The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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_Enter the_ ABBOT.

_Abbot_. My good Lord!
I crave a second grace for this approach;
But yet let not my humble zeal offend
By its abruptness--all it hath of ill
Recoils on me; its good in the effect
May light upon your head--could I say _heart_-- 50
Could I touch _that_, with words or prayers, I should
Recall a noble spirit which hath wandered,
But is not yet all lost.

_Man_. Thou know'st me not;
My days are numbered, and my deeds recorded:
Retire, or 'twill be dangerous--Away!

_Abbot_. Thou dost not mean to menace me?

_Man_. Not I!
I simply tell thee peril is at hand,
And would preserve thee.

_Abbot_. What dost thou mean?

_Man_. Look there!
What dost thou see?

_Abbot_. Nothing.

_Man_. Look there, I say,
And steadfastly;--now tell me what thou seest? 60

_Abbot_. That which should shake me,--but I fear it not:
I see a dusk and awful figure rise,
Like an infernal god, from out the earth;
His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form
Robed as with angry clouds: he stands between
Thyself and me--but I do fear him not.

_Man_. Thou hast no cause--he shall not harm thee--but
His sight may shock thine old limbs into palsy.
I say to thee--Retire!

_Abbot_. And I reply--
Never--till I have battled with this fiend:-- 70
What doth he here?

_Man_. Why--aye--what doth he here?
I did not send for him,--he is unbidden.

_Abbot_. Alas! lost Mortal! what with guests like these
Hast thou to do? I tremble for thy sake:
Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him?
Ah! he unveils his aspect: on his brow
The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye[169]
Glares forth the immortality of Hell--
Avaunt!--

_Man_. Pronounce--what is thy mission?

_Spirit_. Come!

_Abbot_. What art thou, unknown being? answer!--speak! 80

_Spirit_. The genius of this mortal.--Come!'tis time.

_Man_. I am prepared for all things, but deny
The Power which summons me. Who sent thee here?

_Spirit_. Thou'lt know anon--Come! come!

_Man_. I have commanded
Things of an essence greater far than thine,
And striven with thy masters. Get thee hence!

_Spirit_. Mortal! thine hour is come--Away! I say.

_Man_. I knew, and know my hour is come, but not
To render up my soul to such as thee:
Away! I'll die as I have lived--alone. 90

_Spirit_. Then I must summon up my brethren.--Rise![bg]
[_Other Spirits rise._

_Abbot_. Avaunt! ye evil ones!--Avaunt! I say,--
Ye have no power where Piety hath power,
And I do charge ye in the name--

_Spirit_. Old man!
We know ourselves, our mission, and thine order;
Waste not thy holy words on idle uses,
It were in vain: this man is forfeited.
Once more--I summon him--Away! Away!

_Man_. I do defy ye,--though I feel my soul
Is ebbing from me, yet I do defy ye; 100
Nor will I hence, while I have earthly breath
To breathe my scorn upon ye--earthly strength
To wrestle, though with spirits; what ye take
Shall be ta'en limb by limb.

_Spirit_. Reluctant mortal!
Is this the Magian who would so pervade
The world invisible, and make himself
Almost our equal? Can it be that thou
Art thus in love with life? the very life
Which made thee wretched?

_Man_. Thou false fiend, thou liest!
My life is in its last hour,--_that_ I know, 110
Nor would redeem a moment of that hour;
I do not combat against Death, but thee
And thy surrounding angels; my past power
Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,
But by superior science--penance, daring,
And length of watching, strength of mind, and skill
In knowledge of our Fathers--when the earth
Saw men and spirits walking side by side,
And gave ye no supremacy: I stand
Upon my strength--I do defy--deny-- 120
Spurn back, and scorn ye!--

_Spirit_. But thy many crimes
Have made thee--

_Man_. What are they to such as thee?
Must crimes be punished but by other crimes,
And greater criminals?--Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, _that_ I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, _that_ I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The Mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,-- 130
Is its own origin of ill and end--
And its own place and time:[170] its innate sense,
When stripped of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
_Thou_ didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me;
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey--
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.--Back, ye baffled fiends! 140
The hand of Death is on me--but not yours!
[_The Demons disappear._

_Abbot_. Alas! how pale thou art--thy lips are white--
And thy breast heaves--and in thy gasping throat
The accents rattle: Give thy prayers to Heaven--
Pray--albeit but in thought,--but die not thus.

_Man_. 'Tis over--my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well--
Give me thy hand.

_Abbot_. Cold--cold--even to the heart--
But yet one prayer--Alas! how fares it with thee? 150

_Man_. Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die.[171]
[MANFRED _expires._

_Abbot_. He's gone--his soul hath ta'en its earthless flight;
Whither? I dread to think--but he is gone.[172]

FOOTNOTES:

[106] {86}[The MS. of _Manfred_, now in Mr. Murray's possession, is in
Lord Byron's handwriting. A note is prefixed: "The scene of the drama is
amongst the higher Alps, partly in the Castle of Manfred, and partly in
the mountains." The date, March 18, 1817, is in John Murray's
handwriting.]

[107] [So, too, Faust is discovered "in a high--vaulted narrow Gothic
chamber."]

[108] [Compare _Faust,_ act i. sc. 1--

"Alas! I have explored
Philosophy, and Law, and Medicine,
And over deep Divinity have pored,
Studying with ardent and laborious zeal."

Anster's Faust, 1883, p. 88.]

[ap] {86}

_Eternal Agency!_
_Ye spirits of the immortal Universe!_--[MS. M.]

[aq] _Of inaccessible mountains are the haunts_.--[MS. M.]

[109] [_Faust_ contemplates the sign of the macrocosm, and makes use of
the sign of the Spirit of the Earth. _Manfred's_ written charm may have
been "Abraxas," which comprehended the Greek numerals 365, and expressed
the all-pervading spirits of the Universe.]

[110] [The Prince of the Spirits is Arimanes, _vide post,_ act ii. sc.
4, line 1, _seq._]

[111] {87}[Compare _Childe Harold,_ Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. lines 8,
9.]

[ar] _Which is fit for my pavilion_.--[MS. M.]

[as] _Or makes its ice delay_.--[MS. M.]

[112] {89}[Compare "Creatures of clay, I receive you into mine
empire."--_Vathek,_ 1887, p. 179.]

[at] {90}_The Mind which is my Spirit--the high Soul._--[MS. erased.]

[au] _Answer--or I will teach ye._--[MS. M.]

[113] [So the MS., in which the word "say" clearly forms part of the
_Spirit's_ speech.]

[114] {91}[Compare "Stanzas for Music," i. 3, _Poetical Works,_ 1900, iii
435.]

[115] [It is evident that the female figure is not that of Astarte, but
of the subject of the "Incantation."]

[116] [The italics are not indicated in the MS.]

[117] N.B.--Here follows the "Incantation," which being already
transcribed and (I suppose) published I do not transcribe again at
present, because you can insert it in MS. here--as it belongs to this
place: with its conclusion the 1st Scene closes.

[The "Incantation" was first published in "_The Prisoner of Chillon and
Other Poems_. London: Printed for John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1816."
Immediately below the title is a note: "The following Poem was a Chorus
in an unpublished Witch Drama, which was begun some years ago."]

[118] {92}[Manfred was done into Italian by a translator "who was unable to
find in the dictionaries ... any other signification of the 'wisp' of
this line than 'a bundle of straw.'" Byron offered him two hundred
francs if he would destroy the MS., and engage to withhold his hand from
all past or future poems. He at first refused; but, finding that the
alternative was to be a horsewhipping, accepted the money, and signed
the agreement.--_Life_, p. 375, note.]

[av] {93}_I do adjure thee to this spell._--[MS. M.]

[119] {94}[Compare--

[Greek: o~) di~os ai)the\r, k.t.l.]

AEschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus,_ lines 88-91.]

[120] {95}[Compare Hamlet's speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
(_Hamlet,_ act ii. sc. 2, lines 286, _sq._).]

[121] [The germs of this and of several other passages in _Manfred_ may
be found, as Lord Byron stated, in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which
he transmitted to his sister. "Sept. 19, 1816.--Arrived at a lake in the
very nipple of the bosom of the Mountain; left our quadrupeds with a
Shepherd, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which
my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dints as in a
sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I
scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest _pinnacle._ ...
The whole of the Mountain superb. A Shepherd on a very steep and high
cliff playing upon his _pipe_; very different from _Arcadia,_ (where I
saw the pastors with a long Musquet instead of a Crook, and pistols in
their Girdles).... The music of the Cows' bells (for their wealth, like
the Patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, (which reach to a height
far above any mountains in Britain), and the Shepherds' shouting to us
from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared
almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I
have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence:--much more so than
Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the sabre
and musquet order; and if there is a Crook in one hand, you are sure to
see a gun in the other:--but this was pure and unmixed--solitary,
savage, and patriarchal.... As we went, they played the 'Ranz des
Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my
mind with Nature" (_Letters_, 1899, in. 354, 355).]

[122] {96}[Compare--

"Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun."

_To a Skylark_, by P. B. Shelley, stanza iii. line 5.]

[123] ["Passed _whole woods of withered pines, all withered_; trunks
stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a _single
winter_,--their appearance reminded me of me and my family" (_Letters_,
1899, iii. 360).]

[124] {97}["Ascended the Wengen mountain.... Heard the Avalanches
falling every five minutes nearly--as if God was pelting the Devil down
from Heaven with snow balls" (_Letters_, 1899, in. 359).]

[aw] _Like foam from the round ocean of old Hell_.--[MS. M.]

[125] ["The clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up
perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of Hell, during a
Spring-tide--it was white, and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in
appearance. The side we ascended was (of course) not of so precipitous a
nature; but on arriving at the summit, we looked down the other side
upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood
(these crags on one side quite perpendicular) ... In passing the masses
of snow, I made a snowball and pelted Hobhouse with it" (_ibid_, pp.
359. 360).]

[126] [The fall of the Rossberg took place September 2, 1806. "A huge
mass of conglomerate rock, 1000 feet broad and 100 feet thick, detached
itself from the face of the mountain (Rossberg or Rufiberg, near Goldau,
south of Lake Zug), and slipped down into the valley below, overwhelming
the villages of Goldau, Busingen, and Rothen, and part of Lowertz. More
than four hundred and fifty human beings perished, and whole herds of
cattle were swept away. Five minutes sufficed to complete the work of
destruction. The inhabitants were first roused by a loud and grating
sound like thunder ... and beheld the valleys shrouded in a cloud of
dust; when it had cleared away they found the face of nature
changed."--_Handbook of Switzerland,_ Part 1. pp 58, 59.]

[127] {99}[The critics of the day either affected to ignore or severely
censured (e.g. writers in the _Critical_, _European_, and _Gentleman's_
Magazines) the allusions to an incestuous passion between Manfred and
Astarte. Shelley, in a letter to Mrs. Gisborne, November 16, 1819,
commenting on Calderon's _Los Cabellos de Absalon,_ discusses the
question from an ethical as well as critical point of view: "The incest
scene between Amon and Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon
say, in the person of the former--

Si sangre sin fuego hiere
Qua fara sangre con fuego.'

Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical
circumstance. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of
another which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism, or it
may be that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in
existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in
selfishness and antipathy."--_Works of P. B. Shelley,_ 1880, iv. 142.]

[ax] {100} ----_and some insaner sin_.--[MS. erased.]

[128] [Compare _Childe Harold,_ Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2.]

[129] {102}This iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the lower
part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a rainbow come down to
pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts
till noon. ["Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent (7 in
the morning) again; the Sun upon it forming a _rainbow_ of the lower
part of all colours, but principally purple and gold; the bow moving as
you move; I never saw anything like this; it is only in the Sunshine"
(_Letters_, 1899, iii, 359).]

[130] ["Arrived at the foot of the Mountain (the Yung frau, i.e. the
Maiden); Glaciers; torrents; one of these torrents _nine hundred feet_
in height of visible descent ... heard an Avalanche fall, like thunder;
saw Glacier--enormous. Storm came on, thunder, lightning, hail; all in
perfection, and beautiful.... The torrent is in shape curving over the
rock, like the _tail_ of a white horse streaming in the wind, such as it
might be conceived would be that of the '_pale_ horse' on which _Death_
is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a
something between both; it's immense height ... gives it a wave, a
curve, a spreading here, a condensation there, wonderful and
indescribable" (ibid., pp. 357, 358).]

[ay] {103}_Wherein seems glassed_----.--[MS. of extract, February 15,
1817.]

[131] {104}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 2,
3, note 2.]

[132] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxxiv. line 3, note
2.]

[133] [Compare--

"The moving moon went up the sky."

_The Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 263.

Compare, too--

"The climbing moon."

Act iii. sc. 3, line 40.]

[134] {105}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanzas v.-xi.]

[135] The philosopher Jamblicus. The story of the raising of Eros and
Anteros may be found in his life by Eunapius. It is well told. ["It is
reported of him," says Eunapius, "that while he and his scholars were
bathing in the hot baths of Gadara, in Syria, a dispute arising
concerning the baths, he, smiling, ordered his disciples to ask the
inhabitants by what names the two lesser springs, that were fairer than
the rest, were called. To which the inhabitants replied, that 'the one
was called Love, and the other Love's Contrary, but for what reason they
knew not.' Upon which Iamblichus, who chanced to be sitting on the
fountain's edge where the stream flowed out, put his hand on the water,
and, having uttered a few words, called up from the depths of the
fountain a fair-skinned lad, not over-tall, whose golden locks fell in
sunny curls over his breast and back, so that he looked like one fresh
from the bath; and then, going to the other spring, and doing as he had
done before, called up another Amoretto like the first, save that his
long-flowing locks now seemed black, now shot with sunny gleams.
Whereupon both the Amoretti nestled and clung round Iamblichus as if
they had been his own children ... after this his disciples asked him no
more questions."--Eunapii Sardiani _Vitae Philosophorum et Sophistarum_
(28, 29), _Philostratorum_, etc., _Opera_, Paris, 1829, p. 459, lines
20-50.]

[136] {107}[There may be some allusion here to "the squall off
Meillerie" on the Lake of Geneva (see Letter to Murray, June 27, 1816,
_Letters,_ 1899, iii. 333).]

[137] [Compare the concluding sentence of the Journal in Switzerland
(_ibid.,_ p. 364).]

[az] _And live--and live for ever_.--[Specimen sheet.]

[ba] {108}_As from a bath_--.--[MS, erased.]

[138] The story of Pausanias, king of Sparta, (who commanded the Greeks
at the battle of Platea, and afterwards perished for an attempt to
betray the Lacedaemonians), and Cleonice, is told in Plutarch's life of
Cimon; and in the Laconics of Pausanias the sophist in his description
of Greece.

[The following is the passage from Plutarch: "It is related that when
Pausanias was at Byzantium, he cast his eyes upon a young virgin named
Cleonice, of a noble family there, and insisted on having her for a
mistress. The parents, intimidated by his power, were under the hard
necessity of giving up their daughter. The young woman begged that the
light might be taken out of his apartment, that she might go to his bed
in secresy and silence. When she entered he was asleep, and she
unfortunately stumbled upon the candlestick, and threw it down. The
noise waked him suddenly, and he, in his confusion, thinking it was an
enemy coming to assassinate him, unsheathed a dagger that lay by him,
and plunged it into the virgin's heart. After this he could never rest.
Her image appeared to him every night, and with a menacing tone repeated
this heroic verse--

'Go to the fate which pride and lust prepare!'

The allies, highly incensed at this infamous action, joined Cimon to
besiege him in Byzantium. But he found means to escape thence; and, as
he was still haunted by the spectre, he is said to have applied to a
temple at Heraclea, where the _manes_ of the dead were consulted. There
he invoked the spirit of Cleonice, and entreated her pardon. She
appeared, and told him 'he would soon be delivered from all his
troubles, after his return to Sparta:' in which, it seems, his death was
enigmatically foretold." "Thus," adds the translator in a note, "we find
that it was a custom in the pagan as well as in the Hebrew theology to
conjure up the spirits of the dead, and that the witch of Endor was not
the only witch in the world."--Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p. 339.

The same story is told in the _Periegesis Graecae_, lib. iii. cap. xvii.,
but Pausanias adds, "This was the deed from the guilt of which Pausanias
could never fly, though he employed all-various purifications, received
the deprecations of Jupiter Phyxius, and went to Phigalea to the
Arcadian evocators of souls."--_Descr. of Greece_ (translated by T.
Taylor), 1794, i. 304, 305.]

[139] {109}[Compare--

"But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lxxiii. lines 6, 7.

Byron did not know, or ignored, the fact that the Jungfrau was first
ascended in 1811, by the brothers Meyer, of Aarau.]

[140] {110}[Compare--

"And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?
* * * * *
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts."

_Hymn before Sunrise, etc.,_ by S.T. Coleridge, lines 47, 48, 53.

"Arrived at the Grindenwald; dined, mounted again, and rode to the
higher Glacier--twilight, but distinct--very fine Glacier, like _a
frozen hurricane_" (Letters, 1899, iii. 360).]

[141] [The idea of the Witches' Festival may have been derived from the
Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken.]

[142] [Compare--

"Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
* * * * *
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble--
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet."

_Ode from the French,_ v. 8, 11-14. _Poetical Works,_ 1900, iii. 435.

Compare, too, _Napoleon's Farewell_, stanza 3, ibid., p. 428. The
"Voice" prophesies that St. Helena will prove a second Elba, and that
Napoleon will "live to fight another day."]

[143] {111}[Byron may have had in his mind Thomas Lord Cochrane
(1775-1860), "who had done brilliant service in his successive
commands--the _Speedy_, _Pallas_, _Imperieuse_, and the flotilla of
fire-ships at Basque Roads in 1809." In his Diary, March 10, 1814, he
speaks of him as "the stock-jobbing hoaxer" (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 396,
note 1).]

[144] {112}[Arimanes, the Aherman of _Vathek_, the Arimanius of Greek
and Latin writers, is the Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu, "who is all death,"
the spirit of evil, the counter-creator) of the _Zend-Avesta_,
"Fargard," i. 5 (translated by James Darmesteter, 1895, p. 4). Byron may
have got the form Arimanius (_vide_ Steph., _Thesaurus_) from
D'Herbelot, and changed it to Arimanes.]

[145] [The "formidable Eblis" sat on a globe of fire--"in his hand ...
he swayed the iron sceptre that causes ... all the powers of the abyss
to tremble."--_Vathek_, by William Beckford, 1887, p. 178.]

[bb] {112}_The comets herald through the burning skies_.--[Alternative
reading in MS.]

[146] {114}[Compare--

"Sorrow is Knowledge."

Act I. sc. 1, line 10, _vide ante_, p. 85.

Compare, too--

"Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
'All that we know is, nothing can be known.'"

_Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza vii. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 103.]

[147] {115}[Astarte is the classical form (_vide_ Cicero, _De Natura
Deorum_, iii. 23, and Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, iv.) of Milton's

"Mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both."

Cicero says that she was married to Adonis, alluding, no doubt, to the
myth of the Phoenician Astoreth, who was at once the bride and mother of
Tammuz or Adonis.]

[bc] {116}_Or dost Qy?_--[Marginal reading in MS.]

[148] [Compare--

" ... illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cii. lines 7-9.]

[149] {118}[Compare--

" ... a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concentered recompense."

_Prometheus_, iii. 55-57, _vide ante_, p. 51.]

[150] {119}[On September 22, 1816 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 357, note 2),
Byron rode from Neuhaus, at the Interlaken end of Lake Thun, to the
Staubbach. On the way between Matten and Muellinen, not far from the
village of Wilderswyl, he passed the baronial Castle of Unspunnen, the
traditional castle of Manfred. It is "but a square tower, with flanking
round turrets, rising picturesquely above the surrounding brushwood." On
the same day and near the same spot he "passed a rock; inscription--two
brothers--one murdered the other; just the place for it." Here,
according to the Countess Guiccioli, was "the origin of _Manfred_." It
is somewhat singular that, on the appearance of _Manfred_, a paper was
published in the June number of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_, 1817,
vol. i. pp. 270-273, entitled, "Sketch of a Tradition related by a Monk
in Switzerland." The narrator, who signs himself P. F., professes to
have heard the story in the autumn of 1816 from one of the fathers "of
Capuchin Friars, not far from Altorf." It is the story of the love of
two brothers for a lady with whom they had "passed their infancy." She
becomes the wife of the elder brother, and, later, inspires the younger
brother with a passion against which he struggles in vain. The fate of
the elder brother is shrouded in mystery. The lady wastes away, and her
paramour is found dead "in the same pass in which he had met his sister
among the mountains." The excuse for retelling the story is that there
appeared to be "a striking coincidence in some characteristic features
between Lord Byron's drama and the Swiss tradition."]