All my faults perchance thou knowest, Every feeling hath been shaken; Pride, which not a world could bow, Even my soul forsakes me now: Fare thee well! thus disunited, Torn from every nearer tie, Sear'd in heart, and lone, and blighted, MARCH 17, 1816. EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.1 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name It were the haven of my happiness; But other claims and other ties thou hast, And mine is not the wish to make them less. A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore, 1 His sister. If my inheritance of storms hath been I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, I have been cunning in mine overthrow, Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away; Something I know not what does still uphold A spirit of slight patience; - not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain. Perhaps the workings of defiance stir I feel almost at times as I have felt In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, My heart with recognition of their looks; And even at moments I could think I see Some living thing to love but none like thee. Is a brief feeling of a trivial date; But something worthier do such scenes inspire: For much I view which I could most desire, And, above all, a lake I can behold Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old. Oh that thou wert but with me! - but I grow And the tide rising in my alter'd eye. I did remind thee of our own dear Lake, By the old Hall which may be mine no more. Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before; Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd forever, or divided far. The world is all before me; I but ask Of Nature that with which she will comply It is but in her summer's sun to bask, To mingle with the quiet of her sky, To see her gentle face without a mask, And never gaze on it with apathy. She was my early friend, and now shall be My sister till I look again on thee. I can reduce all feelings but this one; for at length I see Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. The earliest - even the only paths for me Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, I had been better than I now can be; The passions which have torn me would have slept; I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept. With false Ambition what had I to do? Little with Love, and least of all with Fame; Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. But all is over- I am one the more To baffled millions which have gone before. And for the future, this world's future may And for the remnant which may be to come Not thankless, for within the crowded sum For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart It is the same, together or apart, From life's commencement to its slow decline We are entwined: The tie which bound the first endures the last! WATERLOO.1 There was a sound of revelry by night, Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it? - No; 't was but the wind, On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! arm! it is it is the cannon's opening roar ! Within a window'd niche of that high hall Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deem'd it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell: He rush'd into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. 1 From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto III. |