But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies; And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb, Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise: Pleasure's pall'd victim! life-abhorring gloom Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom. LXXXIV. Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng; To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day. TO INEZ. NAY, smile not at my sullen brow; Yet Heaven avert that ever thou Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain. 2. And dost thou ask, what secret woe 3. It is not love, it is not hate, Nor low Ambition's honours lost, 4. It is that weariness which springs 5. It is that settled, ceaseless gloom 6. What Exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, The blight of life - the demon Thought. 7. Yet others rapt in pleasure seem, 8. Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, Whate'er betides, I've known the worst. 9. What is that worst? Nay do not ask In pity from the search forbear: Smile on nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there. LXXXV. Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu! Who may forget how well thy walls have stood? None hugg'd a conqueror's chain, save fallen Chivalry! * Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1809. LXXXVI. Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate! Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, War, war is still the cry, "War even to the knife!"* LXXXVII. Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed! LXXXVIII. Flows there a tear of pity for the dead? Let their bleach'd bones, and blood's unbleaching stain, LXXXIX. Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done; "War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza. Fall'n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees XC. Not all the blood at Talavera shed, Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight, Have won for Spain her well asserted right. And thou, my friend!* XCI. since unavailing woe By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest? * The Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month, I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most! XCIII. Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage: Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quell'd. |