Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (199 page)

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 deigned to bend her chastely-awful eyes:
 
But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies;
 
And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb,
 
Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise:
 
Pleasure’s palled victim! life-abhorring gloom
Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain’s unresting doom.

LXXXIV.

 
Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
 
But viewed them not with misanthropic hate;
 
Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song,
 
But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
 
Nought 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,
 
Poured forth this unpremeditated lay,
To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.

TO INEZ.

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.

And dost thou ask what secret woe
 
I bear, corroding joy and youth?
And wilt thou vainly seek to know
 
A pang even thou must fail to soothe?

It is not love, it is not hate,
 
Nor low Ambition’s honours lost,
That bids me loathe my present state,
 
And fly from all I prized the most:

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.

It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
 
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore,
That will not look beyond the tomb,
 
But cannot hope for rest before.

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.

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!

Through many a clime ’tis mine to go,
 
With many a retrospection curst;
And all my solace is to know,
 
Whate’er betides, I’ve known the worst.

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:
 
Here all were noble, save nobility;
None hugged a conqueror’s chain save fallen Chivalry!

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 nought but life,
 
Pride points the path that leads to liberty;
 
Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
War, war is still the cry, ‘War even to the knife!’

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 scimitar to secret knife,
 
War mouldeth there each weapon to his need -
 
So may he guard the sister and the wife,
 
So may he make each curst oppressor bleed,
So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!

LXXXVIII.

 
Flows there a tear of pity for the dead?
 
Look o’er the ravage of the reeking plain:
 
Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
 
Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,
 
Then to the vulture let each corse remain;
 
Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird’s maw,
 
Let their bleached bones, and blood’s unbleaching stain,
 
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 enchained.
 
Strange retribution! now Columbia’s ease
 
Repairs the wrongs that Quito’s sons sustained,
While o’er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrained.

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 woe
 
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 unlaurelled 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!
What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest?

XCII.

 
Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most!
 
Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear!
 
Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
 
In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
 
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 mourned 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 doomed to go:
 
Lands that contain the monuments of eld,
Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Destruction of Sennacherib

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

THE ASSYRIAN came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
  
5
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
  
10
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
  
15
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
  
20

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Youth and Age

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

THERE’S not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay;
’Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
  
5
Are driven o’er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shiver’d sail shall never stretch again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others’ woes, it dare not dream its own;
  
10
That heavy chill has frozen o’er the fountain of our tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;
’Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin’d turret wreathe,
  
15
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.

O could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept o’er many a vanish’d scene, —
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither’d waste of life, those tears would flow to me!
  
20

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Elegy on Thyrza

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

AND thou art dead, as young and fair
 
As aught of mortal birth;
And forms so soft and charms so rare
 
Too soon return’d to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
  
5
And o’er the spot the crowd may tread
 
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low
  
10
 
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow
 
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I loved, and long must love
  
15
 
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell
’Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last,
 
As fervently as thou
  
20
Who didst not change through all the past
 
And canst not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
 
Nor falsehood disavow:
  
25
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;
 
The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lours,
  
30
 
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
 
Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have pass’d away
  
35
I might have watch’d through long decay.

The flower in ripen’d bloom unmatch’d
 
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch’d,
 
The leaves must drop away.
  
40
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
 
Than see it pluck’d today;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
  
45

I know not if I could have borne
 
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow’d such a morn
 
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath past,
  
50
And thou wert lovely to the last,
 
Extinguish’d, not decay’d;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,
  
55
 
My tears might well be shed
To think I was not near, to keep
 
One vigil o’er thy bed:
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
  
60
 
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain,
 
Though thou hast left me free,
  
65
The loveliest things that still remain
 
Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity
 
Returns again to me,
  
70
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order