1 This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birthplace of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved.

2 [Lord Byron alludes to a ridiculous custom which formerly prevailed at the public-houses in Highgate, of administering a burlesque oath to all travelers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened, never to kiss the maid when he could the mistress; never to eat brown bread when he could get white; never to drink small beer when he count get strong," with many other injunctions of the like kind. to all which was added the saving clause,-"unless you like it best."]

LXXIII.

Hush'd is the din of tongues-on gallant steeds, With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-poised lance.

Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds,
And lowly bending to the lists advance;
Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance;
If in the dangerous game they shine to-day,
The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance,
Best prize of better acts, they bear away,

And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay.

LXXIV.

In costly sheen and gaudy cloak array'd,
But all afoot, the light-limb'd Matadore
Stands in the centre, eager to invade
The lord of lowing herds; but not before

The ground, with cautious tread, is traversed o'er,
Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed.
His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more
Can man achieve without the friendly steed-
Alas! too oft condemn'd for him to bear and bleed.

LXXV.

Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls, The den expands, and Expectation mute Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And, wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot, The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe: Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit His first attack, wide waving to and fro His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.

LXXVI.

Sudden he stops; his eye is fix'd: away, Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear: Now is thy time, to perish, or display The skill that yet may check his mad career. With well-timed croupe the nimble coursers veer; On foams the bull, but not unscath'd he goes; Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear: He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes; Dart follows dart; lance, lance; loud bellowing speak his woes.

LXXVII.

Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail,
Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse;
Though man and man's avenging arms assail,
Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force.
One gallant steed is stretch'd a mangled corse;
Another, hideous sight! unseam'd appears,
His gory chest unveils life's panting source;
Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears,
Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unharm'd

he bears.

LXXXIII.

Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind, Though now it moved him as it moves the wise; Not that Philosophy on such a mind E'er deign'd to bend her chastely-awful eyes: But Passion raves itself to rest, or fiies; And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb, Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise: Pleasure's pall'd victim! life-abhorring gloom Wrote on his faded brow cursed Cain's unresting doom.

LXXXIV.

Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
But view'd them not with misanthropic hate:
Fain would he now have join'd the dance, the song
But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
Naught that he saw his sadness could abate:
Yet once he struggled 'gainst the demon's sway,
And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,
Pour'd forth this unpremeditated lay,

[day. To charms as fair as those that sooth'd his happier

TO INEZ. 1.

NAY, smile not at my sullen brow;
Alas! I cannot smile again:

Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain.

2.

And dost thou ask, what secret wo

I bear, corroding joy and youth? And wilt thou vainly seek to know A pang, e'en thou must fail to sooth? 3.

It is not love, it is not hate,

Nor low Ambition's honors lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
And fly from all I prized the most:
4.

It is that weariness which springs
From all I meet, or hear, or see:
To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.

5.

It is that settled, ceaseless gloom

The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore; That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before.

6.

What exile from himself can flee?

To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be,

The blight of life-the demon Thought.

7.

Yet others rapt in pleasure seem,
And taste of all that I forsake;
Oh! may they still of transport dream,
And ne'er, at least like me, awake!

8.

Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,
With many a retrospection cursed;
And all my solace is to know,

Whate'er betides, I've known the worst.

9.

What is that worst? Nay do not ask-
In pity from the search forbear:
Smile on-nor venture to unmask

Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there.

LXXXV.

Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu! Who may forget how well thy walls have stood? When all were changing thou alone wert true, First to be free and last to be subdued: And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude, Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye; A traitor only fell beneath the feud :' nere all were noble, save Nobility; [alry! None hugg'd a conqueror's chain, save fallen Chiv

LXXXVI.

Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate !
They fight for freedom who were never free;
A Kingless people for a nerveless state,
Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee,
True to the veriest slaves of Treachery;
Fond of a land which gave them naught but life,
Pride points the path that leads to liberty;
Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,

Then to the vulture let each corse remain; Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw, [stain, Let their bleach'd bones, and blood's unbleaching Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe: Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw! LXXXIX.

Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done; Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees : It deepens still, the work is scarce begun, Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees. Fall'n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees More than her fell Pizarros once enchain'd: Strange retribution! now Columbia's ease Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustain'd, While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrain'd.

XC.

Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight,
Not Albuera lavish of the dead,

Have won for Spain her well-asserted right.
When shall her olive-branch be free from blight?
When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil!
How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
And Freedom's stranger-tree grow native of the soil!

XCI.

And thou, my friend! since unavailing wo
Bursts from my heart and mingles with the strain-
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain:
But thus unlaurell'd to descend in vain,
By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,

And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!

LXXXVII.

Ye who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing cimeter to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his needSo may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each cursed oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!

LXXXVIII.

Flows there a tear of pity for the dead?
Look c'er the ravage of the reeking plain;
Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,

XCII.

Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most!
Dear to a heart where naught was left so dear!
Though to my hopeless days forever lost,
In dreams deny me not to see thee here!

The Honorable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra, (May 14, 1811.) I had known him ten years, the better part of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month, I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction :

"Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,
And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."

I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honors, against the ablest can

sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired:

And Morn in secret shall renew the tear Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose.

XCIII.

Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage : Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doom'd to go: Lands that contain the monuments of Eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quell'd.

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO THE SECOND.

I.

COME blue-eyed maid of heaven !—but then, alas i
Didst never yet one mortal song inspire-
Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
And is, despite of war and wasting fire,1
And years, that bade thy worship to expire:
But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire

Of men who never felt the sacred glow [bestow. That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts

II.

Ancient of days! august Athena !2 where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone-glimmering through the dream of things

that were:

First in the race that led to Glory's goal,

1 Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. 2 We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valor to defend his country,

appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortunes of war, incidental to the bravest : but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privllege of plundering the Parthener, and riumph in turn, according

They won, and pass'd away---is this the whole ? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower Dimwith the mist of years,gray flits the shade of power III.

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come-but molest not yon defenceless urn: Lock on this spot-a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield-religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's 'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; [reeds Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on

IV.

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, 50 On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and wo? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

V.

Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound,
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:
He fell, and falling nations mourn'd around;
But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
Where demi-gods appear'd, as records tell.
Remove yon skull from out the scatter'd heaps:
Is that a temple where a God may dwell?
Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell;
VI.

Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:

to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her conPhilip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the temptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a tri

ple sacrifice. But

"Man, proud man,

Dress'd in a little brief authority,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep."

It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead, the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honor of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c., and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous.