And call Captivity a kindness-meant

To shield him from insanity or shame-
Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent
To be Christ's Laureate-they reward him well!
Florence dooms me but death or banishment,
Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,1

Harder to bear and less deserved, for I

Had stung the factions which I strove to quell ; But this meek man who with a lover's eye

140

Will look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deign
To embalm with his celestial flattery,

As poor a thing as e'er was spawned to reign,2
What will he do to merit such a doom?
Perhaps he'll love,—and is not Love in vain
Torture enough without a living tomb?
Yet it will be so-he and his compeer,

The Bard of Chivalry, will both consume

In penury and pain too many a year,
And, dying in despondency, bequeath

3

To the kind World, which scarce will yield a tear, A heritage enriching all who breathe

With the wealth of a genuine Poet's soul, And to their country a redoubled wreath, Unmatched by time; not Hellas can unroll

150

Through her Olympiads two such names, though one' Of hers be mighty;-and is this the whole

Of such men's destiny beneath the Sun ? 5

160

1. [See the Introduction to the Lament of Tasso, ante, p. 139, and Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza xxxvi. line 2, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 355, note 1.]

2. Alfonso d'Este (II.), Duke of Ferrara, died 1597.]

3. [Compare the opening lines of the Orlando Furioso

"Le Donne, i Cavalier'! l'arme, gli amori,

Le Cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

See Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanzas xl., xli.,

Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 359, 360, note 1.]

4. [The sense is, "Ariosto may be matched with, perhaps excelled by, Homer; but where is the Greek poet to set on the same pedestal with Tasso?"]

5. [Compare Churchill's Grave, lines 15-19—

"And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless?"

Vide ante, p. 47.]

Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense, The electric blood with which their arteries run, Their body's self turned soul with the intense

Feeling of that which is, and fancy of

That which should be, to such a recompense
Conduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough
Storm be still scattered? Yes, and it must be;
For, formed of far too penetrable stuff,
These birds of Paradise 1 but long to flee

Back to their native mansion, soon they find
Earth's mist with their pure pinions not agree,
And die or are degraded; for the mind
Succumbs to long infection, and despair,
And vulture Passions flying close behind,
Await the moment to assail and tear ; 2

i.

170

And when, at length, the wingéd wanderers stoop, Then is the Prey-birds' triumph, then they share The spoil, o'erpowered at length by one fell swoop. Yet some have been untouched who learned to bear, Some whom no Power could ever force to droop, 180

1. [Compare

2. [Compare

blood -

-[MS. Alternative reading.]

"For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise."

Kubla Khan, lines 52, 53,

Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, 1893, p. 94.]

"By our own spirits are we deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; '

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

Resolution and Independence, vii. lines 5-7,

Wordsworth's Poetical Works, 1889, p. 175. Compare, too, Moore's fine apology for Byron's failure to submit to the yoke of matrimony, "and to live happily ever afterwards"

"But it is the cultivation and exercise of the imaginative faculty that, more than anything, tend to wean the man of genius from actual life, and, by substituting the sensibilities of the imagination for those of the heart, to render, at last, the medium through which he feels no less unreal than that through which he thinks. Those images of ideal good and beauty that surround him in his musings soon accustom him to consider all that is beneath this high standard unworthy of his care; till, at length, the heart becoming chilled as the fancy warms, it too often happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of them."-Life, p. 268.]

Who could resist themselves even, hardest care!
And task most hopeless; but some such have been,
And if my name amongst the number were,
That Destiny austere, and yet serene,

Were prouder than more dazzling fame unblessed;
The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen

Than the Volcano's fierce eruptive crest,

Whose splendour from the black abyss is flung,
While the scorched mountain, from whose burning

breast

A temporary torturing flame is wrung,

Shines for a night of terror, then repels

Its fire back to the Hell from whence it sprung, The Hell which in its entrails ever dwells.

190

CANTO THE FOURTH.

MANY are Poets who have never penned
Their inspiration, and perchance the best:
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend
Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compressed
The God within them, and rejoined the stars
Unlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessed
Than those who are degraded by the jars

Of Passion, and their frailties linked to fame,
Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.
Many are Poets but without the name;

For what is Poesy but to create

From overfeeling Good or Ill; and aim1
At an external life beyond our fate,

And be the new Prometheus of new men,2
Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavished his high gift in vain,

10

1. [So too Wordsworth, in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800); Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."]

2. [Compare

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness

But baffled as thou wert from high.
Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals."

Prometheus, iii. lines 35, seq.; vide ante, p. 50.

Compare, too, the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, stanza xvi. var. ii.-

"He suffered for kind acts to men."

Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 312.]

Lies chained to his lone rock by the sea-shore?
So be it: we can bear.-But thus all they
Whose Intellect is an o'ermastering Power
Which still recoils from its encumbering clay
Or lightens it to spirit, whatsoe'er

The form which their creations may essay,
Are bards; the kindled Marble's bust may wear
More poesy upon its speaking brow

Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear; One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,

Or deify the canvass till it shine

With beauty so surpassing all below,

That they who kneel to Idols so divine

Break no commandment, for high Heaven is there
Transfused, transfigurated: and the line

Of Poesy, which peoples but the air

With Thought and Beings of our thought reflected,
Can do no more: then let the artist share
The palm, he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved-Alas!
Despair and Genius are too oft connected.
Within the ages which before me pass

Art shall resume and equal even the sway
Which with Apelles and old Phidias
She held in Hellas' unforgotten day.

Ye shall be taught by Ruin to revive
The Grecian forms at least from their decay,
And Roman souls at last again shall live

In Roman works wrought by Italian hands,
And temples, loftier than the old temples, give
New wonders to the World; and while still stands
The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar
A Dome, its image, while the base expands

20

30

40

50

1. ["Transfigurate," whence "transfiguration," is derived from the Latin transfiguro, found in Suetonius and Quintilian. Byron may have thought to anglicize the Italian trasfigurarsi.] 2. The Cupola of St. Peter's.

[Michel Angelo, then in his seventy-second year, received the appointment of architect of St. Peter's from Pope Paul III. He began the dome on a different plan from that of the first architect, Bramante, "declaring that he would raise the Pantheon in the air." The drum of the dome was constructed in his life-time, but for more than twentyfour years after his death (1563), the cupola remained untouched, and