O'er petty quarrels upon petty things.

Is this the man who scourged or feasted kings?
Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's statement, and an eari's harangues!
A bust delay'd, a book refused, can shake
The sleep of him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the tamer of the great,
Now slave of all could tease or irritate-
The paltry gaoler and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?
Plunged in a dungeon he had still been great;
How low, how little was this middle state,
Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,-my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still;
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime;
And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's ap-
plause.
[heart
But smile—though all the pangs of brain and
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends and imaged
face

Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the

mind

[kind:

Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,
As if his ashes found their latest home
In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.
He wants not this; but France shall feel the

want

Of this last consolation, though so scant :
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones,
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;
Or carried onward in the battle's van,
To form, like Guesclin's dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is-the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum.

v.

Oh heaven! of which he was in power a feature ;
Oh earth! of which he was a noble creature ;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights! [done!
Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Cæsar's deeds out-
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon-
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their pyramids to hear

Be wavering, which long awed and awes man-A new Cambyses thundering in their ear ;
Smile-for the fetter'd eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again.

IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must he smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound;
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's

ape;

How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,
Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him
Refusing one poor line along the lid, [fast,
To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:
The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust,
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.
But what are these to him? Can glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
hath he of what his tomb consists;
sleeps-nor more if he exists:

ར

While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood ;
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren
sand,

To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta en capital
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid !
Twice spared to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic !-Frederics but in name

And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame:
Who, crush'd at Jena, crouched at Berlin, fell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel 'pass'd,

But left thee as he found thee, still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear-
Kosciusko! On-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar.
The half barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 'tis a sun that sets!
Moscow thou limit of his long career,
For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain-he saw thee-how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

• Guesclin died during the siege of a city: it surrendered, and the keys were brought and laid upon his bier, so that the place might appear rendered to his ashes.

AFTER an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than-though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet,—to one, whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, -to a friend often tried and never found wanting;-to yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least conclurled state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence, but which cannot poison my future while I retain the resource of your friendship and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself.

It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable-Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects.

With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether-and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may

• His marriage.