17.

And though some trifling share of praise,
To cheer my last declining days,

To me were doubly dear;
Whilst blessing your beloved name,
I'd waive at once a Poet's fame,
To prove a Prophet here.

1807.

I WOULD I WERE A CARELESS CHILD.

I.

. I WOULD I were a careless child,

Still dwelling in my Highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon1 pride,
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll.

i. Stanzas. [Poems O. and T.]

school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance.”—Detached Thoughts, Nov. 5, 1821; Life, p. 540.]

1. Sassenach, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or English.

2.

Fortune! take back these cultur'd lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile hands,

I hate the slaves that cringe around:

Place me among the rocks I love,

Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar ;

I ask but this again to rove

Through scenes my youth hath known before.

3.

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The World was ne'er design'd for me:

Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour when man must cease to be?
Once I beheld a splendid dream,
A visionary scene of bliss:

Truth!-wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?

4.

I lov'd-but those I lov'd are gone;

Had friends-my early friends are fled :

How cheerless feels the heart alone,

When all its former hopes are dead! Though gay companions, o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill;

Though Pleasure stirs the maddening soul,

The heart-the heart-is lonely still.

5.

How dull to hear the voice of those

Whom Rank or Chance, whom Wealth or Power,

Have made, though neither friends nor foes,

Associates of the festive hour.

Give me again a faithful few,

In years and feelings still the same,

And I will fly the midnight crew,

Where boist'rous Joy is but a name.

6.

And Woman, lovely Woman! thou,
My hope, my comforter, my all!
How cold must be my bosom now,
When e'en thy smiles begin to pall!
Without a sigh would I resign,

This busy scene of splendid Woe,
To make that calm contentment mine,

Which Virtue knows, or seems to know.

7.

1

Fain would I fly the haunts of men 1—

I seek to shun, not hate mankind;

1. [Shyness was a family characteristic of the Byrons. The poet continued in later years to have a horror of being observed by unaccustomed eyes, and in the country would, if possible, avoid meeting strangers on the road.]

My breast requires the sullen glen,

Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.
Oh! that to me the wings were given,

Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven,
To flee away, and be at rest.1

LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE
CHURCHYARD OF HARROW.1 2

SPOT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;

i. Lines written beneath an Elm

In the

Churchyard of Harrow on the Hill

September 2, 1807.—[Poems O. and T.]

I. And I said, O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away, and be at rest."—Psalm lv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language.

"

66

2. [On the death of his daughter, Allegra, in April, 1822, Byron sent her remains to be buried at Harrow, "where," he says, in a letter to Murray, "I once hoped to have laid my own.' "There is," he wrote, May 26, a spot in the churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot; but as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church." No tablet was, however, erected, and Allegra sleeps in her unmarked grave inside the church, a few feet to the right of the entrance.]

With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,

Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mus'd the twilight hours away;

Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But, ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,

And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,

"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"

When Fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast, And calm its cares and passions into rest, Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe my dying hour,If aught may soothe, when Life resigns her power,— To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell, Would hide my bosom where it lov'd to dwell; With this fond dream, methinks 'twere sweet to die— And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie; Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose,

Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;

For ever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade, Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd; Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I lov'd,

Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps mov'd;

VOL. I.

P