It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount!

I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipp'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought.
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy :
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing - there

As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who call'd you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shatter'd and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain -
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun

Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? -
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!

GOD! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

To rise before me

Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.

1802

1

VI

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

B

(1788-1824)

YRON has been admired on the continent

of Europe above all other modern English poets, and the great Goethe praised him extravagantly. His reputation in his own country, however, has steadily faded. Will his detractors obliterate his name, or his admirers paint it in everlasting colors above them all? Time alone will tell, but in justice to ourselves we dare not let him go till we have known him as he is and at his best.

Byron is the poet of storm and passion, of revolt, and romantic daring, and generous sacrifice, and bitter hate, and sardonic laughter, and unconquerable despair. We must forget the placid calm of Wordsworth, the ethereal sweetness of Shelley, the sensuous loveliness of Keats, the singing metres of Tennyson, if we would read Byron successfully. A study of his poetry with a microscope reveals nothing. It is only in the large and rapid description of poems like " Childe Harold " and " Don Juan " that we get him at his best; for here he tells his own romantic history and paints his own figure with dramatic vividness and almost devilish glee. In his own day these long descriptive poems were read with the

eagerness of novels, but to-day we prefer our dramatic stories in prose, and have lost the art of reading descriptive poems. Perhaps sometime his highly colored and romantic life will be told briefly in the fierce descriptions of his own poems, and then we shall read the story with zest and understanding.

Byron has probably been described best by Lord Macaulay, who was just the person to do him justice. Says Macaulay:

"It is hardly too much to say that Lord Byron could exhibit only one man and one woman — a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection; a woman all softness, loving to caress and be caressed, but capable of being transformed by passion into a tigress. . . . He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end of his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object in every landscape. Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. . . . His heroes are men who have arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who are sick of life, who are at war with society, . . . and who to the last defy the whole power of earth and heaven. He always described himself as a man of the same kind with his favourite creations; as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity for happiness was gone and could not be restored, but whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or hereafter."

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