THE COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT

(From Manfred, Act III, Scene IV; written in Venice, April,

1817)

SCENE IV. Interior of the tower

MANFRED alone

HE stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of

THE
Tof the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful!

I linger yet with Nature, for the Night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsar's palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements.
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,

ΙΟ

20

Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;
But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,

While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. —

30

And thou didst shine, thou rolling Moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,
As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,

And making that which was not till the place

Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the Great of old,

The dead, but sceptred, Sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

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SELECTIONS FROM CHILDE HAROLD

CANTOS II AND III

Childe Harold is a series of descriptive, reflective, and lyrical stanzas, strung together on a slender thread of narrative. It is divided into four cantos, and is written in the nine-line stanza of Spenser's Faerie Queene,-a measure that, in Byron's hands, becomes an instrument of many strings.

The impressions made upon the poet by his tour through Portugal, Spain, Albania, and Greece are recorded in the first two cantos of Childe Harold, which, when published in March,1 1812, inspired Byron's oft-quoted remark, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." Among much that is trivial and commonplace, certain stanzas in Cantos I and II rise into greatness.

But there is a vast gulf fixed between the first two and the last two cantos of Childe Harold. Cantos III and IV, published in 1816 and 1818, respectively, first showed the world the scope of Byron's genius. They form an imperishable contribution to literature. Their subjectmatter is furnished by the scenery and historical associations of Belgium, the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy. But Childe Harold is no mere versified notebook. Here Byron's passion for the grander aspects of nature the mountains and the sea - finds its highest expression. The poem is even more than a series of brilliant scenic descriptions: it is, as the poet himself says, "a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious." Byron's sense of historic continuity and his vivid imagination bring the dead past to life again, with its art and literature, its great deeds and its mighty men, "The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome."

GREECE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1821 (From Canto II)

Though Greece, enslaved by the Turks and rent by domestic discord, showed at this period little capacity for self-government, she yet regained her independence as the result of the revolution begun in 1821. Some twelve years after writing the present stanzas Byron was to offer up his own life upon the altar of Grecian freedom.

1 Nicol, Byron (English Men of Letters), gives February 29; but Leslie Stephen, article "Byron," Dictionary of National Biography, gives March; and E. H. Coleridge, Poetical Works of Lord Byron (1 vol.), gives March 10.

II

NCIENT of days! august Athena! where,

ΑΝ

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

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

LXXIII

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long-accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's 1 sepulchral strait

1

Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,

2

Leap from Eurotas' " banks, and call thee from the tomb?

LXXIV

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow

Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,

Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now

Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?

1 Thermopylæ: a narrow pass on the eastern coast, through which ran the only road from northern to southern Greece. Here, in 480 B.C., Leonidas, the Spartan, with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thebans, met the Persian army of Xerxes. The Greeks were slain to a man, and “Thermopyla" has become a synonym of "patriotism."

2 Eurotas: a river of Greece, on which Sparta was situated.

8 Thrasybulus: an Athenian general and statesman who, in 403 B.C., by seiz. ing Phyle and the Piræus, overthrew the Thirty Tyrants of Athens and restored the democracy.