Selected Poems (78 page)

CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

Canto the Third

‘A fin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n’y a en vérité de remède que celui-ll et le temps.’ —
Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D’Alembert, Sept.
7, 1776.

I

Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!

A
DA
! sole daughter of my house and heart?

When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,

And when we parted, – not as now we part,

5

But with a hope. –

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by,

When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

II

10

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed

That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar!

Swift be their guidance, wheresoe’er it lead!

Though the strain’d mast should quiver as a reed,

15

And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,

Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail

Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.

III

In my youth’s summer I did sing of One,

20

The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;

Again I seize the theme, then but begun,

And bear it with me, as the rushing wind

Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find

The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,

25

Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,

O’er which all heavily the journeying years

Plod the last sands of life, – where not a flower appears.

IV

Since my young days of passion – joy, or pain,

Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,

30

And both may jar: it may be, that in vain

I would essay as I have sung to sing.

Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling

So that it wean me from the weary dream

Of selfish grief or gladness – so it fling

35

Forgetfulness around me – it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V

He, who grown aged in this world of woe,

In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,

So that no wonder waits him; nor below

40

Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,

Cut to his heart again with the keen knife

Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell

Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife

With airy images, and shapes which dwell

45

Still unimpair’d, though old, in the soul’s haunted cell.

VI

’Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense, that we endow

With form our fancy, gaining as we give

The life we image, even as I do now.

50

What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,

Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,

Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mix’d with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,

And feeling still with thee in my crush’d feelings’ dearth.

VII

55

Yet must I think less wildly: – I
have
thought

Too long and darkly, till my brain became,

In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought,

A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:

And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,

60

My springs of life were poison’d. ’Tis too late!

Yet am I changed; though still enough the same

In strength to bear what time can not abate,

And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

VIII

Something too much of this: – but now ’tis past,

65

And the spell closes with its silent seal.

Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last;

He of the breast which fain no more would feel,

Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne’er heal;

Yet Time, who changes all, had alter’d him

70

In soul and aspect as in age: years steal

Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;

And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

IX

His had been quaff’d too quickly, and he found

The dregs were wormwood; but he fill’d again,

75

And from a purer fount, on holier ground,

And deem’d its spring perpetual; but in vain!

Still round him clung invisibly a chain

Which gall’d for ever, fettering though unseen,

And heavy though it clank’d not; worn with pain,

80

Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,

Entering with every step he took through many a scene.

X

Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix’d

Again in fancied safety with his kind,

And deem’d his spirit now so firmly fix’d

85

And sheath’d with an invulnerable mind,

That, if no joy, no sorrow lurk’d behind;

And he, as one, might ’midst the many stand

Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find

Fit speculation; such as in strange land

90

He found in wonder-works of God and Nature’s hand.

XI

But who can view the ripen’d rose, nor seek

To wear it? who can curiously behold

The smoothness and the sheen of beauty’s cheek,

Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?

95

Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold

The star which rises o’er her steep, nor climb?

Harold, once more within the vortex, roll’d

On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,

Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth’s fond prime.

XII

100

But soon he knew himself the most unfit

Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held

Little in common; untaught to submit

His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell’d

In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell’d

105

He would not yield dominion of his mind

To spirits against whom his own rebell’d;

Proud though in desolation; which could find

A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

XIII

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;

110

Where roll’d the ocean, thereon was his home;

Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,

He had the passion and the power to roam;

The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam,

Were unto him companionship; they spake

115

A mutual language, clearer than the tome

Of his land’s tongue, which he would oft forsake,

For Nature’s pages glass’d by sunbeams on the lake.

XIV

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,

Till he had peopled them with beings bright

120

As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,

And human frailties, were forgotten quite:

Could he have kept his spirit to that flight

He had been happy; but this clay will sink

Its spark immortal, envying it the light

125

To which it mounts, as if to break the link

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.

XV

But in Man’s dwellings he became a thing

Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,

Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,

130

To whom the boundless air alone were home:

Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome,

As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beat

His breast and beak against his wiry dome

Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat

135

Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.

XVI

Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,

With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom;

The very knowledge that he lived in vain,

140

That all was over on this side the tomb,

Had made Despair a smilingness assume,

Which, though ’twere wild, — as on the plunder’d wreck

When mariners would madly meet their doom

With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck, –