Page images
PDF
EPUB

To pass the desert to a throne,

What mortal his own doom may guess?

Let none despond, let none despair!
To-morrow the Borysthenes

May see our coursers graze at ease
Upon his Turkish bank, and never

Had I such welcome for a river

As I shall yield when safely there. Comrades, good night!"

The Hetman threw

His length beneath the oak-tree shade,
With leafy couch already made-

A bed nor comfortless nor new

To him, who took his rest whene'er

The hour arrived, no matter where :

His eyes the hastening slumbers steep. –

And if ye marvel Charles forgot

To thank his tale, he wondered not,
The king had been an hour asleep!

[blocks in formation]

860

Ends not in dying,

And, formed for flying,

Love plumes his wing;
Then for this reason

Let's love a season;

But let that season be only Spring.

II

When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;

A few years older,

Ah! how much colder
They might behold her

For whom they sigh!
When linked together,
In every weather,

They pluck Love's feather

From out his wing

He'll stay for ever,

But sadly shiver

Without his plumage, when past the Spring.

STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN

FLORENCE AND PISA

(Written in 1821)

I

H, talk not to me of a name great in story

OH,

The days of our Youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

II

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
"Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled :
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

III

Oh FAME! if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover,
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

IV

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee; Her Glance was the best of the rays that surround thee; When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was Love, and I felt it was Glory.

SELECTIONS FROM DON JUAN

Don Juan is undoubtedly Byron's masterpiece, on which his claim to immortality must largely rest. It was the last and by far the most elaborate of his productions, and had attained a length of over fifteen thousand lines when the poet's departure for Greece left it forever unfinished. Don Juan is in many ways a marvelous poem, but especially so in its perfectly sustained art; while its remarkable mingling of satire and sentiment, cynicism and pathos, sublimity and absurdity, shows forth Byron himself, with all his complexities and contradictions of character. With the possible exception of Butler's Hudibras, it is the wittiest of English poems, and as a complete picture of its age it is certainly unique. Its verse form, the Italian ottiva rima, or eight-line stanza, is handled with an ease and a variety of effect unsurpassed in literature. Whatever the subjectmatter, the style of Don Juan never falls below a high level of excellence, although the poet's moods change with startling rapidity from grave to gay, often leaving the reader in doubt as to what effect was intended. But such anticlimaxes form an essential part of the poem. Through the perfection of its art, its scathing satire, true pathos, and brilliant wit, Don Juan must forever take its place among the great sustained poems of the world.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
The song and oar of Adria's1 gondolier,

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep;
"T is sweet to see the evening star appear ;

'Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

1 Adria: the Adriatic Sea. In this instance Byron perhaps refers to Venice, the "bride of the Adriatic."

CXXIII

'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and look brighter when we come;
'Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark,

Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

CXXIV

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes

From civic revelry to rural mirth;

Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps;
Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth;
Sweet is revenge—especially to women
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

THE SHIPWRECK

(From Canto II)

This marvelous piece of description, probably the most famous of its kind, is a mosaic from various sources, one of which is the account, given by the poet's grandfather, John Byron, of the loss of

66

The Wager," in 1741, in the Straits of Magellan. No mere selection can do justice to Byron's descriptive and comic art. The story of Juan's shipwreck, followed by famine, despair, the death of his companions, and his own final rescue, should be read as a whole.

XXIV

HE ship, called the most holy "Trinidada,”

Was steering duly for the port Leghorn;

For there the Spanish family Moncada

Were settled long ere Juan's sire was born:

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »