The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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[224] {178}[The reference is, probably, to the _Repository of Arts,
Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics_ (1809-1829),
which was illustrated by coloured plates of dresses, "artistic"
furniture, Gothic cottages, park lodges, etc.]

[225] [For "Ridotto," see Letter to Moore, January 28, 1817, _Letters,_
1900, iv. 49, note 1.]

[bn] _Of Imited_ (_sic_) _Imitations, how soon! how._--[MS.]

[226] ["When Brummell was obliged ... to retire to France, he knew no
French; and having obtained a Grammar for the purposes of study, our
friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French
... he responded, 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in
Russia, by the _Elements_.' I have put this pun into _Beppo,_ which is
'a fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several
dinners (as he owned himself), by repeating occasionally, as his own,
some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the
Morning."--_Detached Thoughts_, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 422, 423.]

[227] ["Like Sylla, I have always believed that all things depend upon
Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves. I am not aware of any one thought
or action, worthy of being called good to myself or others, which is not
to be attributed to the Good Goddess--Fortune!"--_Ibid_., p. 451.]

[228] "January 19th, 1818. To-morrow will be a Sunday, and full
Ridotto."--[MS.]

[bo] {181} ----_philoguny,_--[MS.]

[229] {182}[Botherby is, of course, Sotheby. In the _English Bards_
(line 818) he is bracketed with Gifford and Macneil _honoris causti,_
but at this time (1817-18) Byron was "against" Sotheby, under the
impression that he had sent him "an anonymous note ... accompanying a
copy of the _Castle of Chillon,_ etc. [_sic_]." Sotheby affirmed that he
had not written the note, but Byron, while formally accepting the
disclaimer, refers to the firmness of his "former persuasion," and
renews the attack with increased bitterness. "As to _Beppo,_ I will not
alter or suppress a syllable for any man's pleasure but my own. If there
are resemblances between Botherby and Sotheby, or Sotheby and Botherby,
the fault is not mine, but in the person who resembles,--or the persons
who trace a resemblance. _Who_ find out this resemblance? Mr. S.'s
_friends._ _Who_ go about moaning over him and laughing? Mr. S.'s
_friends"_ (Letters to Murray, April 17, 23, 1818, _Letters,_ 1900, iv.
226-230). A writer of satires is of necessity satirical, and Sotheby,
like "Wordswords and Co.," made excellent "copy." If he had not written
the "anonymous note," he was, from Byron's point of view, ridiculous and
a bore, and "ready to hand" to be tossed up in rhyme as _Botherby._ (For
a brief account of Sotheby, see _Poetical Works,_ i. 362, note 2.)]

[bp] {183}_Gorging the slightest slice of Flattery raw_.--[MS. in a
letter to Murray, April 11, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 218.]

[230] {184}[So, too, elsewhere. Wordsworth and Coleridge had depreciated
Voltaire, and Byron, _en revanche_, contrasts the "tea-drinking
neutrality of morals" of the _school_, i.e. the Lake poets, with "their
convenient treachery in politics" (see _Letters,_ 1901, v. 600).]

[231] {184}["Lady Byron," her husband wrote, "would have made an
excellent wrangler at Cambridge." Compare--

"Her favourite science was the mathematical."

_Don Juan,_ Canto I. stanza xii. line 1.]

[232] {185}[Stanza lxxx. is not in the original MS.]

[bq] {186}_Sate Laura with a kind of comic horror_.--[MS.]

[233] {189}[Cap Bon, or Ras Adden, is the northernmost point of Tunis.]

ODE ON VENICE

ODE ON VENICE[234]

I.

Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?--anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers--as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, 10
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
Oh! agony--that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years[235]
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,[236]
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy Tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas[237]--and to the busy hum
Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 30
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere Death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, 40
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of Life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring--albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy 50
Chamber swims round and round--and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.[238]

II.

There is no hope for nations!--Search the page
Of many thousand years--the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting _to be_ which _hath been_,
Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean 60
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order--they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. 70
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,[239]
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the _real_;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your Sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme!--Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits who, despite of all, 80
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered,
Gushing from Freedom's fountains--when the crowd,[240]
Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore,--in which long yoked they ploughed
The sand,--or if there sprung the yellow grain,
'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bowed, 90
And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:--
Yes! the few spirits--who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations--fair, when free--
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! 100

III.

Glory and Empire! once upon these towers[241]
With Freedom--godlike Triad! how you sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit--in her fate
All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled--with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship;--even her crimes 110
Were of the softer order, born of Love--
She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead,
But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,[242]
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles; 120
Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
And called the "kingdom"[243] of a conquering foe,--
But knows what all--and, most of all, _we_ know--
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

IV.

The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;[244]
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time, 130
For Tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean[245]
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeathed--a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a Monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 140
Full of the magic of exploded science--
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!--She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,[246]
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earned with blood.--Still, still, for ever
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 150
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering:--better be
Where the extinguished Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylae,
Than stagnate in our marsh,--or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee![247] 160

FOOTNOTES:

[234] {193}[The _Ode on Venice_ (originally _Ode_) was completed by July
10, 1818 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 245), but was published at the same time
as _Mazeppa_ and _A Fragment_, June 28, 1819. The _motif_, a lamentation
over the decay and degradation of Venice, re-echoes the sentiments
expressed in the opening stanzas (i.-xix.) of the Fourth Canto of
_Childe Harold_. A realistic description of the "Hour of Death" (lines
37-55), and a eulogy of the United States of America (lines 133-160),
give distinction to the _Ode_.]

[235] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiii. lines 4-6.]

[236] [Compare _ibid._, stanza xi. lines 5-9.]

[237] {194}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza iii lines 1-4.]

[238] [Compare _The Prisoner of Chillon_, line 178, note 2, _vide ante_,
p. 21.]

[239] {195}[In contrasting Sheridan with Brougham, Byron speaks of "the
red-hot ploughshares of public life."--_Diary_, March 10, 1814,
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 397.]

[240] [Compare--

"At last it [the mob] takes to weapons such as men
Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant.
Then comes 'the tug of war;'--'t will come again,
I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,'
If I had not perceived that revolution
Alone can save the earth from Hell's pollution."

_Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanza li. lines 3-8.]

[241] {196}[Compare Lord Tennyson's stanzas--

"Of old sat Freedom on the heights."]

[242] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiv. line 3, note 1,
and line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 339, 340.]

[243] {197}[In 1814 the Italian possessions of the Emperor of Austria
were "constituted into separate and particular states, under the title
of the kingdom of Venetian Lombardy."--Koch's _Europe_, p. 234.]

[244] [The Prince of Orange ... was proclaimed Sovereign Prince of the
Low Countries, December 1, 1813; and in the following year, August 13,
1814, on the condition that he should make a part of the Germanic
Confederation, he received the title of King of the
Netherlands.-_Ibid_., p. 233.]

[245] [Compare "Oceano dissociabili," Hor., _Odes_, I. iii 22.]

[246] [In October, 1812, the American sloop _Wasp_ captured the English
brig _Frolic_; and December 29, 1812, the _Constitution_ compelled the
frigate _Java_ to surrender. In the following year, February 24, 1813,
the _Hornet_ met the _Peacock_ off the Demerara, and reduced her in
fifteen minutes to a sinking condition. On June 28, 1814, the
sloop-of-war _Wasp_ captured and burned the sloop _Reindeer_, and on
September 11, 1814, the _Confiance_, commanded by Commodore Downie, and
other vessels surrendered."--_History of America_, by Justin Winsor,
1888, vii. 380, _seq_.]

[247] {198}[Byron repented, or feigned to repent, this somewhat
provocative eulogy of the Great Republic: "Somebody has sent me some
American abuse of _Mazeppa_ and 'the Ode;' in future I will compliment
nothing but Canada, and desert to the English."--Letter to Murray,
February 21, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 410. It is possible that the
allusion is to an article, "Mazeppa and Don Juan," in the _Analectic
Magazine_, November, 1819, vol. xiv, pp. 405-410.]

MAZEPPA.

INTRODUCTION TO _MAZEPPA_

_Mazeppa_, a legend of the Russian Ukraine, or frontier region, is based
on the passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII_. prefixed as the
"Advertisement" to the poem. Voltaire seems to have known very little
about the man or his history, and Byron, though he draws largely on his
imagination, was content to take his substratum of fact from Voltaire.
The "true story of Mazeppa" is worth re-telling for its own sake, and
lends a fresh interest and vitality to the legend. Ivan Stepanovitch
Mazeppa (or Mazepa), born about the year 1645, was of Cossack origin,
but appears to have belonged, by descent or creation, to the lesser
nobility of the semi-Polish Volhynia. He began life (1660) as a page of
honour in the Court of King John Casimir V. of Poland, where he studied
Latin, and acquired the tongue and pen of eloquent statesmanship.
Banished from the court on account of a quarrel, he withdrew to his
mother's estate in Volhynia, and there, to beguile the time, made love
to the wife of a neighbouring magnate, the _pane_ or Lord Falbowski. The
intrigue was discovered, and to avenge his wrongs the outraged husband
caused Mazeppa to be stripped to the skin, and bound to his own steed.
The horse, lashed into madness, and terror-stricken by the discharge of
a pistol, started off at a gallop, and rushing "thorough bush, thorough
briar," carried his torn and bleeding rider into the courtyard of his
own mansion!

With regard to the sequel or issue of this episode, history is silent,
but when the curtain rises again (A.D. 1674) Mazeppa is discovered in
the character of writer-general or foreign secretary to Peter
Doroshenko, hetman or president of the Western Ukraine, on the hither
side of the Dnieper. From the service of Doroshenko, who came to an
untimely end, he passed by a series of accidents into the employ of his
rival, Samoilovitch, hetman of the Eastern Ukraine, and, as his
secretary or envoy, continued to attract the notice and to conciliate
the good will of the (regent) Tzarina Sophia and her eminent _boyard_,
Prince Basil Golitsyn. A time came (1687) when it served the interests
of Russia to degrade Samoilovitch, and raise Mazeppa to the post of
hetman, and thenceforward, for twenty years and more, he held something
like a regal sway over the whole of the Ukraine (a fertile "no-man's
land," watered by the Dnieper and its tributaries), openly the loyal and
zealous ally of his neighbour and suzerain, Peter the Great.

How far this allegiance was genuine, or whether a secret preference for
Poland, the land of his adoption, or a long-concealed impatience of
Muscovite suzerainty would in any case have urged him to revolt, must
remain doubtful, but it is certain that the immediate cause of a final
reversal of the allegiance and a break with the Tsar was a second and
still more fateful _affaire du coeur_. The hetman was upwards of sixty
years of age, but, even so, he fell in love with his god-daughter,
Matrena, who, in spite of difference of age and ecclesiastical kinship,
not only returned his love, but, to escape the upbraidings and
persecution of her mother, took refuge under his roof. Mazeppa sent the
girl back to her home, but, as his love-letters testify, continued to
woo her with the tenderest and most passionate solicitings; and,
although she finally yielded to _force majeure_ and married another
suitor, her parents nursed their revenge, and endeavoured to embroil the
hetman with the Tsar. For a time their machinations failed, and
Matrena's father, Kotchubey, together with his friend Iskra, were
executed with the Tsar's assent and approbation. Before long, however,
Mazeppa, who had been for some time past in secret correspondence with
the Swedes, signalized his defection from Peter by offering his services
first to Stanislaus of Poland, and afterwards to Charles XII. of Sweden,
who was meditating the invasion of Russia.

"Pultowa's day," July 8, 1709, was the last of Mazeppa's power and
influence, and in the following year (March 31, 1710), "he died of old
age, perhaps of a broken heart," at Varnitza, a village near Bender, on
the Dniester, whither he had accompanied the vanquished and fugitive
Charles.

Such was Mazeppa, a man destined to pass through the crowded scenes of
history, and to take his stand among the greater heroes of romance. His
deeds of daring, his intrigues and his treachery, have been and still
are sung by the wandering minstrels of the Ukraine. His story has passed
into literature. His ride forms the subject of an _Orientale_ (1829) by
Victor Hugo, who treats Byron's theme symbolically; and the romance of
his old age, his love for his god-daughter Matrena, with its tragical
issue, the judicial murder of Kotchubey and Iskra, are celebrated by the
"Russian Byron" Pushkin, in his poem _Poltava_. He forms the subject of
a novel, _Iwan Wizigin_, by Bulgarin, 1830, and of tragedies by I.
Slowacki, 1840, and Rudolph von Gottschall. From literature Mazeppa has
passed into art in the "symphonic poem" of Franz Lizt (1857); and, yet
again, _pour comble de gloire_, _Mazeppa, or The Wild Horse of Tartary_,
is the title of a "romantic drama," first played at the Royal
Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge, on Easter Monday, 1831; and revived at
Astley's Theatre, when Adah Isaacs Menken appeared as "Mazeppa," October
3, 1864. (_Peter the Great_, by Eugene Schuyler, 1884, ii. 115, _seq_.;
_Le Fils de Pierre Le Grand, Mazeppa, etc_., by Viscount E. Melchior de
Voguee, Paris, 1884; _Peter the Great_, by Oscar Browning, 1899, pp.
219-229.)

Of the composition of Mazeppa we know nothing, except that on September
24, 1818, "it was still to finish" (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 264). It was
published together with an _Ode_ (_Venice: An Ode_) and _A Fragment_
(see _Letters_, 1899, iii. Appendix IV. pp. 446-453), June 28, 1819.

Notices of _Mazeppa_ appeared in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, July,
1819, vol. v. p. 429 (for _John Gilpin_ and _Mazeppa_, by William
Maginn, _vide ibid_., pp. 434-439); the _Monthly Review_, July, 1819,
vol. 89, pp. 309-321; and the _Eclectic Review_, August, 1819, vol. xii.
pp. 147-156.

ADVERTISEMENT.

"Celui qui remplissait alors cette place etait un gentilhomme Polonais,
nomine Mazeppa, ne dans le palatinat de Podolie: il avait ete eleve page
de Jean Casimir, et avait pris a sa cour quelque teinture des
belles-lettres. Une intrigue qu'il eut dans sa jeunesse avec la femme
d'un gentilhomme Polonais ayant ete decouverte, le mari le fit lier tout
nu sur un cheval farouche, et le laissa aller en cet etat. Le cheval,
qui etait du pays de l'Ukraine, y retourna, et y porta Mazeppa,
demi-mort de fatigue et de faim. Quelques paysans le secoururent: il
resta longtems parmi eux, et se signala dans plusieurs courses contre
les Tartares. La superiorite de ses lumieres lui donna une grande
consideration parmi les Cosaques: sa reputation s'augmentant de jour en
jour, obligea le Czar a le faire Prince de l'Ukraine."--Voltaire, _Hist.
de Charles XII_., 1772, p. 205.

"Le roi, fuyant et poursuivi, eut son cheval tue sous lui; le Colonel
Gieta, blesse, et perdant tout son sang, lui donna le sien. Ainsi on
remit deux fois a cheval, dans la fuite,[br] ce conquerant qui n'avait
pu y monter pendant la bataille."--p. 222.

"Le roi alla par un autre chemin avec quelques cavaliers. Le carrosse,
ou il etait, rompit dans la marche; on le remit a cheval. Pour comble de
disgrace, il s'egara pendant la nuit dans un bois; la, son courage ne
pouvant plus suppleer, a ses forces epuisees, les douleurs de sa
blessure devenues plus insupportables par la fatigue, son cheval etant
tombe de lassitude, il se coucha quelques heures au pied d'un arbre, en
danger d'etre surpris a tout moment par les vainqueurs, qui le
cherchaient de tous cotes."--p. 224.

MAZEPPA

I.

'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,[248]
When Fortune left the royal Swede--
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had passed to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow's walls were safe again--
Until a day more dark and drear,[249]
And a more memorable year, 10
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one--a thunderbolt to all.

II.

Such was the hazard of the die;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly[250]
By day and night through field and flood,
Stained with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
And not a voice was heard to upbraid 20
Ambition in his humbled hour,
When Truth had nought to dread from Power.
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave
His own--and died the Russians' slave.
This, too, sinks after many a league
Of well-sustained, but vain fatigue;
And in the depth of forests darkling,
The watch-fires in the distance sparkling--
The beacons of surrounding foes--
A King must lay his limbs at length. 30
Are these the laurels and repose
For which the nations strain their strength?
They laid him by a savage tree,[251]
In outworn Nature's agony;
His wounds were stiff, his limbs were stark;
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade
A transient slumber's fitful aid:
And thus it was; but yet through all,
Kinglike the monarch bore his fall, 40
And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will:
All silent and subdued were they.
As once the nations round him lay.