My Recollections of Lord Byron
Weary, unless when separate: the tree
Cut from its forest root of years--the river
Damn'd from its fountain--the child from the knee
And breast maternal wean'd at once forever,--
Would wither less than these two torn apart;
Alas! there is no instinct like the heart.
XII.
"'Whom the gods love die young,' was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more--
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath;
* * * * * * *
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over, may be meant to save.
XIII.
"Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead.
The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them:
They found no fault with Time, save that he fled;
They saw not in themselves aught to condemn;
Each was the other's mirror.
* * * * * * *
XVI.
"Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless found
Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys
As rarely they beheld throughout their round;
And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,
For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound
By the mere senses; and that which destroys
Most love, possession, unto them appear'd
A thing which each endearment more endear'd.
XVII.
"Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful!
But theirs was love in which the mind delights
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull.
And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,
Intrigues, adventures of the common school,
Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,
Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a wh--re.
XVIII.
"Hard words; harsh truth; a truth which many know.
Enough.--The faithful and the fairy pair,
Who never found a single hour too slow,
What was it made them thus exempt from care?
Young innate feelings all have felt below,
Which perish in the rest, but in them were
Inherent; what we mortals call romantic,
And always envy, though we deem it frantic.
XIX.
"This is in others a factitious state,
* * * * * * *
But was in them their nature or their fate.
* * * * * * *
XX.
"They gazed upon the sunset: 'tis an hour
Dear unto all, but dearest to _their_ eyes,
For it had made them what they were: the power
Of love had first o'erwhelm'd them from such skies,
When happiness had been their only dower,
And twilight saw them link'd in passion's ties;
Charm'd with each other, all things charm'd that brought
The past still welcome as the present thought.
* * * * * * *
XXVI.
"Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother;
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
XXVII.
"Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart,
Why did they not then die?--they had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong."
"_Don Juan,"_ canto iv.
It was this love which caused Campbell the poet to say:
"If the love of Juan and Haidee is not pure and innocent, and expressed
with delicacy and propriety, then may we at once condemn and blot out
this tender passion of the soul from the list of a poet's themes. Then
must we shut our eyes and harden our hearts against that passion which
sways our whole existence, and quite become mere creatures of hypocrisy
and formality, and accuse Milton himself of madness."
At Ravenna, where Lord Byron composed so many sublime works, he also
wrote "Sardanapalus" and "Heaven and Earth." He was then thirty-two
years of age. The love predominating in these two dramas is that which
swayed his own soul, the same sentiment which, a year later, also
inspired the beautiful poem composed on his way from Ravenna to Pisa.
No quotation could convey an idea of the noble energetic feeling
animating these two dramas, for adequate language is wanting; impervious
to words, the sentiment they contain is like a spirit pervading, or a
ray of light warming and illuminating them.
They require to be read throughout. I prefer to quote his words on love,
in the 16th canto of "Don Juan," and in "The Island," because they are
the last traced by his pen. Written a few days previous to his fatal
departure for Greece, it can not be doubted that the sentiment which
dictated them was the same that accompanied him to his last hour.
CVII.
* * * * * * *
"And certainly Aurora had renew'd
In him some feelings he had lately lost,
Or harden'd; feelings which, perhaps ideal,
Are so divine, that I must deem them real:--
CVIII.
"The love of higher things and better days;
The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways;
The moments when we gather from a glance
More joy than from all future pride or praise,
Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance
The heart in an existence of its own,
Of which another's bosom is the zone."[50]
And then, in describing the happiness of two lovers, in his poem of "The
Island," a few days before setting out for Greece, he says again:--
"Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstasy,
That life knows no such rapture as to die;
And die they do; for earthly life has naught
Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought;
And all our dreams of better life above
But close in one eternal gush of love."
After speaking of the religious enthusiast, and saying that his soul
preceded his dust to heaven, he adds:--
"Is love less potent? No--his path is trod,
Alike uplifted gloriously to God;
Or link'd to all we know of heaven below,
The other better self, whose joy or woe
Is more than ours."
But enough of quotations; and now what poet has ever written or spoken
of love with words and images more chaste, more truly welling from his
own heart? We feel that he has given us the key to that. And if, after
all these demonstrations, there still remain any readers who continue to
accept as true the pleasantries, satires, and mystifications contained
in some of his verses, I do not pretend to write for them. They are to
be pitied, but there is no hope of convincing them. That depends on
their quality of mind. The only thing possible, then, is to recall some
of those anecdotes which, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the
same time illustrate Lord Byron's way of acting. I will select one. When
Lord Byron was at Pisa a friend of Shelley's, whom he sometimes saw, had
formed a close intimacy with Lady B----, a woman of middle-age but of
high birth. The tie between them was evidently the result of vanity on
Mr. M----'s side, and, as she was the mother of a large family, it was
doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that did not prevent Mr.
M---- from boasting of his success, and even (that he might be believed)
from going into disgusting details in his eagerness for praise.
One day that Mr. M---- was in the same _salon_ (at Mrs. Sh----'s house)
with Lord Byron and the Countess G----, the conversation turned upon
women and love in general, whereupon Mr. M---- lauded to the skies the
devotedness, constancy, and truth of the sex. When he had finished his
sentimental "tirade," Lord Byron took up the opposite side, going on as
Don Juan or Childe Harold might. It was easy to see he was playing a
part, and that his words, partly in jest, partly ironical, did not
express his thoughts. Nevertheless they gave pain to Mme. G----, and, as
soon as they were alone, Lord Byron having asked her why she was sad,
she told him the cause.
"I am very sorry to have grieved you," said he, "but how could you think
that I was talking seriously?"
"I did not think it," she said, "but those who do not know you will
believe all; M---- will not fail to repeat your words as if they were
your real opinions; and the world, knowing neither him nor you, will
remain convinced that he is a man full of noble sentiments, and you a
real Don Juan, not indeed your own charming youth, but Moliere's Don
Juan!"
"Very probably," said Lord Byron; "and that will be another true page to
add to M----'s note-book. I can't help it. I couldn't resist the
temptation of punishing M---- for his vanity. All those eulogiums and
sentimentalities about women were to make us believe how charming they
had always been toward him, how they had always appreciated his merits,
and how passionately in love with him Lady B---- is now. My words were
meant to throw water on his imaginary fire."
Alas! it was on such false appearances that they made up, then and
since, the Lord Byron still believed in by the generality of persons.
Lord Byron by his marriage gave another pledge of having renounced the
foibles of the heart and the allurements of the senses; and it is very
certain that he redeemed his word. If, through susceptibility or any
other defect, Lady Byron, going back to the past or trusting to vile,
revengeful, and interested spies, did not know how to understand him,
all Lord Byron's friends did, whether or not they dared to say so. And
he himself, who never could tell a lie, has assured us of his married
fidelity.[51] His life in Switzerland was devoted to study, retreat, and
even austerity. How little this stood him in stead with his enemies is
well known. "I never lived in a more edifying manner than at Geneva," he
said to Mr. Medwin. "My reputation has not gained by it. Nevertheless,
when there is mortification, there ought to be a reward."[52]
When he arrived at Milan many ladies belonging to the great world were
most anxious to know him; these presentations were proposed to him, and
he refused. As to his life at Venice, a wicked sort of romance has been
made of it, by exaggerating most ordinary things, and heaping invention
upon invention; but this has been explained with sufficient detail in
another chapter, where all the different causes of these exaggerations
have been shown in their just measure of truth.[53]
Here, then, I will only say, that if, on arriving at Venice, he relaxed
his austerity to lead the life common to young men without legitimate
ties: if, under the influence of that lovely sky, he did not remain
insensible to the songs of the beautiful Adriatic siren, nor trample
under foot the few flowers fate scattered on his path, to make amends
perhaps for the thorns that had so long beset it; if he sometimes
accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the
form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious
occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial
things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less
energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at
Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the
Alps, was written at Venice; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was
conceived and written at Venice. The "Lament of Tasso," "Mazeppa," the
"Ode to Venice," "Beppo" (from his studies of Berni), the first two
cantos of "Don Juan," were all written at Venice.
Moreover, it was there he collected materials for his dramas; there he
studied the Armenian language, making sufficient progress to translate
St. Paul's Epistles into English. And all that, in less than twenty-six