[First published in the Edition of 1901 from a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Murray.] 'TIS midnight- but it is not dark Within thy spacious place, St. Mark ! The Lights within, the Lamps without, Shine above the revel rout. The brazen Steeds are glittering o'er Facing the palace in which doth lodge It is a princely colonnade! And wrought around a princely place, Which makes the fearless isles so free! Every pillar fair to see, Marble- jasper - and porphyry hard by which stands With fretted pinnacles on high, More like the mosque of orient lands, And Mary's blessèd likeness stands. VENICE, December 6, 1816. NOSE and chin would shame a knocker; ANSWER - Many passengers arrest one, To demand the same free question. Shorter 's my reply, and franker, That's the Bard, the Beau, the Banker. Yet if you could bring about Just to turn him inside out, Satan's self would seem less sooty, And his present aspect - Beauty. Mark that (as he masks the bilious Air, so softly supercilious) Chasten'd bow, and mock humility, Almost sicken to servility; Hear his tone (which is to talking That which creeping is to walking, Now on all-fours, now on tip-toe); Hear the tales he lends his lip to; Little hints of heavy scandals; Every friend in turn he handles; 10 20 30 All which women or which men do, Glides forth in an innuendo, 40 Clothed in odds and ends of humour You are neither - then he 'll flatter, .Lights which ought to burn the brighter For his merits, would you know 'em? THE DUEL 50 60 70 [First published in the Edition of 1901 from a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Murray. These lines, addressed to Mary Chaworth, allude to the duel fought between her granduncle, William Chaworth, Esq., of Annesley, and the poet's granduncle, the fifth Lord Byron, on January 26, 1765. Mr. Chaworth fell in the encounter, and his antagonist was tried before the House of Lords on the charge of murder, but acquitted by a verdict of 'manslaughter.'] 'Tis fifty years, and yet their fray To me the Lands of him who slew 10 To Monarchs crown'd, and some dis- As ever Britain's Annals knew: And the last Conquer'd own'd the line I loved thee I will not say how, Since things like these are best forgot: Perhaps thou mayst imagine now Who loved thee, and who loved thee not. And thou wert wedded to another, And I at last another wedded: I am a father, thou a mother, To Strangers vow'd, with strangers bedded And what he is, and what thou art, STANZAS TO THE PO [These stanzas were first published in 1824 by Medwin in the Conversations. According to a statement of the Countess Guiccioli they were composed by Byron in April, 1819, while actually sailing on the Po from Venice to Ravenna, where he was to join her. The stanzas were supposed by the earlier editors to have been transmitted to London in a letter to Murray (May 8, 1820), with the direction: 'They must not be published: pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions.' Mr. E. H. Coleridge points out several incongruities in these statements, and suggests that the poem alluded to as mere verses of society' is not this address to the Po, but the somewhat cynical rhymes, 'Could Love forever, Run like a river.' The theory is plausible, but no more. In a letter to the Athenæum, August 24, 1901, Mr. Richard Edgcumbe suggests that the poem is to the river Trent, and is concerned with Mrs. Chaworth Musters.] Thy bosom overboils, congenial river! away But left long wrecks behind: and now again, Borne in our old unchanged career, we move; Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main. And I to loving one I should not love. The current I behold will sweep beneath 21 Her native walls and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat. She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee, Full of that thought; and, from that mo ment, ne'er Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see, Without the inseparable sigh for her! Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream, Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on But that which keepeth us apart is not Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot, As various as the climates of our birth. 40 A stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd By the black wind that chills the polar flood. SONNET ON THE NUPTIALS OF THE MARQUIS ANTONIO CAVALLI WITH THE COUNTESS CLELIA RASPONI OF RAVENNA [First published in the Edition of 1901 from a manuscript in the possession of the Lady Dorchester.] A NOBLE Lady of the Italian shore, Lovely and young, herself a happy bride, Commands a verse, and will not be denied, From me a wandering Englishman; I tore One sonnet, but invoke the muse once more To hail these gentle hearts which Love has tied, In Youth, Birth, Beauty, genially allied, And blest with Virtue's soul and Fortune's [A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ravenna when he wrote these Stanzas, says: They were composed, like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy, and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song was labouring under an access of fever.' So reads the note in the Edition of 1831. It is to be remarked, however, that Byron was not at Ravenna but at Venice on the date of the poem.] COULD Love for ever Run like a river, And Time's endeavour Be tried in vain No other pleasure With this could measure, And like a treasure We'd hug the chain. When lovers parted A few years older, For whom they sigh! 10 20 |