INTRODUCTION TO CANTO III.

IN a month from the appearance of "The Siege of Corinth," and "Parasina," Lord Byron wrote to Moore (March 8, 1816) that his poetical feelings began and ended with eastern countries, and that having exhausted the subject, he could make nothing of any other. When a restless spirit, satiated with the monotony of a stationary life, and, above all, anguish at the marriage of his early love, Miss Chaworth, sent him to rove in 1809, the effect was to inspire the two first Cantos of Childe Harold-the earliest poem worthy of his present name. Another domestic catastrophe-the refusal of his wife in Jan. 1816, to live with him any longer-and the consequent clamour which was raised against him, drove him, at the end of April, into a second and final exile. The poetical result was the same as before. The soil which, on the eve of starting, he declared to be exhausted, immediately threw out the richest vintage it had hitherto produced. He travelled through Flanders and the Rhine country to Switzerland, and there completed, before the end of June, the third Canto of Childe Harold. "It is," he says, a "fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies." All these subjects are depicted in his stanzas, which may be considered the poetical autobiography of perhaps the most melancholy period of his not less melancholy than glorious life. The notes of woe were extorted by his domestic misery; the metaphysics, which imparted an occasional mysticism to his strains, he owed to Shelley, whom he met at Geneva; and the admiration of this companion for Wordsworth was also the cause why Lord Byron wrote of the lakes and mountains in a spirit akin to that of the Rydal bard, though expressed in nobler and more animating terms. The third canto was bought by Mr. Murray for 1500 guineas, and published in August 1816. Since the appearance of its precursors, the mind of Lord Byron had gained in depth and energy. The descriptions of nature are grander, the reflections profounder and more impassioned, the words more burning and concise. The stanzas upon Waterloo, those on the thunderstorm in the mountains, and the characters of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon, are among the very finest passages in English verse. Yet so difficult is it to rekindle by a continuation the original enthusiasm, that many gave the palm to the previous cantos, and even Jeffrey did no more than express his confidence, that it would not be thought inferior and might probably be preferred. But a generous article by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, did justice both to the poem and its author- turned back the tide of obloquy which had set in against Lord Byron, and convinced the world that his genius was still on the ascendant

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,-not as now we part,

But with a hope.

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by

When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

II.

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed

That knows his rider.

Welcome to their roar !

Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!

Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed,

And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.

III.

In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind

Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,

O'er which all heavily the journeying years

Plod the last sands of life,-where not a flower appears.

IV.

Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain,
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,
And both may jar: it may be, that in vain

I would essay as I have sung to sing.

Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V.

He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below

Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell

Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

VI.

'Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense that we endow

With form our fancy, gaining as we give

The life we image, even as I do now.

What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,

Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,

Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,

And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth.