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 fell1 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 2 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!' 3

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,

So 4 So 4

War mouldeth there each weapon to his needmay he guard the sister and the wife, may he make each curst oppressor bleedSo may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!

4

1 A traitor only fell.] Solano, Captain General of Andalusia, was massacred by the mob of Cadiz, who accused him of reluctance the French. 1808. oppose

to

A Kingless people.] Both Charles IV. and his son had abdicated, while King Joseph (Buonaparte) was unrecognised.

5 War even to the knife.] Guerra al cuchillo.' The answer of Palafox, the defender of Saragoza, to the French summons to surrender.

4 So.] Used like the French ainsi (thus) in its natural sense : often used by Byron in the sense of 'if in this case,'

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;1
Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees :
It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
Fallen nations gaze on Spain; if freed she frees
More than her fell Pizarros 2 once enchained :
Strange retribution! now Columbia's 3 ease

3

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,

4

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?

5

1 The French did not really evacuate Spain till March 1814, when Ferdinand VII. was restored to his country.

2 More than her fell Pizarros.] The two brothers, Francis and Gonzalez Pizarro, about 1475, who bravely but cruelly laid the foundation of the Spanish empire in Peru.

5 Columbia.] The freedom of Columbia from Spain's dominion was asserted by Bolivar in 1811.

4 Barossa.] Defeat of the French by General Graham, near Cadiz, March 5, 1811.

5 Breathe her.] A construction not unusual with rest, sit, but very exceptional in the present case. Cf. Keats's 'Eve of St. Agnes:''He found him in a little moonlit room,' D

How many a doubtful day shall sink in night, Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil, And Freedom's stranger-tree1 grow native of the soil!

XCI

And thou, my friend ! 2-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 unlaureled 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 lię united in repose.

3

XCIII

Here is one fytte 3 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.1 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,5 Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.

1 Stranger-tree.] 'We will lodge there (in England) 50,000 caps of liberty, we will plant there the sacred tree.'-Letter from French Minister of Marine to the Friends of Liberty in England, 1793. 2 My friend. John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died at Coimbra, in Portugal, 1811.

5 Fytte.] See Romance, Sir Tristram,' of Thomas of Erceldoune 4 Moe.] See Glossary.

5 Eld.] See Glossary.

35

SECOND CANTO.

I

COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven!1-but thou, alas !
Didst never yet one mortal song inspire-
Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
And is, despite of war and wasting fire,
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 2

That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow.

ΙΓ

Ancient of days! august Athena! 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,

They won, and passed away-is this the whole ?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole 3

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

1 Blue-eyed maid of heaven.] Bright-eyed,' or 'owl-eyed.' уλavк@πis 'äývn. See Byron's Curse of Minerva.'

2 Of men who never felt the sacred glow.] Grecian independence was not secured till three years after Lord Byron's death, by the treaty of London in 1827.

3 The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole.] Without any further comment, the reader must mark for himself this and other cases of alliteration. 'Sophist's stole,' the philosophic garb-the term sophist in Byron being chiefly used in the primary sense of philosopher, as in Prom. Vinctus' of Eschylus.

III

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here:
Come-but molest not yon defenceless urn:
Look 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 1-and other creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;

Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.

IV

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven-
Is'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, so
On earth no more, but mingled with the skies?
Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?
Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies :
That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

V

4

Or burst the vanished Hero's lofty mound ;*
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:
He fell, and falling nations mourned around;
But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell.
Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps :
Is that a temple where a God may dwell?

3

Why even the worn at last disdains her shattered cell!

1 'Tis Mahomet's.] The Turks were masters of Athens at this time.

2 Poor child of Doubt and Death.] The religious belief of Byron is ever oscillating. It would be unfair to argue a general scepticism from passages of this kind. In many places he admits the existence of God and the efficiency of prayer. (Canto iii. ss. lxxxix. xci.) 3 So.] Equivalent to 'if only.'

4 The tomb of Ajax, from whom a Deme of Athens took the name Aiantis.