Cantona The First
[19]
Oh, thou! in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,[k]
Muse! formed or fabled at the Minstrel's will!
Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,[l][20]
Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred Hill:
Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;[m]
Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine, [1.B.][16]
Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
To grace so plain a tale—this lowly lay of mine.
Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,
Who ne in Virtue's ways did take delight;
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
Ah me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;[n]
Few earthly things found favour in his sight[o]
Save concubines and carnal companie,
And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.[21]
[17]
Childe Harold was he hight:[22]—but whence his name[p]
And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
And had been glorious in another day:
But one sad losel soils a name for ay,[23]
However mighty in the olden time;
Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme,[q]
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.
Childe Harold basked him in the Noontide sun,[r]
Disporting there like any other fly;[18]
Nor deemed before his little day was done
One blast might chill him into misery.
But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
Worse than Adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of Satiety:
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell.
For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,[s]
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sighed to many though he loved but one,[t][24]
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,[u]
And from his fellow Bacchanals would flee;[19]
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But Pride congealed the drop within his ee:[25]
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,[v]
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;[26]
With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
The Childe departed from his father's hall:
It was a vast and venerable pile;
So old, it seeméd only not to fall,
Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle.
Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile![w]
Where Superstition once had made her den
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile;[x]
And monks might deem their time was come agen,[27]
If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.
[20]
[y]
Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,[z][21]
As if the Memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know;
For his was not that open, artless soul
That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow,
Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,
Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control.
[aa]
And none did love him!—though to hall and bower[28]
He gathered revellers from far and near,[22]
He knew them flatterers of the festal hour,
The heartless Parasites of present cheer.
Yea! none did love him—not his lemans dear—[ab][29]
But pomp and power alone are Woman's care,
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;[30]
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
[23]
Childe Harold had a mother—not forgot,[ac]
Though parting from that mother he did shun;
A sister whom he loved, but saw her not[31]
Before his weary pilgrimage begun:
If friends he had, he bade adieu to none.[ad]
Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel:[ae][32]
Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon
A few dear objects, will in sadness feel
Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.
[24]
His house, his home, his heritage, his lands,[af]
The laughing dames in whom he did delight,[ag]
Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
Might shake the Saintship of an Anchorite,
And long had fed his youthful appetite;
His goblets brimmed with every costly wine,
And all that mote to luxury invite,
Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine,
And traverse Paynim shores, and pass Earth's central line.[ah][33]
The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew,[ai]
As glad to waft him from his native home;
And fast the white rocks faded from his view,
And soon were lost in circumambient foam:
And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
Repented he, but in his bosom slept[34][25]
The silent thought, nor from his lips did come
One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept,
And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept.
But when the Sun was sinking in the sea
He seized his harp, which he at times could string,
And strike, albeit with untaught melody,
When deemed he no strange ear was listening:
And now his fingers o'er it he did fling,
And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight;
While flew the vessel on her snowy wing,
And fleeting shores receded from his sight,
Thus to the elements he poured his last "Good Night."[35]
FOOTNOTES
[19] {15} [The MS. does not open with stanza i., which was written after Byron returned to England, and appears first in the Dallas Transcript (see letter to Murray, September 5, 1811). Byron and Hobhouse visited Delphi, December 16, 1809, when the First Canto (see stanza lx.) was approaching completion (Travels in Albania, by Lord Broughton, 1858, i. 199).]
[k] Oh, thou of yore esteemed——.—[D.]
[l] Since later lyres are only strung on earth.—[D.]
[20] [For the substitution of the text for vars. ii., iii., see letter to Dallas, September 21, 1811 (Letters, 1898, ii. 43).]
[m]
——thy glorious rill.—[D.]
or, —wooed thee, drank the vaunted rill.—[D.]
[n] {16} Sore given to revel and to Pageantry.—[MS. erased.]
[o]
He chused the bad, and did the good affright
With concubines——.—[MS.]
No earthly things——.—[D.]
[21] ["We [i.e. Byron and C.S. Matthews] went down [April, 1809] to Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, ... and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments" (letter to Murray, November 19, 1820. See, too, the account of this visit which Matthews wrote to his sister in a letter dated May 22, 1809 [Letters, 1898, i. 150-160, and 153, note]). Moore (Life, p. 86) and other apologists are anxious to point out that the Newstead "wassailers" were, on the whole, a harmless crew of rollicking schoolboys "—were, indeed, of habits and tastes too intellectual for mere vulgar debauchery." And as to the "alleged 'harems,'" the "Paphian girls," there were only one or two, says Moore, "among the ordinary menials." But, even so, the "wassailers" were not impeccable, and it is best to leave the story, fact or fable, to speak for itself.
[22] {17} ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means "was called." "Childe Harold he hight" would be more correct. Compare Spenser's Faërie Queene, bk. i. c. ix. 14. 9, "She Queene of Faeries hight." But "hight" was occasionally used with the common verbs "is," "was." Compare The Ordinary, 1651, act iii. sc. 1—
" ... the goblin
That is hight Good-fellow Robin."
Dodsley (ed. Hazlitt), xii. 253.]
[p] Childe Burun———.—[MS.]
[23] [William, fifth Lord Byron (the poet's grand-uncle), mortally wounded his kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel which was fought, without seconds or witnesses, at the Star and Garter Tavern, Pall Mall, January 29, 1765. He was convicted of wilful murder by the coroner's jury, and of manslaughter by the House of Lords; but, pleading his privilege as a peer, he was set at liberty. He was known to the country-side as the "wicked Lord," and many tales, true and apocryphal, were told to his discredit (Life of Lord Byron, by Karl Elze, 1872, pp. 5, 6).]
[q] ———nor honied glose of rhyme.—[D. pencil.]
[r] Childe Burun———.—[MS.]
[s] {18} For he had on the course too swiftly run.—[MS. erased.]
[t] Had courted many——.—[MS. erased.]
[24] [Mary Chaworth. (Compare "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," passim: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 285.)]
[u] ——Childe Burun——.—[MS.]
[25] {19} [Compare The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I, stanza ix. 9—
"And burning pride and high disdain
Forbade the rising tears to flow."]
[v]
And strait he fell into a reverie.—[MS.]
——sullen reverie.—[D.]
[26] [Vide post, stanza xi. line 9, note.]
[w] Strange fate directed still to uses vile.—[MS. erased.]
[x]
Now Paphian jades were heard to sing and smile.—[MS. erased.]
Now Paphian nymphs——.—[D. pencil.]
[27] [The brass eagle which was fished out of the lake at Newstead in the time of Byron's predecessor contained, among other documents, "a grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible crime ... which the monks might have committed previous to the 8th of December preceding (Murdris, per ipsos post decimum nonum Diem Novembris, ultimo præteritum perpetratis, si quæ fuerint, exceptis)" (Life, p. 2, note). The monks were a constant source of delight to the Newstead "revellers." Francis Hodgson, in his "Lines on a Ruined Abbey in a Romantic Country" (Poems, 1809), does not spare them—
"'Hail, venerable pile!' whose ivied walls
Proclaim the desolating lapse of years:
And hail, ye hills, and murmuring waterfalls,
Where yet her head the ruin'd Abbey rears.
No longer now the matin tolling bell,
Re-echoing loud among the woody glade,
Calls the fat abbot from his drowsy cell,
And warns the maid to flee, if yet a maid.
No longer now the festive bowl goes round,
Nor monks get drunk in honour of their God."]
[y] {20} The original MS. inserts two stanzas which were rejected during the composition of the poem:—
Of all his train there was a henchman page,
peasant served
A dark eyed boy, who loved his master well;
And often would his pranksome prate engage
Harold's
Childe Burun's ear, when his proud heart did swell
With sable thoughts that he disdained to tell.
Alwin
Then would he smile on him, as Rupert smiled,
Robin
When aught that from his young lips archly fell
Harold's
The gloomy film from Burun's eye beguiled;
And pleased the Childe appeared nor ere the boy reviled. And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe. }
Him and one yeoman only did he take
To travel Eastward to a far countree;
And though the boy was grieved to leave the lake
On whose firm banks he grew from Infancy,
Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily
With hope of foreign nations to behold,
And many things right marvellous to see,
vaunting
Of which our lying voyagers oft have told,
From Mandevilles' and scribes of similar mold. or, In tomes pricked out with prints to monied ... sold In many a tome as true as Mandeville's of old. }
[z] ——Childe Burun——.—[MS.]
[aa] {21} Stanza ix. was the result of much elaboration. The first draft, which was pasted over the rejected stanzas (vide supra, p. 20, var. i.), retains the numerous erasures and emendations. It ran as follows:—
And none did love him though to hall and bower
few could
Haughty he gathered revellers from far and near
An evil smile just bordering on a sneer
He knew them flatterers of the festal hour
Curled on his lip
The heartless Parasites of present cheer,
As if
And deemed no mortal wight his peer
Yea! none did love him not his lemmans dear
To gentle Dames still less he could be dear
Were aught But pomp and power alone are Woman's care
But And where these are let no Possessor fear
The sex are slaves Maidens like moths are ever caught by glare
Love shrinks outshone by Mammons dazzling glare
And Mammon
That Demon wins his [MS. torn] where Angels might despair.
[28] The "trivial particular" which suggested to Byron the friendlessness and desolation of the Childe may be explained by the refusal of an old schoolfellow to spend the last day with him before he set out on his travels. The friend, possibly Lord Delawarr, excused himself on the plea that "he was engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping." "Friendship!" he exclaimed to Dallas. "I do not believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and family excepted, and, perhaps, my mother, a single being who will care what becomes of me" (Dallas, Recollections, etc., pp. 63, 64). Byron, to quote Charles Lamb's apology for Coleridge, was "full of fun," and must not be taken too seriously. Doubtless he was piqued at the moment, and afterwards, to heighten the tragedy of Childe Harold's exile, expanded a single act of negligence into general abandonment and desertion at the hour of trial.
[ab] {22} No! none did love him——.—[D. pencil.]
[29] The word "lemman" is used by Chaucer in both senses, but more frequently in the feminine.—[MS. M.]
[30] "Feere," a consort or mate. [Compare the line, "What when lords go with their feires, she said," in "The Ancient Fragment of the Marriage of Sir Gawaine" (Percy's Reliques, 1812, iii. 416), and the lines—
"As with the woful fere,
And father of that chaste dishonoured dame."
Titus Andronicus, act iv. sc. 1.
Compare, too, "That woman and her fleshless Pheere" (The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, line 180 of the reprint from the first version in the Lyrical Ballads, 1798; Poems by S. T. Coleridge, 1893, App. E, p. 515).]
[ac] {23} Childe Burun——.—[MS.]
[31] [In a suppressed stanza of "Childe Harold's Good Night" (see p. 27, var. ii.), the Childe complains that he has not seen his sister for "three long years and moe." Before her marriage, in 1807, Augusta Byron divided her time between her mother's children, Lady Chichester and the Duke of Leeds; her cousin, Lord Carlisle; and General and Mrs. Harcourt. After her marriage to Colonel Leigh, she lived at Newmarket. From the end of 1805 Byron corresponded with her more or less regularly, but no meeting took place. In a letter to his sister, dated November 30, 1808 (Letters, 1898, i. 203), he writes, "I saw Col. Leigh at Brighton in July, where I should have been glad to have seen you; I only know your husband by sight." Colonel Leigh was his first cousin, as well as his half-sister's husband, and the incidental remark that "he only knew him by sight" affords striking proof that his relations and connections were at no pains to seek him out, but left him to fight his own way to social recognition and distinction. (For particulars of "the Hon. Augusta Byron," see Letters, 1898, i. 18, note.)]
[ad] Of friends he had but few, embracing none.—[MS. erased.]
[ae] Yet deem him not from this with breast of steel.—[MS. D.]
[32] [Compare Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming, ii. 8. 1—"Yet deem not Gertrude sighed for foreign joy."]
[af] {24} His house, his home, his vassals, and his lands.—[MS. D.]
[ag]
The Dalilahs——.—[MS. D.]
His damsels all——.—[MS. erased.]
[ah] ——where brighter sunbeams shine.—[MS. erased.]
[33] "Your objection to the expression 'central line' I can only meet by saying that, before Childe Harold left England, it was his full intention to traverse Persia, and return by India, which he could not have done without passing the equinoctial" (letter to Dallas, September 7, 1811; see, too, letter to his mother, October 7, 1808: Letters, 1898, i. 193; ii. 27).
[ai] The sails are filled——.—[MS.]
[34] He experienced no such emotion on the resumption of his Pilgrimage in 1816. With reference to the confession, he writes (Canto III. stanza i. lines 6-9)—
" ... I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye."
[35] {25} [See Lord Maxwell's "Good Night" in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Poetical Works, ii. 141, ed. 1834): "Adieu, madam, my mother dear," etc. [MS.]. Compare, too, Armstrong's "Good Night" ibid.—
"This night is my departing night,
For here nae langer mun I stay;
There's neither friend nor foe of mine,
But wishes me away.
What I have done thro' lack of will,
I never, never can recall;
I hope ye're a' my friends as yet.
Good night, and joy be with you all."]
