
The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.
_Lucifer._ What is that?
* * * * * * *
_Cain._ My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world--
The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming--
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold
Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds--
The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice--
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls:--
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven
To gaze on it.
Even those charming children of Nature, Haidee and Dudu, in "Don Juan,"
and the Neuha, in "The Island," scarcely meant to represent more than
the visible material part of the ideal woman he could love if he met
with her--even these charming creatures possess not only the pagan
beauty of form, but also Christian beauty, that of the soul: goodness,
gentleness, tenderness. And it is also to be remarked, that by degrees,
as time wore on, Lord Byron's female types rose in the moral scale,
while still preserving their adorable charms, and their harmony with the
state of civilization wherein he placed them. For instance, his Haidee,
in the second canto of "Don Juan," written at Venice in 1818, is not
worth, morally, the Haidee of the fourth canto, written at Ravenna in
1820. Beneath his pen at Ravenna, the adorable maiden evidently becomes
spiritualized. This may be attributed to the poet's state of mind, for
he was quite different at Ravenna to what he had been at Venice. The
portrait of this lovely child is certainly very charming in 1818, but,
while admiring her spotless Grecian brow, her beautiful hair, large
Eastern eyes, and noble mouth, we can not help remarking something vague
and undecided about her. And even in those fine verses where he says
that Haidee's face belongs to a type inconceivable for human thought,
and still more impossible of execution for mortal chisel, it is still
the beauty of form that he shows you; while the Haidee of Ravenna is
quite spiritualized in all her exquisite beauty.
After having described her as she appeared in her delicious Eastern
costume, Lord Byron expresses himself in these terms:--
"Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel
Flow'd like an alpine torrent, which the sun
Dyes with his morning light,--and would conceal
Her person if allow'd at large to run;
And still they seem'd resentfully to feel
The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun
Their bonds, whene'er some Zephyr, caught, began
To offer his young pinion as her fan.
"Round her she made an atmosphere of life,
The very air seem'd lighter from her eyes,
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies,
And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife--
Too pure even for the purest human ties;
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel."
And, describing the whiteness of her skin, he says:--
"Day ne'er will break
On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her;
The eye might doubt of it were well awake,
She was so like a vision."
In the sixth canto of "Don Juan"--the hero being in the midst of a
harem--all his sympathies are for Dudu, a beautiful Circassian, who
unites to all the charms, all the moral qualities that a slave of the
harem might possess. This is the portrait which Lord Byron draws:--
XLII.
"A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudu,
Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those
Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue,
Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose.
* * * * * * *
XLIII.
"She was not violently lively, but
Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking.
* * * * * * *
LII.
"Dudu, as has been said, was a sweet creature,
Not very dashing, but extremely winning,
With the most regulated charms of feature,
Which painters can not catch like faces sinning
Against proportion--the wild strokes of nature
Which they hit off at once in the beginning,
Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike,
And, pleasing or unpleasing, still are like.
LIII.
"But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth,
Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it
Than are your mighty passions and so forth,
Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they'd try it:
I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
And pity lovers rather more than seamen.
LIV.
"But she was pensive more than melancholy,
And serious more than pensive, and serene,
It may be, more than either: not unholy
Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.
The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly
Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen,
That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall;
She never thought about herself at all.
LV.
"And therefore was she kind and gentle as
The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown)."
As to Neuha, the daughter of Ocean (in "The Island"), his last creation,
she is, indeed, the daughter of Nature also, and no less admirable than
her sister Haidee, but she is still more highly endowed in a moral
sense:--
"The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature--lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life--for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak:
The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,
To bear the bark of others' happiness.
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:
She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not."
When, after the combat, she arrives in her bark to save Torquil, the
poet exclaims:
"And who the first that springing on the strand,
Leap'd like a nereid from her shell to land,
With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye
Shining with love, and hope, and constancy?
Neuha--the fond, the faithful, the adored--
Her heart on Torquil's like a torrent pour'd;
And smiled, and wept, and near, and nearer clasp'd
As if to be assured 'twas _him_ she grasp'd;
Shuddered to see his yet warm wound, and then,
To find it trivial, smiled and wept again.
She was a warrior's daughter, and could bear
Such sights, and feel, and mourn, but not despair.
Her lover lived,--nor foes nor fears could blight,
That full-blown moment in its all delight:
Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob
That rock'd her heart till almost heard to throb;
And paradise was breathing in the sigh
Of nature's child in nature's ecstasy."
"All these sweet creations realize the idea, formed from all time, of
surpassing loveliness, of gentleness with passion," justly observes
Monsieur Nisard--he who, in his very clever sketch of the illustrious
poet, so often forms erroneous judgments of Lord Byron. For he also
accepted him as he was presented--namely, as the victim of calumny and
prejudice; or else he considered him after a system, examining only some
_passages and one single period_ of the man's and the _poet's_ life,
instead of taking the whole career and the general spirit of his
writings,--a method also perceivable in his appreciation of Lord Byron's
female characters.
Indeed Monsieur Nisard evidently only speaks of the Medoras, Zuleikas,
Leilas, and in general of all the types in his Eastern poems, and
appertaining to his first period: most fascinating beings undoubtedly,
true emanations of the purest and most passionate love, but yet as
morally inferior to the Angiolinas, Myrrhas, Josephines, Auroras, as his
poems of the first period are intellectually inferior to those of the
second, beginning with the third canto of "Childe Harold," and as
civilized Christian woman is superior to a woman in the harem. But
Monsieur Nisard, who has a very systematic way of judging
things--wishing to prove that Lord Byron's loves were quite lawless in
their ungovernable strength, filling the whole soul to the absorption of
every other sentiment and interest (which might, indeed, perhaps be said
of the personages in his Eastern poems), and not able, without