VII.

Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
"All that we know is, nothing can be known."
Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
Each hath his pang, but feeble sufferers groan
With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.
Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best;
Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron :

There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome rest.

VIII.

Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;
How sweet it were in concert to adore

With those who made our mortal labours light!
To hear each voice we fear'd to hear no more!
Behold each mighty shade reveal'd to sight,

The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! i

IX.

There, thou!. whose love and life together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain-

Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead When busy Memory flashes on my brain?

[In the original MS., for this magnificent stanza, we find what follows:

"Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I

Look not for life, where life may never be;

I am no sneerer at thy phantasy:

Thou pitiest me,-alas! I envy thee,
Thou bold discoverer in an unknown sea,

Of happy isles and happier tenants there;

I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;

Still dream of Paradise, thou knows't not where,

But lov'st too well to bid thine erring brother share."]

Well-I will dream that we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast:

If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
Be as it may Futurity's behest,

For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest! 1

X.

Here let me sit upon this massy stone, 2 The marble column's yet unshaken base; Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav'rite throne : 3 Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place. It may not be: nor ev'n can Fancy's eye Restore what Time hath labour'd to deface. Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh; Unmov'd the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.

XI.

But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane
On high, where Pallas linger'd, loth to flee

[Lord Byron wrote this stanza at Newstead, in October, 1811, on hearing of the death of his Cambridge friend, young Eddlestone; "making," he says, "the sixth, within four months, of friends and relations that I have lost between May and the end of August."]

2 ["The thought and the expression," says Professor Clarke, in a letter to the poet," are here so truly Petrarch's, that I would ask you whether you ever read,—

Poi quando 'l vero sgombra

Quel dolce error pur li medesmo assido,
Me freddo, pietra morta in pietra viva;

In guisa d' uom chè pensi e piange e scriva,'

"Thus rendered by Wilmot, —

'But when rude truth destroys

The loved illusion of the dreamed sweets,

I sit me down on the cold rugged stone,

Less cold, less dead than I, and think and weep alone.""]

3 The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: originally there were one hundred and fifty. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon.

The latest relic of her ancient reign;

The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
England! I joy no child he was of thine:

Thy free-born men should spare what once was free; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine. 1

XII.

But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast,

To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared: 2 Cold as the crags upon his native coast, 3 His mind as barren and his heart as hard, Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, Aught to displace Athena's poor remains : Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains, 4 And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.

XIII.

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athena's tears?

Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears;

The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago.

2 See Appendix, Note A, for some strictures on the removal of the works of art from Athens.

3["Cold and accursed as his native coast."-MS.]

4 I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines :-" When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, Téλos! I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar.

The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land: Yes, she, whose gen'rous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a harpy's hand, Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.1

XIV.

Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appall'd
Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way ? 2
Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthrall'd,
His shade from Hades upon that dread day
Bursting to light in terrible array!

What! could not Pluto spare the chief once more,
To scare a second robber from his prey?

Idly he wander'd on the Stygian shore,

Nor now preserv'd the walls he loved to shield before.

[After stanza xiii. the original MS. has the following:-
"Come, then, ye classic Thanes of each degree,
Dark Hamilton and sullen Aberdeen,
Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
All that yet consecrates the fading scene:
Oh! better were it ye had never been,
Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight,
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen,
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight,

Than ye should bear one stone from wrong'd Athena's site.

"Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew

Now delegate the task to digging Gell,
That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell;
Who can with him the folio's limits swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw ?
Who can topographize or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,

His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without a flaw."]

2 According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer. — See Chandler.

XV.

Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved

To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored,

And snatch'd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr'd!

XVI.

But where is Harold? shall I then forget
To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave?
Little reck'd he of all that men regret;
No loved-one now in feign'd lament could rave;
No friend the parting hand extended gave,
Ere the cold stranger pass'd to other climes :
Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave;
But Harold felt not as in other times,

And left without a sigh the land of war and crimes.

XVII.

He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea
Has view'd at times, I ween, a full fair sight;
When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
The white sail set, the gallant frigate tight;
Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
The glorious main expanding o'er the bow,
The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
The dullest sailer wearing bravely now,

So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.