Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto IV — Verses 157-174

CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break To separate contemplation, the great whole;

And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul To more immediate objects, and control Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart Its eloquent proportions, and unroll In mighty graduations, part by part, The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

CLVIII.

Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is That what we have of feeling most intense Outstrips our faint expression; e'en so this Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great Defies at first our nature's littleness, Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause and be enlightened; there is more In such a survey than the sating gaze Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place, or the mere praise Of art and its great masters, who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;

The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

CLX.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-- A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.

CLXI.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and light-- The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity.

CLXII.

But in his delicate form--a dream of Love, Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast Longed for a deathless lover from above, And maddened in that vision--are expressed All that ideal beauty ever blessed The mind within its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guest-- A ray of immortality--and stood Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god?

CLXIII.

And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven The fire which we endure, it was repaid By him to whom the energy was given Which this poetic marble hath arrayed With an eternal glory--which, if made By human hands, is not of human thought And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

CLXIV.

But where is he, the pilgrim of my song, The being who upheld it through the past?

Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.

He is no more--these breathings are his last;

His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, And he himself as nothing:--if he was Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed With forms which live and suffer--let that pass-- His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, CLXV.

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all That we inherit in its mortal shroud, And spreads the dim and universal pall Thro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays A melancholy halo scarce allowed To hover on the verge of darkness; rays Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, CLXVI.

And send us prying into the abyss, To gather what we shall be when the frame Shall be resolved to something less than this Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame, And wipe the dust from off the idle name We never more shall hear,--but never more, Oh, happier thought!

can we be made the same: It is enough, in sooth, that ONCE we bore These fardels of the heart--the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII.

Hark!

forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, A long, low distant murmur of dread sound, Such as arises when a nation bleeds With some deep and immedicable wound;

Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground.

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned, And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII.

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?

Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low Some less majestic, less beloved head?

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy, Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled The present happiness and promised joy Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy.

CLXIX.

Peasants bring forth in safety.

--Can it be, O thou that wert so happy, so adored!

Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard Her many griefs for One; for she had poured Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head Beheld her Iris.

--Thou, too, lonely lord, And desolate consort--vainly wert thou wed!

The husband of a year!

the father of the dead!

CLXX.

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made: Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid, The love of millions!

How we did entrust Futurity to her!

and, though it must Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed Our children should obey her child, and blessed Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed Like star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beamed.

CLXXI.

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well: The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung Against their blind omnipotence a weight Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,-- CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny; but no, Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, Good without effort, great without a foe;

But now a bride and mother--and now THERE!

How many ties did that stern moment tear!

From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast Is linked the electric chain of that despair, Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi!

navelled in the woody hills So far, that the uprooting wind which tears The oak from his foundation, and which spills The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wears A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves Shine from a sister valley;--and afar The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, 'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending star Rose o'er an empire,--but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome;--and where yon bar Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight, The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.