Lands of the dark-eyed Maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's 1 blaze:
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase;
But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,

2

From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.

XXIII

'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel
We once have loved, though love is at an end:
The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
Who, with the weight of years would wish to bend,
When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?
Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,
Death hath but little left him to destroy!

Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

XXIV

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,
The soul forgets her schemes of hope and pride,
And flies unconscious o'er each backward year.
None are so desolate but something dear,
Dearer than self, possesses or possessed
A thought, and claims the homage of a tear ;
A flashing pang! of which the weary breast
Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

XXV

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

1 Hecate's.] Diana or Luna, the moon, Diva triformis. 2 Mauritania.] Morocco. For a similarity of suffix supposed to be Basque, itan or esten, as in Turkestan, conf. Britannia, the land of the Brits.

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

XXVI

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None1 that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less,
Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued :
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

XXVII

More blest the life of godly eremite,2
Such as on lonely Athos 3 may be seen,
Watching at eve upon the giant height,
Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene,
That he who there at such an hour hath been
Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;
Then slowly tear him from the witching scene,
Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,
Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.

XXVIII

Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track
Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,
And each well-known caprice of wave and wind;
Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;
The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,
As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,

Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well.

1 None.]

An involved, though easily intelligible sentence. None of all that followed, sought, and sued, with kindred consciousness endued, would, if we were not, seem to smile the less.

2 Eremite.] pnuos, child of the desert. 'H' in hermit is inadmissible etymologically.

3 Athos.] In the ancient 'Chersonesus Chalcidica,' the 'Holy Mountain,' with its nineteen convents and 6,000 monks.

XXIX

But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,1 The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride : Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide : While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.

XXX

Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
But trust not this; too easy youth, beware!
A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
And thou may'st find a new Calypso there.
Sweet Florence! could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine :
But checked by every tie, I may not dare
To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.

XXXI

Thus Harold deemed, as on that lady's eye
He looked, and met its beam without a thought
Save admiration glancing harmless by :
Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,
Who knew his votary often lost and caught,
But knew him as his worshipper no more,
And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought :
Since now he vainly urged him to adore,

Well deemed the little God his ancient sway was o'er.

XXXII

Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze,
One who, 'twas said, still sighed to all he saw,

·

1 Calypso's isles.] The island of Goza is the island Ogygia (Calypso's isle). The goddess detained Ulysses, but was commanded by Zeus to release him to his 'mortal bride,' Penelope. His boy,' Telemachus. Mentor corresponds in character and function to the Abrahamic Eliezer of Damascus.

Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze,
Which others hailed with real or mimic awe,
Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law,
All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims :
And much she marvelled that a youth so raw

Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.

XXXIII

Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
Now masked in silence or withheld by pride,
Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,
And spread its snares licentious far and wide;
Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside,
As long as aught was worthy to pursue:
But Harold on such arts no more relied;
And had he doted on those eyes so blue,
Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.

XXXIV

Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs; What careth she for hearts when once possessed? Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes; But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes; Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk confidence still best with woman copes : Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes.

XXXV

'Tis an old lesson; Time approves it true,

And those who know it best, deplore it most;
When all is won that all desire to woo,

The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
Youth wasted, minds degraded, honour lost,
These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these!
If, kindly cruel, early hope is crost,
Still to the last it rankles, a disease,

Not to be cured, when love itself forgets to please.

1

1 Tropes.] Figures, or the hyperbolical language of a lover. See in Hamlet' this use of 'tropically?

XXXVI

Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
For we have many a mountain-path to tread,
And many a varied shore to sail along,
By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led-
Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head
Imagined in its little schemes of thought;
Or e'er in new Utopias 1 were ared,2

1

To teach man what he might be, or he ought; If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

XXXVII

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
Though alway changing, in her aspect mild;
From her bare bosom let me take my fill,

3

Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.
Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,

Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:

To me by day or night she ever smiled,

Though I have marked her when none other hath,

And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

XXXVIII

Land of Albania !4 where Iskander 5 rose,
Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,
And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes
Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize :

1 Utopias.] The Atopia, the strange place, outside the world's geography; the ideal state of Sir Thomas More.

2 Ared.] See Glossary.

3 Her never-weaned.] The intensity of Byron's love for nature is everywhere manifest-see Stanza xxv.; Canto iii. ss. xiii., lix., xciii., cix.; Canto iv. s. clxxviii. This love of nature had died among the mechanical and metaphysical poets, till Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron revived it. See Wordsworth

'I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they.'

4 Albania.] The north-western part of Greece, including part of ancient Epirus.

5 Iskander.] Alexander, called by the Turks Iskander Beg, or Alexander the Bey, an Albanian chief, whose European name was George Castriot, and who resisted most bravely the Ottomans at the close of the fifteenth century.