268 BYRON’S
Feel I not wroth with those who hade me dwellIn this vast lazar-house of many woes ?
'There laughter is not mirth, nor thought themind,
Nor words a language, nor ev’n men mankind;Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell—
For we are crowded in our solitudes—
Many, but each divided by the wall,
Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;—While all can hear, none heed his neighbour’scall—
None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here ?Who have debased me in the minds of men,Debarring me the usage of.my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts as things to shun andfear?
Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward Sorrow’s stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our Stoical success?
No!—still too proud to be vindictive—IHave pardon’d princes’ insults, and would die.
Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sakeI weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates—but I can not detest;Thoupitiest not—but I can not forsake.
v.
Look on a love which knows not to despair,
But all unquench’d is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud,Encompass’d with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,—forth flies the all ethereal dart!
And thus at the collision of thy nameThe vivid thought still flashes through my frame,And for a moment all things as they wereFlit by me;—they are gone—I am the same.'
And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knewA Princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it wasSufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal’d it, they, alas SWere punish’d by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrineWorshipp'd at holy distance and aroundHallow’d and meekly kiss’d the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that LoveHad robed thee with a glory, and array’dThy lineaments in a beauty that dismay’d—
Oh! not dismay’d—but awed, like One above!
And in that sweet severity there wasA something which all softness did surpass—
I know not how—thy genius master’d mine—
My star stood still before thee:—if it werePresumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should heFit for this cell, which wrongs me—but for thee.lhe very love which lock’d me to my chainHath lighten’d half its weight: and for the rest,Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
WORKS.
VI.
It is no marvel—from my very birth .
My soul was drunk with love,—which did pervadeAnd mingle with whate’er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I madeIdols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shadeOf waving trees, and dream’d uncounted hours,Though I was chid for wandering! and the WisoShook their white aged heads*o’er me, and saidOf such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow;
And then they smote me, and I did not weep.
But cursed them in my heart, and to my hauntReturn’d and wept alone, and dream’d againThe visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pantWith feelings of strange tumult and soft pain:And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the dayI found the thing I sought—and that was thee;And then I lost my being all to beAbsorb’d in thine—the world was past away—Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!
VIZ.
I loved all Solitude, but little thoughtTo spend I know not what of life, remoteFrom all communion with existence, saveThe maniac and his tyrant!—had I beenTheir fellow, many years ere this had seenMy mind like theirB corrupted \o its grave,
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave ?Perchance in such a cell we suffer moreThan the wreck’d sailor on his desert shore:
The world is all before him— mine is here.,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier*What though he perish, he may lift his eyeAnd with a dying glance upbraid the sky—
I will not raise my own in such reproof.
Although ’tis clouded by my dungeon roof.
VIII.
Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,
But with a sense of its decay:—I seeUnwonted lights along my prison shine.
And a strange demon, who is vexing meWith pilfering pranks and petty pains, belowThe feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to One, who long hath suffer’d so,Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
And all that may he borne, or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but Man,
But spirits may be leagued with them—all Earth Abandons—Heaven forgets me;—in the dearthOf such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further,—and prevailAgainst the outworn creature they assail.
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved 0Like steel in tempering fire ?—because I loved.Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.
IX.
I once was quick iu feeling—that is o’er;—
My scars are callous, or I should have dash’dMy brain against these bars, as the sun flash’dIn mockery through them;—If I bear and boreThe much I have recounted, and the more