To cheer resistance against death or chains, They stood, the three, as the three hundred stood Who dyed Thermopyla with holy blood. 260 But, ah, how different! 't is the cause makes all, Degrades or hallows courage in its fall. O'er them no fame, eternal and intense, Blazed through the clouds of death and beckon'd hence; No grateful country, smiling through her tears, Begun the praises of a thousand years; No nation's eyes would on their tomb be bent, No heroes envy them their monument; However boldly their warm blood was spilt, Their life was shame, their epitaph was guilt. 270 And this they knew and felt, at least the one, The leader of the band he had undone; Who, born perchance for better things, had set His life upon a cast which linger'd yet: shock, Obdurate as a portion of the rock XII The boat drew nigh, well arm'd, and firm the crew To act whatever duty bade them do; 300 After the first fierce peal, as they pull'd nigher, They heard the voice of Christian shout, 'Now fire!' And ere the word upon the echo died, Two fell; the rest assail'd the rock's rough side, And, furious at the madness of their foes, Disdain'd all further efforts, save to close. But steep the crag, and all without a path, Each step opposed a bastion to their wrath; While, placed 'midst clefts the least accessible, Which Christian's eye was train'd to mark full well, 310 The three maintain'd a strife which must not yield, In spots where eagles might have chosen to build. Their every shot told; while the assailant fell, Dash'd on the shingles like the limpet shell; But still enough survived, and mounted still, Scattering their numbers here and there, until Then plunged: the rock below received like glass His body crush'd into one gory mass, Yet reek'd, the remnant of himself and deeds; Some splinters of his weapons (to the last, As long as hand could hold, he held them fast) On the horizon verged the distant deck, Down plunged she through the cave to rouse her boy; Told all she had seen, and all she hoped, and all That happy love could augur or recall; 390 Sprung forth again, with Torquil following free His bounding nereid over the broad sea; Swam round the rock, to where a shallow cleft Hid the canoe that Neuha there had left Drifting along the tide, without an oar, That eve the strangers chased them from the shore; But when these vanish'd, she pursued her prow, Regain'd, and urged to where they found it now. Nor ever did more love and joy embark, Than now were wafted in that slender ark. ITALIAN POEMS [Taken as a whole the Italian Poems must be reckoned the least valuable portion of Byron's work, although one of them is interesting as showing the tendency of the poet's mind, and another is an extraordinary tour de force. Their composition extends from April of 1817 to March of 1820, the first three years of his residence in Italy, and is the fruit of his genuine love for the language and literature of that land. In the autumn of 1816 Byron left Switzerland for Italy and was soon domiciled in Venice. The first of the Italian poems, however, was the result of a visit to Ferrara, and shows how strong was the historical spirit in him. The Lament of Tasso is dated April 20, 1817. The subject seems to have had a special interest for Byron, and he has introduced it with good effect into the fourth canto of Childe Harold (stanzas xxxv. et seq.), not without a fling at Boileau in return for the famous clinquant du Tasse. Beppo was written in the autumn of 1817, in acknowledged imitation of the mock-heroic style of John Hookham Frere. At this time Byron was still engaged on the fourth canto of Childe Harold and it is a mark of his versatility that he could work at once on two poems so different in character. While finishing the solemn apostrophes of his romantic Pilgrim he was thus preluding the satirical mockery of the later Pilgrim, Don Juan. The first canto of the latter poem was, indeed, finished in September of the following year. The Ode on Venice, quite in the style and metre of the Tasso, was written in July of 1818, although not published for nearly a twelvemonth, when it appeared with Mazeppa and A Fragment. The Prophecy of Dante, both in subject and metre, was peculiarly out of Byron's range, and must be reckoned one of his absolute failures. As for the metre, the terza rima, Byron was only one of a number of English poets who have shown astonishing perversity in disregarding the principles on which its success depends, as might have been learned from the slightest attention to the manner of Dante himself and the other great Italians. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind displays the same wilful ignorance and is saved from failure only by its brevity. The Prophecy of Dante was written at Ravenna in June, 1819, at the request of the Countess Guiccioli. Byron's next Italian poem proves that, if he imitated Frere in Beppo, he also went directly to the sources from which Frere himself had drawn. His translation of the first canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore is a careful piece of work, finished in the early weeks of 1820 at Ravenna, and in its closeness to the original is really a tour de force. It is not necessary to point out the influence of such a translation on Don Juan. The last of his Italian poems was a translation of the famous Francesca of Rimini episode in the fifth canto of Dante's Inferno. Writing to Murray from Ravenna, March 20, 1820, Byron says: Last post I sent you The Vision of Dante, -four first cantos. Enclosed you will find, line for line, in third rhyme (terza rima), of which your British Blackguard reader as yet understands nothing, Fanny of Rimini. You know that she was born here, and married, and slain, from Cary, Boyd, and such people already. I have done it into cramp English, line for line, and rhyme for rhyme, to try the possibility.'] THE LAMENT OF TASSO At Ferrara, in the Library, are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto; and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But, as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed, and depopulated: the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon. |