The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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CANTO THE FOURTH.

Many are Poets who have never penned
Their inspiration, and perchance the best:
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend
Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compressed
The God within them, and rejoined the stars
Unlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessed
Than those who are degraded by the jars
Of Passion, and their frailties linked to fame,
Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.
Many are Poets but without the name; 10
For what is Poesy but to create
From overfeeling Good or Ill; and aim[316]
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new men,[317]
Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavished his high gift in vain,
Lies to his lone rock by the sea-shore?
So be it: we can bear.--But thus all they 20
Whose Intellect is an o'ermastering Power
Which still recoils from its encumbering clay
Or lightens it to spirit, whatsoe'er
The form which their creations may essay,
Are bards; the kindled Marble's bust may wear
More poesy upon its speaking brow
Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear;
One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,
Or deify the canvass till it shine
With beauty so surpassing all below, 30
That they who kneel to Idols so divine
Break no commandment, for high Heaven is there
Transfused, transfigurated:[318] and the line
Of Poesy, which peoples but the air
With Thought and Beings of our thought reflected,
Can do no more: then let the artist share
The palm, he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved--Alas!
Despair and Genius are too oft connected.
Within the ages which before me pass 40
Art shall resume and equal even the sway
Which with Apelles and old Phidias
She held in Hellas' unforgotten day.
Ye shall be taught by Ruin to revive
The Grecian forms at least from their decay,
And Roman souls at last again shall live
In Roman works wrought by Italian hands,
And temples, loftier than the old temples, give
New wonders to the World; and while still stands
The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar 50
A Dome,[319] its image, while the base expands
Into a fane surpassing all before,
Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in: ne'er
Such sight hath been unfolded by a door
As this, to which all nations shall repair,
And lay their sins at this huge gate of Heaven.
And the bold Architect[320] unto whose care
The daring charge to raise it shall be given,
Whom all Arts shall acknowledge as their Lord,
Whether into the marble chaos driven 60
His chisel bid the Hebrew,[321] at whose word
Israel left Egypt, stop the waves in stone,[cm]
Or hues of Hell be by his pencil poured
Over the damned before the Judgement-throne,[322]
Such as I saw them, such as all shall see,
Or fanes be built of grandeur yet unknown--
The Stream of his great thoughts shall spring from me[323]
The Ghibelline, who traversed the three realms
Which form the Empire of Eternity.
Amidst the clash of swords, and clang of helms, 70
The age which I anticipate, no less
Shall be the Age of Beauty, and while whelms
Calamity the nations with distress,
The Genius of my Country shall arise,
A Cedar towering o'er the Wilderness,
Lovely in all its branches to all eyes,
Fragrant as fair, and recognised afar,
Wafting its native incense through the skies.
Sovereigns shall pause amidst their sport of war,
Weaned for an hour from blood, to turn and gaze 80
On canvass or on stone; and they who mar
All beauty upon earth, compelled to praise,
Shall feel the power of that which they destroy;
And Art's mistaken gratitude shall raise
To tyrants, who but take her for a toy,
Emblems and monuments, and prostitute
Her charms to Pontiffs proud,[324] who but employ
The man of Genius as the meanest brute
To bear a burthen, and to serve a need,
To sell his labours, and his soul to boot. 90
Who toils for nations may be poor indeed,
But free; who sweats for Monarchs is no more
Than the gilt Chamberlain, who, clothed and feed,
Stands sleek and slavish, bowing at his door.
Oh, Power that rulest and inspirest! how
Is it that they on earth, whose earthly power[325]
Is likest thine in heaven in outward show,
Least like to thee in attributes divine,
Tread on the universal necks that bow,
And then assure us that their rights are thine? 100
And how is it that they, the Sons of Fame,
Whose inspiration seems to them to shine
From high, they whom the nations oftest name,
Must pass their days in penury or pain,
Or step to grandeur through the paths of shame,
And wear a deeper brand and gaudier chain?
Or if their Destiny be born aloof
From lowliness, or tempted thence in vain,
In their own souls sustain a harder proof,
The inner war of Passions deep and fierce? 110
Florence! when thy harsh sentence razed my roof,
I loved thee; but the vengeance of my verse,
The hate of injuries which every year
Makes greater, and accumulates my curse,
Shall live, outliving all thou holdest dear--
Thy pride, thy wealth, thy freedom, and even _that_,
The most infernal of all evils here,
The sway of petty tyrants in a state;
For such sway is not limited to Kings,
And Demagogues yield to them but in date, 120
As swept off sooner; in all deadly things,
Which make men hate themselves, and one another,
In discord, cowardice, cruelty, all that springs
From Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,[326]
In rank oppression in its rudest shape,
The faction Chief is but the Sultan's brother,
And the worst Despot's far less human ape.
Florence! when this lone spirit, which so long
Yearned, as the captive toiling at escape,
To fly back to thee in despite of wrong, 130
An exile, saddest of all prisoners,[327]
Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong,
Seas, mountains, and the horizon's[328] verge for bars,[cn]
Which shut him from the sole small spot of earth
Where--whatsoe'er his fate--he still were hers,
His Country's, and might die where he had birth--
Florence! when this lone Spirit shall return
To kindred Spirits, thou wilt feel my worth,
And seek to honour with an empty urn[329]
The ashes thou shalt ne'er obtain--Alas! 140
"What have I done to thee, my People?"[330] Stern
Are all thy dealings, but in this they pass
The limits of Man's common malice, for
All that a citizen could be I was--
Raised by thy will, all thine in peace or war--
And for this thou hast warred with me.--'Tis done:
I may not overleap the eternal bar[331]
Built up between us, and will die alone,
Beholding with the dark eye of a Seer
The evil days to gifted souls foreshown, 150
Foretelling them to those who will not hear;
As in the old time, till the hour be come
When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear,
And make them own the Prophet in his tomb.

Ravenna, 1819.

FOOTNOTES:

[276] {241}[Compare--

"He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhime."

Milton, _Lycidas_, line 11.]

[277] [By "Runic" Byron means "Northern," "Anglo-Saxon."]

[278] [Compare "In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in
yours--_Amor mio_--is comprised my existence here and
hereafter."--Letter of Byron to the Countess Guiccioli, August 25, 1819,
_Letters_, 1900, iv. 350. Compare, too, _Beppo_, stanza xliv.; _vide
ante_, p. 173.]

[279] {243}[Compare--

"I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:
A little cupola more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust."

_Don Juan_, Canto IV. stanza civ. lines 1-3.]

[280] [The _Cassandra_ or _Alexandra_ of Lycophron, one of the seven
"Pleiades" who adorned the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus (third century
B.C.), is "an iambic monologue of 1474 verses, in which Cassandra is
made to prophesy the fall of Troy ... with numerous other historical
events, ... ending with [the reign of] Alexandra the Great." Byron had
probably read a translation of the _Cassandra_ by Philip Yorke, Viscount
Royston (born 1784, wrecked in the _Agatha_ off Memel, April 7, 1808),
which was issued at Cambridge in 1806. The _Alexandra_ forms part of the
_Bibliotheca Teubneriana_ (ed. G. Kinkel, Lipsiae, 1880). For the
prophecy of Nereus, _vide_ Hor., _Odes_, lib. i. c. xv.]

[281] {244}[In the notes to his _Essay on Epic Poetry_, 1782 (Epistle
iii. pp. 175-197), Hayley (see _English Bards, etc._, line 310,
_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 321, note 1) prints a translation of the
three first cantos of the _Inferno_, which, he says (p. 172), was
written "a few years ago to oblige a particular friend." "Of all
Hayley's compositions," writes Southey (_Quart. Rev._, vol. xxxi. pp.
283, 284), "these specimens are the best ... in thus following his
original Hayley was led into a sobriety and manliness of diction which
... approached ... to the manner of a better age."

In a note on the Hall of Eblis, S. Henley quotes with approbation
Hayley's translation of lines 1-9 of this Third Canto of the _Inferno_.
_Vathek_ ... by W. Beckford, 1868, p. 188.]

[282] [_L'Italia_: _Canto IV. del Pellegrinaggio di Childe Harold_ ...
tradotto da Michele Leoni, Italia (London?), 1819, 8º. Leoni also
translated the _Lament of Tasso_ (_Lamento di Tasso_ ... Recato in
Italiano da M. Leoni, Pisa, 1818).]

[283] [Alfieri has a sonnet on the tomb of Dante, beginning--

"O gran padre Alighier, se dal ciel miri."

_Opere Scelle_, di Vittorio Alfieri, 1818, iii. 487.]

[284] [The Panther, the Lion, and the She-wolf, which Dante encountered
on the "desert slope" (_Inferno_, Canto I. lines 31, _sq._), were no
doubt suggested by Jer. v. 6: "Idcirco percussit eos leo de silva, lupus
ad vesperam vastavit eos, pardus vigilans super civitates corum."
Symbolically they have been from the earliest times understood as
denoting--the panther, lust; the lion, pride; the wolf, avarice; the
sins affecting youth, maturity, and old age. Later commentators have
suggested that there may be an underlying political symbolism as well,
and that the three beasts may stand for Florence with her "Black" and
"White" parties, the power of France, and the Guelf party as typically
representative of these vices (_The Hell of Dante_, by A. J. Butler,
1892, p. 5, note).

Count Giovanni Marchetti degli Angelini (1790-1852), in his _Discorso_
... _della prima e principale Allegoria del Poema di Dante_, contributed
to an edition of _La Divina Commedia_, published at Bologna, 1819-21, i.
17-44, and reissued in _La Biografia di Dante_ ... 1822, v. 397, _sq_.,
etc., argues in favour of a double symbolism. (According to a life of
Marchetti, prefixed to his _Poesie_, 1878 [_Una notte di Dante, etc._],
he met Byron at Bologna in 1819, and made his acquaintance.)]

[285] {245}[For Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828), see letter to Murray,
October 15, 1816 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 377, note 3); and for Ippolito
Pindemonte (1753-1828), see letter to Murray, June 4, 1817, (_Letters_,
1900, iv. 127, note 4). In his _Essay on the Present Literature of
Italy_, Hobhouse supplies critical notices of Pindemonte and Monti,
_Historical Illustrations_, 1818, pp. 413-449. Cesare Arici, lawyer and
poet, was born at Brescia, July 2, 1782. His works (Padua, 1858, 4
vols.) include his didactic poems, _La coltivazione degli Ulivi_ (1805),
_Il Corallo_, 1810, _La Pastorizia_ (on sheep-farming), 1814, and a
translation of the works of Virgil. He died in 1836. (See, for a long
and sympathetic notice, Tipaldo's _Biografia degli Italiani Illustri_,
iii. 491, _sq_.)]

[286] {247}The reader is requested to adopt the Italian pronunciation of
Beatrice, sounding all the syllables.

[287] [Compare--

"Within the deep and luminous subsistence
Of the High Light appeared to me three circles,
Of threefold colour and of one dimension,
And by the second seemed the first reflected
As Iris is by Iris, and the third
Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed....
O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest."

_Paradiso,_ xxxiii. 115-120, 124 (_Longfellow's Translation_).]

[bw] {248}_Star over star_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[288]

"Che sol per le belle opre
Che sono in cielo, il sole e l'altre stelle,
Dentro da lor _si crede il Paradiso:_
Cosi se guardi fiso
Pensar ben dei, che ogni terren piacere.
[Si trova in lei, ma tu nol puoi vedere."]

Canzone, in which Dante describes the person of Beatrice, Strophe third.

[Byron was mistaken in attributing these lines, which form part of a
Canzone beginning "Io miro i crespi e gli biondi capegli," to Dante.
Neither external nor internal evidence supports such an ascription. The
Canzone is attributed in the MSS. either to Fazio degli Uberti, or to
Bindo Borrichi da Siena, but was not assigned to Dante before 1518
(_Canzoni di Dante, etc._ [Colophon]. Impresso in Milano per Augustino
da Vimercato ... MCCCCCXVIII ...). See, too, _Il Canzoniere di Dante_
... Fraticelli, Firenze, 1873, pp. 236-240 (from information kindly
supplied by the Rev. Philip H. Wicksteed).]

[289] ["Nine times already since my birth had the heaven of light
returned to the selfsame point almost, as concerns its own revolution,
when first the glorious Lady of my mind was made manifest to mine eyes;
even she who was called Beatrice by many who knew not wherefore."--_La
Vita Nuova,_ Sec. 2 (Translation by D. G. Rossetti, _Dante and his Circle,_
1892, p. 30).

"In reference to the meaning of the name, '_she who confers blessing_,'
we learn from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May
Feast, given in the year 1274, by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice
... to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero
Alighieri."--_Note_ by D. G. Rossetti, ibid., p. 30.]

[290] {249}

"L'Esilio che m' e dato onor mi tegno
* * * * *
Cader tra' buoni e pur di lode degno."

_Sonnet of Dante_ [Canzone xx. lines 76-80, _Opere_
di Dante 1897, p. 171]

in which he represents Right, Generosity, and Temperance as banished
from among men, and seeking refuge from Love, who inhabits his bosom.

[291] [Compare--

"On the stone
Called Dante's,--a plain flat stone scarce discerned
From others in the pavement,--whereupon
He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned
To Brunelleschi's Church, and pour alone
The lava of his spirit when it burned:
It is not cold to-day. O passionate
Poor Dante, who, a banished Florentine,
Didst sit austere at banquets of the great
And muse upon this far-off stone of thine,
And think how oft some passer used to wait
A moment, in the golden day's decline,
With 'Good night, dearest Dante!' Well, good night!"

_Casa Guidi Windows_, by E. B. Browning, _Poetical Works_,
1866, iii. 259.]

[292] {250} "Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti
communis pervenerit, _talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod
moriatur_." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen
accused with him. The Latin is worthy of the sentence. [The decree
(March 11, 1302) that he and his associates in exile should be burned,
if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered in
1772 by the Conte Ludovico Savioli. Dante had been previously, January
27, fined eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment.]

[bx] _The ashes she would scatter_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[293] {251}[At the end of the Social War (B.C. 88), when Sulla marched
to Rome at the head of his army, and Marius was compelled to take
flight, he "stripped himself, plunged into the bog (_Paludes
Minturnenses_, near the mouth of the Liris), amidst thick water and
mud.... They hauled him out naked and covered with dirt, and carried him
to Minturnae." Afterwards, when he sailed for Carthage, he had no sooner
landed than he was ordered by the governor (Sextilius) to quit Africa.
On his once more gaining the ascendancy and re-entering Rome (B.C. 87),
he justified the massacre of Sulla's adherents in a blood-thirsty
oration. Past ignominy and present triumph seem to have turned his head
("ut erat inter iram toleratae fortunae, et laetitiam emendatae, parum
compos animi").--Plut., "Marius," _apud_ Langhorne, 1838, p. 304; Livii
_Epit_., lxxx. 28.]

[by] {252}----_their civic rage_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[294] {253} This lady, whose name was _Gemma_, sprung from one of the
most powerful Guelph families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the
principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is--described as being
"_Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum
esse legimus,_" according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is
scandalised with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary
men should not marry. "Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le
mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate, il piu
nobile filosofo che mai fusse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e ufici nella
Repubblica nella sua Citta; e Aristotile che, etc., etc., ebbe due
moglie in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.--E Marco
Tullio--e Catone--e Varrone--e Seneca--ebbero moglie," etc., etc. [_Le
Vite di Dante, etc._, Firenze, 1677, pp. 22, 23]. It is odd that honest
Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for anything I
know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and
Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands'
happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy--Cato gave away
his wife--of Varro's we know nothing--and of Seneca's, only that she was
disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years
afterwards. But says Leonardo, "L'uomo e _animale civile_, secondo piace
a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the
_animal's civism_ is "la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata
nasce la Citta."

[There is nothing in the _Divina Commedia_, or elsewhere in his
writings, to justify the common belief that Dante was unhappily married,
unless silence may be taken to imply dislike and alienation. It has been
supposed that he alludes to his wife, Gemma Donati, in the _Vita Nuova_,
Sec. 36, "as a young and very beautiful lady, who was gazing upon me from a
window, with a gaze full of pity," "who remembered me many times of my
own most noble lady," whom he consented to serve "more because of her
gentle goodness than from any choice" of his own (_Convito_, ii. 2. 7),
but there are difficulties in the way of accepting this theory. There
is, however, not the slightest reason for believing that the words which
he put into the mouth of Jacopo Rusticucci, "La fiera moglie piu
ch'altro, mi nuoce" ["and truly, my savage wife, more than aught else,
doth harm me"] (_Inferno_, xvi. 45), were winged with any personal
reminiscence or animosity. But with Byron (see his letter to Lady Byron,
dated April 3, 1820, in which he quotes these lines "with intention"
[_Letters_, 1901, v. 2]), as with Boccaccio, "the wish was father to the
thought," and both were glad to quote Dante as a victim to matrimony.

Seven children were born to Dante and Gemma. Of these "his son Pietro,
who wrote a commentary on the _Divina Commedia_, settled as judge in
Verona. His daughter Beatrice lived as a nun in Ravenna" (_Dante_, by
Oscar Browning, 1891, p. 47).]

[295] {256}[In his defence of the "mother-tongue" as a fitting vehicle
for a commentary on his poetry, Dante argues "that natural love moves
the lover principally to three things: the one is to exalt the loved
object, the second is to be jealous thereof, the third is to defend it
... and these three things made me adopt it, that is, our mother-tongue,
which naturally and accidentally I love and have loved." Again, having
laid down the premiss that "the magnanimous man always praises himself
in his heart; and so the pusillanimous man always deems himself less
than he is," he concludes, "Wherefore many on account of this vileness
of mind, depreciate their native tongue, and applaud that of others; and
all such as these are the abominable wicked men of Italy, who hold this
precious mother-tongue in vile contempt, which, if it be vile in any
case, is so only inasmuch as it sounds in the evil mouth of these
adulterers."--_Il Convito_, caps. x., xi., translated by Elizabeth Price
Sayer, 1887, pp. 34-40.]

[bz] ----_when matched with thine_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[296] [With the whole of this apostrophe to Italy, compare _Purgatorio_,
vi. 76-127.]

[ca] _From the world's harvest_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[cb] {257}

_Where earthly Glory first then Heavenly made._--
[MS. Alternative reading.]
_Where Glory first, and then Religion made_.--[MS. erased.]

[297] [Compare--

"The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lxxx. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 390, note 2.]

[298] {258}See "Sacco di Roma," generally attributed to Guicciardini
[Francesco (1482-1540)]. There is another written by a Jacopo
_Buonaparte_.

[The original MS. of the latter work is preserved in the Royal Library
at Paris. It is entitled, "Ragguaglio Storico di tutto I'occorso, giorno
per giorno, nel Sacco di Roma dell' anno mdxxvii., scritto da Jacopo
Buonaparte, Gentiluomo Samminiatese, che vi si trovo' presente." An
edition of it was printed at Cologne, in 1756, to which is prefixed a
genealogy of the Buonaparte family.

The "traitor Prince" was Charles IV., Connetable de Bourbon, Comte de
Montpensier, born 1490, who was killed at the capture of Rome, May 6,
1527. "His death, far from restraining the ardour of the assailants [the
Imperial troops, consisting of Germans and Spanish foot], increased it;
and with the loss of about 1000 men, they entered and sacked the
city.... The disorders committed by the soldiers were dreadful, and the
booty they made incredible. They added insults to cruelty, and scoffs to
rapaciousness. Upon the news of Bourbon's death, His Holiness, imagining
that his troops, no longer animated by his implacable spirit, might
listen to an accommodation, demanded a parley; but ... neglected all
means for defence.... Cardinals and bishops were ignominiously exposed
upon asses with their legs and hands bound; and wealthy citizens ...
suspected of having secreted their effects ... were tortured ... to
oblige them to make discoveries, ... the booty ... is said to have
amounted to about two millions and a half of ducats."--_Mod. Univ.
History_, xxxvi. 512.]

[299] {259}[Cambyses, the second King of Persia, who reigned B.C.
529-532, sent an army against the Ammonians, which perished in the
sands.]

[cc] ----_and his phalanx--why_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[300] [The _Prophecy of Dante_ was begun and finished before Byron took
up the cause of Italian independence, or definitely threw in his lot
with the Carbonari, but his intimacy with the Gambas, which dates from
his migration to Ravenna in 1819, must from the first have brought him
within the area of political upheaval and disturbance. A year after
(April 16, 1820) he writes to Murray, "I have, besides, another reason
for desiring you to be speedy, which is, that there is that brewing in
Italy which will speedily cut off all security of communication.... I
shall, if permitted by the natives, remain to see what will come of it,
... for I shall think it by far the most interesting spectacle and
moment in existence, to see the Italians send the Barbarians of all
nations back to their own dens. I have lived long enough among them to
feel more for them as a nation than for any other people in existence:
but they want Union [see line 145], and they want principle; and I doubt
their success."--_Letters_, 1901, v. 8, note 1.]