So much but inconveniently. Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would
tell.

You are the fools, not I—for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd

eye,

On that Old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame,
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.
DIODATI, 1816.

PROMETHEUS

40

[There is something in the character of Prometheus which early and strongly attracted Byron as it did Shelley. Byron's first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase from a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus, and there are many allusions to the god in his later works. Indeed his mind wavered almost to the end between the heroic defiance of Prometheus and the cynical defiance of Don Juan.]

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

10

The ruling principle of Hate,

20

Which for its pleasure doth create

And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

40

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny, His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory. DIODATI, July, 1816.

A FRAGMENT

50

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
Into the number of the

What is this Death? heart?

- until it glides nameless tides.

a quiet of the

10

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 tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of

rest.

The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

DIODATI, July, 1816. [First published with the Prisoner of Chillon, in 1816.]

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN

SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE

[Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. I did as well as I could,' says Lord Byron, but where I have not my choice, I pretend to answer for nothing.' (Letter to Murray, September 29, 1816.) For Byron's admiration of Sheridan, see Letters, passim.]

WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and

Of light no likeness is bequeath'd

name,

no

193

That what to them seem'd Vice might be but Woe.

Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise; Repose denies her requiem to his name, And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame. The secret enemy whose sleepless eye Stands ser tinel, accuser, judge, and spy; 70 The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain, The envious who but breathe in others' pain

Behold the host! delighting to deprave, Who track the steps of Glory to the grave, Watch every fault that daring Genius owes Half to the ardour which its birth be

If the high Spirit must forget to soar, And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,

To soothe Indignity — and face to face Meet sordid Rage - and wrestle with Disgrace,

To find in Hope but the renew'd caress,
The serpent-fold of further Faithlessness:
If such may be the Ills which men as-
sail,

What marvel if at last the mightiest fail? Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given

Bear hearts electric.

from Heaven,

charged with fire

90

Black with the rude collision, inly torn,
By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds

borne,

Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task,
To give the tribute Glory need not ask,
To mourn the vanish'd beam and add our
mite

Of praise in payment of a long delight. 100
Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield,
Mourn for the veteran Hero of your
field!
The worthy rival of the wondrous Three,
Whose words were sparks of Immortality!
Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is
dear,

He was your Master-emulate him here!
Ye men of wit and social eloquence!
He was your brother- bear his ashes

hence !

was

The effect of the original ballad — which existed both in Spanish and Arabicsuch, that it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death, within Granada. [The Spanish of this ballad, which was originally printed side by side with the translation, is not known to exist elsewhere in its integrity. According to Mr. E. H. Coleridge it is a cento of three or more ballads which are included in the Guerras Civiles de Granada of Gines Perez de Hita, published at Saragossa in 1595.']

THE Moorish King rides up and down
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's gates to those
Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama!