The Library

of the

University of Illinois.

ET. 28.]

EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

529

Juan. While engaged in writing this story, he heard from England that Lady Byron was ill, and, his heart softening at the intelligence, he threw the MSS. into the fire. So constantly were the good and evil principles of his nature conflicting for mastery over him.* The two following Poems, so different from each other in their character, the first prying with an awful scepticism into the darkness of another world, and the second breathing all that is most natural and tender in the affections of this,-were also written at this time, and have never been published.

"EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

"Could I remount the river of my years

To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now-until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this death?-a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision-what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so-the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquility, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrances our hours of rest.
"The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,- -or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided-equal must it be,
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea:
It may be both-but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.

"The under-earth inhabitants-are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden, or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell,

Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense

Of breathless being ?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude?-Oh Earth!

Where are the past ?-and wherefore had they birth?

The dead are thy inheritors-and we

But bubbles on thy surface; and the key

Of thy profundity is in the grave,

The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,

*Upon the same occasion, indeed, he wrote some verses in a spirit not quite so generous, of which a few of the opening lines is all I shall give:-

"And thou wert sad-yet I was not with thee!

And thou wert sick-and yet I was not near.
Methought that Joy and Health alone could be
Where I was not, and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus ?- it is as I foretold,

And shall be more so :-" &c. &c.

Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.'

"TO AUGUSTA.

L "My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There are yet two things in my destiny,—
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
"The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

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
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress:

Reversed for him our grandsire's* fate of yore,—
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

"If my inheritance of storms hath been

In other elements, and on the rocks

Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

"Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift,- -a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay :
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

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'a
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
Within me, or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,-
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,

"Admiral Byron, remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the name of "Foul-weather Jack."

"But though it were tempest-tost,

Still his bark could not be lost.

He returned from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's Voyage), and subsequently circumnavigated the world, as commander of a similar expedition."

ET. 28.]

POEM TO HIS SISTER AUGUSTA-UNPUBLISHED.

(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The Chief companion of a calmer lot.

"I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
Which do remember me of where I dwelt
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their look;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love-but none like thee.
"Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation;-to admire

Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;

But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
Here to be lonely is not desolate,

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
The fool of my own wishes, and forget,
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may show ;-
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,

And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

"

WI did remind thee of our own dear lake, *
By the old hall which may be mine no more,
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake

The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make,
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
Resign'd for ever, 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 bo
My sister-till I look again on thee.

"I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not ;--for at length I sco
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;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make-a name.

• The lake of Newstead Abbey.

531