Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm, Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 1645 The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. CLXXXIV. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy 1650 I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. CLXXXV. 1655 My task is done, my song hath ceased, my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit 1660 My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ; Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been-and my visions flit Less palpably before me-and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. CLXXXVI. 1664 Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been- He wore his sandal-shoon* and scallop-shell; * NOTES. LINE 1. Venice, where Byron resided from 1816 to 1819, and where he wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold, was to Europe during the middle ages what Tyre was to ancient Asia-its commercial capital. Its foundation as a civic corporation dates from 697 A.D.; and it continued to flourish till about the end of the fifteenth century, when the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and the discovery of America, removed the centres of the world's commerce westward. The city is said to be built on from 70 to 80 islands, and is divided into two parts by the Grand Canal, from which branch 146 smaller canals, crossed by 306 bridges.- Bridge of Sighs (Ponte de'i Sospiri) is that which divides, or rather joins the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state. two passages: the criminal went by the one to judgment, and returned by the other to death.'-BYRON. It has 8. Winged Lion's marble piles. The most famous Lion of St Mark, the patron divinity of Venice, whose remains were said to have been brought from Alexandria, is mounted on a granite column. 10. Sea Cybele. 'Sabellicus, describing Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.'-BYRON. Cybele symbolised the earth in its productiveness; she held the key that locked, or unlocked its treasures; her statues were surmounted by a mural crown with towers. 'An ocean Rome.'-The Two Foscari. 19. Tasso's echoes are no more. 'The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas, from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with the independence of Venice.'-HOBHOUSE. 20. Gondolier (Fr.), the man in charge of a gondola or flat-boat. The streets of Venice being canals, gondolas are their cabs. 27. The masque of Italy, in apposition with revel of the earth; both figures indicate the freeness of Venetian manners. 31. Dogeless city. The last Doge (Duke) of Venice was elected in 1788. The office was abolished in 1797, when the republic lost its independence. 33. The Rialto, an open space, or square, the centre of the commercial life of Venice, situated on the island on which the city was first established, and named after it.—Shylock, the Jew in Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice.-The Moor, Shakspeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice. 34. Pierre, a character in Otway's Venice Preserved. 37-45. See Canto III. 47-55, and note. 40-45. The construction here is somewhat hazy, but appears to mean, that the happiness which Fate denies in the ordinary pursuits of life is supplied by the creations of the mind, which first exile, and then supplant the things we dislike. 57. Are now but so; that is, as dreams. 71. Inviolate island. Britain. 73-90. There is a prophetic sadness, with a calm, if not penitential tone and candour in these lines, which, considering the poet's early death, makes it difficult to withhold our sympathy. 82-83. No formal application was made for the admission of Byron's remains into Westminster Abbey, because those who had the disposal of the honour let it be understood that it would be refused; he was therefore buried in the family vault at Hucknall, in Nottinghamshire. 86. The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.' -BYRON. 88-90. The thorns which I have reaped. This is an inaccurate simile; thorns are not reaped, and are not fruit. 'Men do not reap grapes of thorns,' &c.; the meaning is obvious enough. 91-94. The spouseless Adriatic, &c. The annual ceremony of Venice wedding the Adriatic originated in 1177, when the Venetians enabled Pope Alexander III. to bring Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, to acknowledge the papal supremacy. The Pope, as a mark of his gratitude, presented the Doge with a ring, which was thrown from the state barge, Bucentaur, into the sea. This signified that the sea was subject to Venice, as a bride is to her husband. 97. An Emperor sued. The reconciliation between the Emperor and the Pope took place in St Mark's Church, Venice, when the former prostrated himself at the Pontiff's feet, who raising him from the ground, kissed and blessed him. 100. The Suabian. The Emperor Frederick succeeded his father, Frederick Hohenstaufen, as Duke of Suabia in 1147; and his uncle Conrad III., as Emperor of Germany, in 1152.—The Austrian reigns. Venice was made over to Austria by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815; but as a result of the AustroGerman war of 1866, she has been annexed to Italy. 106. Lauwine (Ger.), avalanche. 107-108. 'The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander: "Oh for one hour of Dundee."-BYRON.-Blind Dandolo. Enrico, or Henry Dandolo was elected Doge of Venice in 1192, when over eighty years of age; and in 1204, when about ninety-six, he commanded the Venetians at the taking of Constantinople (Byzantium). He died in 1205, and was buried in the church of St Sophia. 109. Steeds of brass. Four brass horses of Grecian structure, brought from Constantinople in 1205. They were removed to Paris by Napoleon along with the lions. In 1815 they were restored to their old place over the doorway of St Mark's. III. Doria's menace. In the struggle between the Venetians and the Genoese for maritime supremacy, the taking of Chioza (Chioggia) by the latter, so disconcerted the Venetians, that they sent ambassadors with blank paper, requesting the Genoese to prescribe what terms they pleased, only leaving Venice independent. The Genoese commander, Peter Doria, replied that they need not expect peace with Genoa until he put reins upon the unbridled steeds of St Mark. Taking courage from despair, the Venetians renewed their resistance, and humbled their haughty foe in return. 119-120. By-word. Pantaloon, buffoon, applied by the Venetians as a nickname, from pianta-leone, 'Planter of the Lion;' the Lion of St Mark, the standard of the republic. 122-125. Making many slaves. During the Crusades the maritime resources of Venice enabled her to supply the naval wants of the Crusaders, and to acquire dominion of the greater part of the Levant. The Turks (the Ottomite), on their conquest of the Byzantine empire, threatened Europe by land and sea; when the battle of Lepanto (1571), in which the Venetians took a principal part, annihilated their naval power; yet in 1669 they wrested Candia from the Venetians after a struggle of twenty-four years' duration. 124. Troy's rival. There were traditions that the Trojans originally came from Crete (Candia), founded upon coincidences of worship, and the identification of Zeus with both the Cretan and the Trojan Mount Ida. In Virgil's Eneid, Book III., Anchises so interprets the directions of the oracle of Dodona. 129. Sumptuous pile, the Palace of the Doges (Palazzo Ducale). 133. Thin streets; that is, thinly peopled. Byron says the population about the end of the seventeenth century was about 200,000; during his residence it was only about 100,000. 136-144. Refers to the defeat of the Athenian expedition, under Nicias, against Syracuse, when many Athenian prisoners owed their freedom to their being able to recite the poems of Euripides, of which the Syracusans were much enamoured. 148. Thy love of Tasso. See note to 19. 150-153. Venice was given over to Austria by the Congress of Vienna, and Britain's (Albion) responsibility for the cession was as a principal member of that Congress.- -Watery wall, the surrounding ocean-the 'silver streak.' 158. Otway, the author of Venice Preserved.-Radcliffe (Mrs), Mysteries of Udolpho. Schiller, The Ghost-seer, or Armenian.-Shakspeare's art, The Merchant of Venice and Othello. 172-180. 'Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other tree.' -BYRON. 189. Temper it to bear. 'It' may be merged in the verb, as in 'lord it'-temper the ills of existence. 199-216. Nowhere is the effect of association, in its painful, but not least poetic aspect, more beautifully and truthfully illustrated than in these two stanzas. 217. Here the poet begins to relate the result of a visit from Venice to Rome by way of Padua, Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence, which he made in May 1817. 221-223. The emphasised was, and is, represent the past and present of Italy.—The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand may refer to the Italian race, or to the physical conditions of climate, &c., whereby any race may be presumed capable of being moulded into the finest human proportions. 228-229. The home of all Art yields, refers to Italy's possession of the finest remains of Greek sculpture. 230. Thy desert, the Campagna di Roma, now an unhealthy, uncultivated plain surrounding Rome, studded with the remains of ancient civilisation. 238. Friuli's mountains. The Carnian Alps, which form the northern boundary of Friuli, a Venetian district, surrounding the north end of the Adriatic. 240. Iris of the West, the circular glow that accompanies sunset. 242. Meek Dian's crest, the waning moon, to which the term 'meek,' at the phase under observation, is very applicable. 243. Island of the blest, the Elysium of the ancient poets, a place of undisturbed repose, supposed to be an island in the Atlantic. In reference to this stanza Byron says 'It is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening as contemplated in many rides along the banks of the Brenta.' |