I asked not why, and recked not where, I learned to love despair. 375 And thus when they appeared at last, And half I felt as they were come even I SONNET. ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 5 And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 10 And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon thy prison is a holy place, for 't was trod, And thy sad floor an altar Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, FARE THEE WELL. [Written in the spring of 1816, just after the separation from Lady Byron.] FARE thee well! and if forever, 5 Would that breast were bared before thee 10 Would that breast, by thee glanced over, Every inmost thought could show! Then thou wouldst at last discover "T was not well to spurn it so. Though the world for this commend thee— Though it smile upon the blow, 15 Even its praises must offend thee, Founded on another's woe: Though my many faults defaced me, Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not; 25 Still thine own its life retaineth Still must mine, though bleeding, beat; And the undying thought which paineth that we no more may meet. Is These are words of deeper sorrow 30 Than the wail above the dead; Both shall live, but every morrow Wake us from a widowed bed. And when thou would solace gather, When our child's first accents flow, 35 Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!" Though his care she must forego? 40 When her little hands shall press thee, Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee, Should her lineaments resemble Those thou never more mayst see, 45 All my faults perchance thou knowest, 50 Every feeling hath been shaken ; Pride, which not a world could bow, Even my soul forsakes me now: But 't is done all words are idle Words from me are vainer still ; 55 But the thoughts we cannot bridle Force their way without the will. 60 Fare thee well! - thus disunited, Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted, To many [this poem] appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness, a kind of appeal which no woman with a heart could resist; while by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the subject. To this latter opinion I confess my own to have, at first, strongly inclined, and suspicious as I could not help thinking the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him injustice. He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which, as be sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced, — the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them. Neither did it appear, from that account, to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye. THOMAS Moore. SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. [These stanzas were written on returning from a ball, where Lady Wilmot Horton had appeared in mourning, with numerous spangles on her dress.] SHE walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; One shade the more, one ray the less, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. |