CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done, my song hath ceased, my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ;
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been—and my visions flit
Less palpably before me—and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been—
A sound which makes us linger ;—yet—farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell;
Farewell with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain.

NOTES.

THE Roman numeral gives the stanza, the Arabic numeral the line in the stanza.

Notes taken from Mr. Tozer's edition are marked (T.); notes taken from Byron's Poetical Works, edited by Mr. Coleridge, are marked (C.).

CANTO THIRD.

III. 2. "sent into banishment by his own despondent thoughts.' The line is a description of Childe Harold. Cp. Shelley's Alastor.

7. The metaphor is "from a torrent-bed, which when driedup serves for a sandy or shingly path, as is often the case in southern Europe" (T.).

VI. Cp. Shelley, "On a poet's lips I slept" (Golden Treasury, No. 324).

VII. 4. phantasy and flame, 'fiery imaginations.'

VIII. 1. Something too much of this: from Hamlet, III. ii. 69. 2. " 'My chant of doom is ended, and is ratified by the seal of silence" (T.).

IX. purer fount, Nature and the study of antiquity.

XIII. Cp. with this stanza Wordsworth's Lines written near Tintern Abbey, and observe what Wordsworth had learnt from communion with Nature that Harold had failed to learn.

XIV. 1. The Chaldæans were the astrologers of the ancient world.

XV. 5. From Macbeth, III. iv. 21, "Then comes my fit again."

XVII. 1. Stop! addressed to the reader, as if in imagination he were accompanying Harold on his journey.

104

Empire's dust. Byron's sympathies were strongly with Napoleon, whom he regarded as representative of the French Revolution, not as destroyer of the liberties of Europe.

3. Byron visited Waterloo within a year of the battle; the mound with the Belgian lion was not erected till 1823.

9. first and last, Alpha and Omega, supreme in importance.

king-making victory, as establishing kings more firmly on their thrones. In "reference to the Holy Alliance between the emperors of Russia and Austria and the king of Prussia, which was made at this time" (T.).

XVIII. 5. pride of place is a term of falconry, and means the highest pitch of flight. Cp. Macbeth, II. iv. 12, “A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place" (Byron's note).

XIX. 1. Gaul, France.

7. Lion, Napoleon. Wolf, Louis XVIII. and other European monarchs.

9. "Wait to see the results of Waterloo before you praise it.” XX. 9. Harmodius and Aristogeiton were celebrated in Greek tradition and song as the vindicators of Athenian liberty because they killed Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus. As a matter of fact, the tyranny of Hippias, the surviving brother, became much worse after the death of Hipparchus. In the previous line Byron refers to the Greek song about Harmodius beginning "I'll wreathe my sword in myrtle bough."

XXI. A ball was given by the Duchess of Richmond in Brussels on June 15, 1815, the eve of the battle of Quatre-bras. "When the duke arrived, rather late, at the ball, I was dancing, but at once went up to him to ask about the rumours. 'Yes, they are true, we are off to-morrow.' This terrible news was circulated directly, and while some of the officers hurried away, others remained at the ball, and actually had not time to change their clothes, but fought in evening costume (Lady de Ros, Personal Recollections of the Great Duke of Wellington).

XXIII. 1. The Duke of Brunswick fell almost at the beginning of the battle of Quatre-bras. His father, the author of the fatal manifesto against the army of the French Republic, had been killed at Auerbach, Oct. 14, 1806 (C.).

XXVI. 1. Cameron's gathering, the gathering cry of the Highland clan of the Camerons. Lochiel, the name of their chief. Albyn, Gaelic name of Scotland.

9. Evan, Sir Evan Cameron, who fought against Cromwell.

Donald, grandson of Evan, wounded at Culloden; the hero of Campbell's poem, Lochiel's Warning.

XXVII. 1. Ardennes. "The forest of Soignies, between Brussels and Waterloo, is treated by the poet as part of the neighbouring forest-district of the Ardennes, which is on the frontier of France and Belgium" (T.).

3. Cp. Ruskin on the 'pathetic fallacy' by which poets attribute to Nature sympathy with human feelings: Modern Painters, vol. iii., pt. iv., ch. 12.

7. fiery mass, as of a stream of lava.

XXIX. 4. "6. 'Major Howard was the son of the Earl of Carlisle, Byron's guardian, whom he satirised ill-naturedly in English Bards and Scottish Reviewers" (T.).

XXXIV. 6. Cp. Deuteronomy xxxii. 32. The 'apples' are a species of gall-nut.

XXXV. 1. Psalm xc. 10.

XXXVII. 8. inert, paralysed with fear of thee.

XXXVIII. 3. thy footstool. Cp. Joshua x. 24.

XL. 2. steel'd ... on, hardened thee and urged thee on.

3. just. The scorn was right in itself, but it should have been concealed.

XLI. Philip's son, Alexander. Diogenes, the cynic philosopher who lived in a 'tub' (or stone jar), and answered Alexander's question, "What can I do for you?" with Stand out of my light."

XLVI. 2. its own creation, the world of thought.

XLVIII. 5. of a longer date, remembered for a longer time.

6. "What wants that knave that a king should have?' was King James's question on meeting Johnny Armstrong and his followers in full accoutrements. See the ballad" (Byron's note). King James was James V. of Scotland.

XLIX. 1. single fields, single combats.

3. blazon. In the tournaments they wore devices on their shields expressing love, e.g. a bleeding heart (T.).

8. fair mischief, mischievous fair one.

L. 9. Lethe, the river of Forgetfulness in Hades.

LIII. 8. one fond breast. Though Byron professes to speak of a sister of Childe Harold, it is his own half-sister Augusta of whom he is really writing. At this point, in fact, he ceases altogether to distinguish Childe Harold from himself, and we hear no more of Harold till he reappears to say farewell at the end of Canto IV.

LVI. Marceau, general of the French Republic, died at 27 from the wounds received in an engagement with the Arch-Duke Charles, near Coblentz, 1796. "France adored, and her enemies

admired; both wept over him" (Byron).

LVIII. Ehrenbreitstein, i.e. broad stone of honour,' the great fortress on the opposite side of the Rhine to Coblentz, overlooking the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle. Though dismantled by the French in 1801, it is now again one of the strongest fortresses in Europe.

LIX. 5. vultures, i. e. conscience.

LX. 8. attaching maze, 'attractive combination.'

LXI. 6. these withal, with these.'

LXII. 3. "The metaphors contained in 'pinnacled' and 'scalps' must not be pressed, lest they become irreconcilable; 'pinnacled' suggests a sharp point or aiguille, scalps' a rounded dome like the summit of Mont Blanc" (T.).

LXIII. Morat, where the Swiss won a great victory over the Duke of Burgundy in 1476.

7. bony heap, 'heap of bones.' "15,000 dead bodies are said to have been left on the field; these were collected by the Swiss into an ossuary, which was destroyed in 1798 by the soldiers of the Burgundian legion in the Revolutionary French army. The bones which Byron saw scattered abroad were collected and buried, and an obelisk set up over them, in 1822" (T.).

8. Stygian coast. The ancients believed that the souls of the unburied wandered on the banks of the river Styx in the infernal regions, unable to cross it.

LXIV. Cannae, Hannibal's great victory over the Romans in the Second Punic War, B. C. 216. Marathon, the battle that saved Greece in the first Persian invasion, B.C. 490.

7. vice-entailed. Corruption brought about by the vices of princes.

9. Draconic. The laws of Draco, the first written code of legislation at Athens, were notoriously severe.

LXV. Aventicum, now Avenches, the ancient capital of Helvetia. The 'lonely column' is now called the Cigognier, as the storks build upon it. Caecina, the Roman general, took Aventicum in A.D. 69, and put to death one of the chief Helvetians, Julius Alpinus, as instigator of the rebellion against Rome (Tacitus, Hist. I., 68). The next stanza refers to a Latin inscription which, since Byron wrote, has been discovered to be a forgery of the seventeenth century. In English it runs :